Q(s)4U: David and Bathsheba
Okay, I really need some feedback today.
Next month I’m teaching an adult Bible study during our VBS program at church. (Let me interrupt myself to say I love the way our church does VBS! It’s a HUGE production, but it’s fantastic. They offer something for everyone and every age. Parents can minister or be ministered to; they can feed young hearts or be spiritually fed themselves. It’s great.) The class I’m teaching is on the five women listed in Matthew’s genealogy of Christ: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary. My favorite part of teaching a class is doing the study and prep beforehand. I LOVE it! I’ve especially enjoyed creating this study because each of these women are so interesting, their stories so complex.
But I have some questions. I’d love to get your perspectives on David and Bathsheba.
Question #1: Was “the act” volitional on Bathsheba’s part or not? I’ve read conflicting sources. I’ve always thought it was not, that David’s taking her was a royally-sanctioned rape. Were subjects allowed to reject the king? If so, did that liberty extend to women called into his quarters? But some sources paint Bathsheba as a temptress who intentionally seduced the king. Some even suggest she and David knew each other, that they harbored a blossoming romance thwarted by her arranged marriage and subsequent seclusion as Uriah’s wife.
Question #2: Why did God choose HER to be an ancestress of the Messiah? Bathsheba was David’s eighth wife. He had other sons before and after Solomon. Why did God choose Solomon, and by extension Bathsheba, as the Messianic line? And, of all the women who contributed to Jesus’ family tree, why was she found worthy enough to mention in Matthew? How many women were left unnamed? And yet this woman, accomplice to adultery, murder and deceit, is clearly listed. Why?
I have my theories on the second question, but I’m really torn about the first. What do you think?
** As a clarification, in response to James’s comment below, the first question is just out of curiousity. I would like to know, but the answer won’t affect my study at all. My study focuses on the lives of these women with the main point being God’s grace. The second question — the why question — is the crux of the study. I’ll share more about my thoughts on this in a later post.
Posted on May 21, 2009, in Scripture, Women of the Bible and tagged Bible, Women of the Bible. Bookmark the permalink. 8 Comments.
I’d go with your first impulse. I don’t know if it was rape, but I find it hard to believe that Bathsheba would be in the power position here. Even if she was beautiful and alluring, David could certainly have said no but that probably wasn’t the norm. It was a weakness, and he regretted it later.
I love the way God chooses the unexpected characters in his lineage, whether she was a powerless victim or a sinner. It gives me hope that I too can follow him and be accepted.
Thanks for the thought-provoking questions!
Question #1:
Have you read the Rabbinic take on this passage? It manages to attribute no sin to David- at all! It’s quite fantastic to read and wrap one’s head around. But as far as your question goes I’m curious as to what purpose it serves? I’m just curious about the shape of your lesson plan/thinking/etc. I tend to think it’s an unanswerable question for lack of reliable source material.
Question #2:
This is the question. Why include an incest survivor, a hooker, an accomplice to murder/deception/adultery, a foreigner, and a self-admitted nobody/pregnant out-of-wedlock girl in the official genealogy to the Jewish audience? Great question…
The question about why God chooses whom He chooses is timeless. I like to ask what the choice of those people says about God’s nature. (On the flip side of the David& Bathsheba coin, why does David get a pass while Bathsheba and the other women get questioned? Each corresponding man has at least as many flaws as each woman.)
It is interesting how easy it is to focus on the flaws of the characters in the Biblical narrative… to get wrapped up trying to figure out a matrix that helps us make sense of God’s choices for differing assignments, to try to make it “fair” or “make sense”. I tend to think that the whole point of God choosing these people is that it doesn’t make any sense or isn’t fair which is the essence of grace. For me the value of comprehending how “grimy” these people were is in reconciling their natures with God’s nature- it always expands my view of God and challenges me to retool my own tendencies toward being judgmental.
Question #1: I’ve always assumed that Bathsheba didn’t have much of a choice, as far as refusing the King goes. Everything I’ve ever read about Kings seems to imply that if you refuse, you die. Or get a very unpleasant consequence. (like in The Other Boleyn Girl, if you’ve seen it, she didn’t have much of a choice when it came to refusing the king – even though she was married – he would have taken her head off!) Granted, she could have and should have refused, if that was the case, but was probably too fearful of the consequences.
I’d love to know what really happened – with alot of history actually. Oh, to be a fly on the wall!
Question #2: Besides the fact that God has always chosen the lowest of the low to do awesome things, it does make you wonder. Most of the women in the Bible, that are mentioned by name, have some sort of turning point and I don’t recall it ever being mentioned that Bathsheba repented or anything like that…
There is no way for us to know how complicit Bathsheba was. Yes, the king probably had the right to have her no matter what, but that doesn’t mean he actually enforced this rule. Bathsheba may have been willing. But to say she seduced him is not biblical. The Bible offers no hint of this. She was bathing on her roof, but she didn’t necessarily realize anyone could see her.
We can’t know, again, why God chose Bathsheba, but I suspect it’s because she was part of proving just how human and sinful David was. God wants to stress that no matter how good we may appear to other humans, we are all sinful and require a Savior.
Women were property. If you recall, Lot offered his daughters for rape when the town of Sodom wanted to rape the angels and he was still considered righteous. I think when Bathsheba came along things hadn’t changed. Jesus gave women status. I wonder if Bathsheba didn’t grieve for the one man who loved her after David killed him and she became part of an impersonal harem. David didn’t have time to be anyone’s husband.
I also suspect that that is why her son was the one to follow David as king. It was to compensate Bathseba for all she had endured and lost.
Hope you won’t mind if I run this comment as my own blog. I’ve been thinking about it for days. Honest. Great minds I guess.
Question #1 – I think she probably feared for her life if she refused the king, so I think it was rape.
Question #2 – I think that it was God’s way of turning something horrible (David’s actions toward her) into something beautiful (the child born of that terrible act became a direct descendant of the Messiah).
The child born of that act died. Solomon was born later. David spent days praying on his face about it and then lost the child. Then he got up and went about his business. I’ve always seen it as an example. Pray your heart out and then accept the Lord’s answer.
Great thoughts. THANKS, everyone for sharing. I’ll post more on this topic next week.
I want to make one clarification. The child who resulted from this act of adultery did not follow David as king. That son died as punishment for David’s sin. (Note that Scripture does not accredit the sin to Bathsheba, but only to David.) Bathsheba, now David’s eighth wife, bore five sons total. The second son was Solomon. It was he who inherited his father’s throne.