Weakness refers to the part of our character or nature which makes us fall easily in the face of temptation. Since no man is perfect, every man has weaknesses. Weakness is common to all people even to the great Bible heroes whose faith and deeds inspire the present generation. And these weaknesses are put on display under various circumstances. These are some examples of weaknesses of man seen in the Bible:
Noah’s weakness
Noah was a good man. Out of all the people of the world at that time, Noah was the only person God regarded as good. Hence, God saved him and his family from the flood that destroyed the whole world. Now after the flood, Noah began the cultivation of crops and he planted a vineyard; hence, he was producing grapes and made alcoholic wine out of the grapes.
Noah slipped into a drinking habit. At some point he consumed enough alcohol to make him pass out, lying naked in his tent. And the Bible continues that his son Ham saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Ham’s brothers, Shem and Japheth, took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their Noah. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see Noah’s nakedness. Genesis 9:20-24
Moses’ weakness
The Bible testifies that Moses was the humblest man upon the face of the earth in his day. It is written: “Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth (Nu 12:3)”. What a great commendation? However, this same Moses was struggling with some moral weaknesses in his life. At least, one of these moral weaknesses is very obvious to Bible readers; that is ‘bad-temperedness’.
Back in Egypt, Moses killed an Egyptian whom he saw maltreating an Israelite (Exodus 2:11-15). At Mt. Sinai, when Moses came down from the mountain and saw that the Israelites have forsaken the Lord and were holding a feast to an idol, he was driven by anger so much that he smashed into pieces the two tablets of stones that God gave him on which is written the commandments. In the wilderness of Zin, the people rebelled against Moses for water. Now God told Moses to speak to the rock to yield its water for the people. However, Moses, out of anger, disobeyed God by striking the rock twice instead of speaking to the rock (Numbers 20:1-13).
Moses’ anger-induced disobedience offended God so much that, he had to face the consequence of not entering the Promised Land. Largely, we would say Moses’ anger-weakness posed a challenge to his mission and leadership as a man of God. Moses had his weaknesses, but, on the whole, he was a great leader and prophet.
David’s weakness
David was a good king and was loved by God. Before he became a king he had an arch enemy, King Saul. Kings Saul hunted David day and night with an unquenchable thirst to kill him. On more than one occasion, David had the opportunity to kill his arch-enemy King Saul and usurp his throne, but he spared his life.
Now this same David, one evening, went on top of his palace. While standing up there, he saw a woman, Bathsheba, bathing on the roof of her house. David had many wives and Bathsheba too was married, yet David could not control himself, he wanted to have her still. It ended that he committed adultery with her and faced many consequences.
In these events, we see two sides of David; at one point, he shows strength for forgiveness and was not vindictive. At another point, he showed weakness for women.