Unraveling The Truth Behind Bathsheba & King David's Affair | Parable

Women who have influence and who have brains and make things happen and change things around them, that doesn't fit with the picture that the woman should be subservient. So if you make her therefore evil, then men can say, look what happens when you put a woman in charge. These women were extraordinary figures of their time. Important discussions about issues like women's power, women's sexuality. All these stories about women in the Bible have sex in common. They have to be recast as evil. They are women who change the world around them. When King David saw her bathing naked on the roof, this married temptress drew the great king so powerfully that he risked everything, including his salvation. At least that's the guy's version. On the side of her being a seductress, people have said in the past, well, why was she bathing on top of the roof? And she was, she purposely positioned herself there because she knew that King David would be walking around on his balcony. This has been a very common interpretation of this story, that somehow Bathsheba kept tabs on David, that she didn't like her own husband or was looking to trade him in for a more powerful model. And so she set it up so that she would seduce David from afar. Until the 1960s, the common interpretation of Bathsheba's story wasn't exactly pro-woman. While her husband was away at war, the beautiful Bathsheba decided to take a bath on the roof of her home, aware that King David was watching from across the way. Smitten, the king sent his minions to Bathsheba's door with an invitation to a command performance at the palace. This was not smart, given that both were married and in those days women could be stoned for adultery. God was so not well pleased. But who's to blame? Was Bathsheba really a naughty temptress? Interpreters over the years, over the centuries, have wondered, because there's so many gaps in the story, whether Bathsheba went out onto the roof of her house in the evening, specifically because she knew David liked to take a stroll there and that therefore she was setting herself up to be seen and desired by him. And probably the best example of this is the film, the 1950s film, David and Bathsheba, where you have poor David who is, you know, distracted by the business of kings and he happens to see Bathsheba bathing and she appears to be making quite a show of it. And she looks over her shoulder at the camera and we know that that's what she's looking, she's looking at David and very aware of him looking at her. So poor David is distracted, sends for her and as the scene progresses she eventually admits that she has in fact been desirous of David all along, put herself in in full view of him and by the end of the story it's she who's actually suggesting that if she could, if King David could do something about the little problem of her husband then she'd be free to be his. More recently, interpreters, particularly women interpreters, have looked at that story and said well that's a very male fantasy, isn't it? That this woman would structure her life around trying to capture this man. Here is a woman who wants to simply have a bath on her roof. It's very common in this culture for a woman to do that. It was springtime, they collected rainwater on the roof, it was very cool in the late evening and so it was a good time to take a bath on the roof and she cannot presume that people are going to go out on their their own rooftops and telescopically look down at her and want to know more about her. So I see her as this woman simply taking a bath. Kings being kings, he decides he wants her and we already know from the text itself that kings get what kings want. So he sends for and takes Bathsheba and she comes. How is she to say no? This was the golden age of Israel, 1000 BC, and David was the golden boy. The son of a shepherd who faced down the giant Goliath and killed him with a slingshot. A major turning point in the war between Israel and the Philistines. David became an army commander, ultimately conquering the Philistines and establishing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. At just 30 years old, this war hero was chosen by his country's elders to be the second king of a united Israel. David's life story shows how even the great must obey God's laws. He had been king for several years and several wives when he met Bathsheba. He's being described at this point in the story as being very successful, being the king after God's own heart. There's no reason to think he's suddenly going to go off the rails, as it were. And so the story, particularly how abruptly it's introduced, is fairly striking, I think. When David spied Bathsheba on that roof, her husband Uriah was away fighting for his country. Why wasn't the king? The story does not explicitly tell us why David is still in Jerusalem, but it does make a pretty strong hint that there's something wrong with him being there. Because 2 Samuel 11 begins by telling us in the springtime, at the time when kings go to war, David stayed in Jerusalem, which is puzzling to begin with, anyway, as to why he would be sending everyone else off to war and he stays behind. Whatever put him at the scene, pre-feminist interpreters were all but unanimous about where to lay the blame for what happened next. Modern scholars are not so sure. I don't think she's tempting him and I think she also has no choice when he calls for her. I think of Bathsheba as actually sexually assaulted by David. Not