David attempts to console his accomplice Joab in the murder of Uriah the Hittite with the line “let this thing not seem evil in your eyes” and goes on to make comments about how that’s just the way of the sword.

Garret Keizer in his excellent book “The Enigma of Anger” makes this comment: “I have never ceased to be amazed that the Bible, the Bible, should present the prototype of all sin as the willful acquisition of an independent moral consciousness. Not power or pleasure, a quiver of invincible arrows or a cache of giant chocolate bars, but the knowledge of good and evil. Not the stuff of brothels but of Sunday schools.” (Kindle location 911-14)

In Gethsemane we see Jesus at exactly this point as he pleads for his disciples to pray in their time of trial. Will Jesus acquire an independent moral consciousness?