everybody reads the passage in that way, but I think that Bathsheba has no choice but to lay with the king. Otherwise you're in a great deal of danger. All versions of the story agree on the immediate consequences. So when she becomes pregnant, she realizes immediately that this is going to be her downfall, so that she has to tell King David. When she told the king, it didn't go well. He already had lots of wives. The story tells that he's got, you know, a number of wives that he collected along the way as he was rising to power, but the problem here is that he has lain with the wife of one of his army officers and this is not a good thing. And that's when things fall apart for David. He is caught and he has to cover up the deed. So the first attempt is to call Uriah back and try to persuade him to sleep with his wife, because if Uriah will sleep with his wife and then everyone realizes that she's pregnant, well, you know, the child will obviously be taken as Uriah's. In the biblical story, he refuses out of solidarity for the troops, for the other soldiers that are sleeping in the field and roughing it. How can he come home and sleep with his wife and enjoy those pleasures when others are not able to do so? So he's very noble and he refuses. For one night with Bathsheba, the king had betrayed a loyal soldier. Will he murder for her? Bathsheba was pregnant with his child when Israel's beloved King David made her his queen. But hold on, she was already married when she met David to a soldier named Uriah. Uriah was one of David's mighty men. He was an honorable man, someone that any woman in that time would have wanted to be married to. He was someone who was so honorable that when David tried to cover up his affair with Bathsheba and invite Uriah back to sleep with his wife so as to cover up the paternity, that Uriah said, no, because my fellow men are at war, how can I enjoy my pleasure when they are at war? Uriah is deliberately sent by David to the front lines, obviously as a way, hopefully, of having him killed off and removed from the story. And that's exactly what happens. He's set up so that David can keep his hands clean. David doesn't actually thrust a sword into his belly or poison his wine or anything like that. But David is just as much guilty of his murder as the mob boss is who orders a hit on somebody. He puts the plan into motion. He thinks he organizes it. He tells his loyal henchman, Joab, what to do. And he sets him up. He gets one of his generals to put Uriah right at the front of the action, sets him up so that he's killed. And then Bathsheba can become the next wife in the royal household. She mourns his death. But then she's willing, even though she may not love David, she has had a child with David. She realizes perhaps that she has very few options as a widow. And so she is willing to be integrated into his household and therefore, thereafter, negotiate, start negotiating the place for herself and the place for her son. For David, this episode with Bathsheba really is the turning point of his rule. From now on, David's family is going to be under attack and he is going to face some family situations which really no father or no husband wants to face. God was not pleased with David and sent the prophet Nathan to tell him so in the form of a rather tricky parable. Well, Nathan comes to confront David about what he's done with Bathsheba, but he doesn't do it directly. He tries to draw David into implicating himself. So he tells him a story about a rich man who had many possessions, including many sheep and cattle, and a poor man who just had the one lamb. And somebody comes to visit the rich man. The rich man insists on using the poor man's one sheep as a meal for the visitor. And of course, this outrages David. And he says, well, somebody who steals something like that from a poor man must surely die. And Nathan, of course, jumps on that and says, you've done exactly that with your eye. You've taken this poor man's wife, even though you are a king with all of these riches and resources. David would be punished through his children, his dynasty. The child he conceived with Bathsheba lived only seven days. This is a terrible punishment for David to lose a male heir because that is someone that could rule for him. So it's not a daughter that he loses, it's a son. And that is God's way of showing that his inheritance is lessened in some way. But this is also, of course, a punishment for Bathsheba. It is her son as well. And he goes through a real period of lament. He recognizes his sin. He fasts, he throws himself on the ground. So he is really repentant for the sin that he commits. But God will not allow him to go unscathed. He must have a punishment for taking this little lamb of the one poor man instead of being with and using his little lambs. What the loss of the child does is it brings a turning point in the relationship between Bathsheba and David. And there's an interesting verse that says that after that happened, David comforted his wife and Bathsheba conceived. Bathsheba produced another son. This one, Solomon, grew up to be as famous as his father and as troubled. And Solomon is hoped for his mother because he's not only named Solomon but the prophet Nathan gives him a name Jedidiah which means beloved of the Lord. And so here Bathsheba is affirmed. She is someone who has come through loss but has hope for her future. Bathsheba all but disappeared from the story for what amounts to years. We don't know what happens to Bathsheba between the birth of Solomon and Solomon actually becoming king or about to become king. And that's again very typical of Hebrew narrative style. Hebrew narrative style only introduces characters when it needs them. And if she's not needed in the story then we don't hear anything about her. It doesn't mean that she's not there. It doesn't mean that she's not doing whatever she needs to do. In fact, behind the scenes Bathsheba was one busy lady. After Bathsheba gave birth to King David's son Solomon, she never looked back but began a transition from victim to political powerhouse. She had three more children with David but it was Solomon she worked to get on the throne. We have to remember that in the ancient world that women's status was usually determined by the status of the man to whom they were most closely linked. And for Bathsheba that would be through her sons. The point is that if you're not the queen mother then you're nobody and you're cast aside and you have to fend for yourself. As the king aged, the dysfunctional family he built exploded into bitter rivalry over who would be the next king of Israel. There was no love lost between rival half-brothers Adonijah by another of David's wives and Solomon, Bathsheba's child. Both from the ancient text itself as well as from sociological looks at monarchies, the time when the factions are fighting for the throne is a very dangerous time. What we do know we see again here in this story is that the queens, so the royal household of the queens, begin to play those politics and if they're a powerful figure they can help get one of their sons on the throne. When King David took to his deathbed, Bathsheba made her most controversial move and this one was all hers. She reminded King David of a promise he'd made to see their son Solomon take the throne. But did he ever actually make that promise? There's a very mysterious promise that David is alleged to have made which is resurrected in first Kings chapter one which doesn't visibly appear earlier in the story. I think you're left to wonder how much of this is the king being reminded in his dotage of something that in fact he never said. Even if Bathsheba was once a victim, she was now fully in charge of her destiny and her sons. And so Bathsheba comes back into the story because she is vying to get her son Solomon on the throne. And as David is dying we have a very interesting portrait where she lines up with a priest and a prophet and that coalition, I mean they're portrayed in the story as three individuals, the queen, the priest, and the prophet, but what they represent most probably is three factions. So she's got a priestly faction and a prophetic faction behind her and they line up to get Solomon on the throne. So while the initial take on Bathsheba is pretty opaque, it looks like she's sort of a pawn of David in being taken as kind of a royal concubine. By the end of her time she ends up being the most powerful queen because she gets her son Solomon on the throne. Solomon took his father's place as king of Israel. With her son on the throne, Bathsheba's position was unassailable. She meets Solomon to ask him for something and he goes to meet her. He bows before her. He sits down on his throne and then he calls people to set up a throne for Bathsheba. And so here Bathsheba is not just another one of David's wives after his death. She's not just the mother of the king but she is the queen mother. Bathsheba had transformed herself from plaything to powerhouse. When her son Solomon became king of Israel, Bathsheba proved to be a surprisingly benevolent queen monk. By the end of the story of Bathsheba, she is someone who has grown, has matured, she's no longer passive, very active, a complex character and she is a woman to be respected and to be reckoned with. In the popular romantic versions of the story of Bathsheba, so much is lost, including the relevance to our lives today. Bathsheba's involvement with David is such that it points to a flaw or a weakness in David's character. David is at a point, a high point of his career. We've seen this in our culture. Somebody in ministry, they have money, they have everything and then they're faced with a situation of temptation and they take because they can and they think there are no consequences for them. But in the situation of David, there's many, in many ways, this is the beginning of the unraveling of David and his kingdom because he never recovers fully from this. There'll be repercussions in his life and the life of his family. A really heroic story of a woman who perhaps was sexually assaulted, who had to work with a very powerful man and work through her relationship with him, no matter what her feelings were towards him, and ultimately have her own son, the flesh of her flesh, become the most powerful figure in Israel. And so seeing it today, a woman who's in a bad situation, who's at the mercy in some ways of powerful men in her life, who does what she has to do in order to survive, and it may not be admirable what she has to do and we might not agree with what she does, but she's the best judge of what she needs to do to ensure her own survival. Far from being a seductive temptress, Bathsheba was helpless before the king's desire. But over the years of her marriage, she grew into a political powerhouse who built a dynasty. Who would have thought that Bathsheba, another man's wife, turned widow, now a wife of the king of Israel, would have become such a beloved character, would have been the mother of Israel's wisest and arguably greatest king.