The Sean McDowell Show - A BIG Debate Behind David & Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11)

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Today, we'll cover one of the most controversial stories in the Bible: David & Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11). Did David rape Bathsheba? Was she complicit in any way? Dr. Carmen Imes is an Old Testament professor, writer, and biblical scholar at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. Hope you enjoy and it can clear up some of the misconceptions and reveal other parts to the story. READ: Blame David, Not Bathsheba. Nathan Did, by Carmen Imes: https://www.christianitytoday.com/2022/07/rape-david-bathsheba-adultery-sexual-sin-prophet-nathan/ READ: Did David Rape Bathsheba? Clay Jones: https://www.equip.org/articles/did-david-rape-bathsheba/ WATCH: The Bible and Slavery: Explained (w/ Carmen Imes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWvwkHKWAfE *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

The story of David and Bathsheba is perhaps one of the most controversial stories in the entire Bible. People continue to debate the details and moral lessons of the story. What is at stake and why does it matter for today? Back to the program to help me unpack this story and the controversy behind it is my colleague, Old Testament professor, Dr. Carmen Imes. Thanks for coming back to talk about this story. Thanks for having me. I hope this is fun and I hope it's enlightening. I think it will be. So you gave this presentation at Talbot based on an evangelical theological society paper about one of my favorite characters in the Bible, David, and the story of what's called David and Bathsheba. You called it something like, let's take another look at Bathsheba, which I thought was such a creative, wonderful title. Is David guilty of rape? Is their power differential or not? How much are we reading into this story? And I started to realize I've read a ton more into this story that I've just taken for granted

that's not in the text. Now, before we get to that, let's take a step back. You're an Old Testament scholar. You're writing a commentary on Exodus. Why stop and research and focus on this story well my first kind of deeper dive into the story of david and bathsheba's was for a chapel message that i gave at prairie college a number of years ago before i came to biola and we were doing a series on david called a man after god's own heart and and I thought, so when we were, you know, they were divvying up the

chapel messages, I said, I want to take this one. Because I think part of what makes this a tricky story is that we come into the David stories thinking, this is the guy who has a heart for God. And so we should follow his example. And that predisposes us to want to cast him in a positive light, even when that really stretches credulity to do that. And so I wanted to start off by saying this phrase, man after God's own heart, is actually not about David's heart. It's about God's heart. This is not saying David has a heart for God. It's a Hebrew idiom that indicates God chose David. He's the man that God chose, which doesn't tell us anything about David's character or what he's like. Now, David does have a heart for God. We see it in the Psalms.

We see it as he's on the run from Saulul we see his devotion to not harming the lord's anointed david has some wonderful qualities but i don't need david to be a squeaky clean character or be a model to follow in order for me to accept scripture as god's word so that was kind of my starting place that makes total sense what you're pointing out already is that we have certain assumptions about David's character that we bring to the text and it shapes the way we interpret it. And sometimes, interestingly enough, prevents us from maybe seeing what's really there. And I'll tell you, Carmen, this is somewhat of, I guess this is a confession. I've often said I'm thankful that some of my first sermons when I was in like 20 years old, a student at Biola, are not recorded online or I would be canceled. I mean, the way I interpreted this story, just because that's what people had said to me, I cringe and think, I hope there's no students out here that actually listen to me.

I was so off base, 21, 22, however old I was at that point. But there's reminders here about handling the text carefully. And we're going to get into this. So before we get to some interpretation and debate, even though it's a famous story, just kind of remind us what's going on in the story that's often called David and Bathsheba. And where does it fit into his life? Yeah, that's a great question. The story takes place in the middle of David's reign. The book of Samuel doesn't unfold David's life chronologically.

There are some things that are moved around. But this particular story about David and Bathsheba is set in the very center of David's war with the Ammonites. And that's an underappreciated part of the story. David's troops are off to war against Ammon because the Ammonites have shamed them. David was trying to be nice to the leader of Ammon. He wanted to show kindness to him. And the king took them to be spies instead of emissaries of goodwill. And so he shames them by, interestingly, cutting off half their beard and cutting off their clothes at the waist. So he sends them home with bare bottoms.

So there's actually nakedness in this story before we ever get to the part about Bathsheba. And that's not often appreciated. So because of the shaming of David and his kingdom, David takes up arms and goes to war against Ammon. And it's in the spring, right when the war is going to kind of gear up again because the weather's nice enough to go out and fight, that we have this sort of pause in the war against Ammon, at least a pause for David. His men are out fighting. He's back at home. And while he's at home, he sees Bathsheba bathing. He's walking around on the roof of the palace. He looks down and sees her bathing. He summons her to the palace. They have sexual relations. And then he sends her back home. She becomes pregnant and sends word to David saying, I'm pregnant. David responds to this

news by summoning her husband from the front lines where he's off fighting. And Uriah comes home. David is apparently hoping he'll go home and sleep with his wife. And it's not clear whether he hopes that Uriah will then think that the baby that's eventually born is his own, or whether he's trying to sort of show off that he's conquered his wife. Like if he, it's not clear at all what he thinks Uriah will know or not know. But in any case, Uriah refuses to go home to his wife. And so David sends him back to the front lines with a special message for the commander, Joab, telling him to put Uriah out in front where the fighting will be most severe so that he can be killed. So the story isn't really resolved until the battle is is over Uriah is indeed killed

David takes Bathsheba into the palace and marries her she gives birth to their son the son dies and and then they they are married she becomes kind of his favorite queen his I shouldn't say Queen because in ancient Israel the Queen's are the mother of the king. So she's not considered queen until her son Solomon becomes king, but she is the favorite consort of David. And eventually the battle against the Ammonites is completed. David goes and takes part in the final push in, I think it's chapter 12 of 2 Samuel. So the scene with Bathsheba is part of this greater complex of battle between Israel and Ammon. And there's so many questions about this story.

There's so many gaps in the story that the narrator is almost like tantalizing us or enticing us into filling it in with our own assumptions, which is probably why it's controversial. Yeah, and we do. Now, the first thing you pointed out, I want to say, is you talk about the context. So I haven't read this passage in some time, but prepared for this, I went back, I thought, you know what, I'm gonna read the chapter before and after. And it really hit me. You can't understand this apart from the larger battle with the Ammonites. Now you gave a great bear. I almost said because Now you gave a great bear, I almost said, because the story, I almost said great bear bottom,

great bear bones story of the details that it's given us. This is sometimes called a roar shack. Is that how you say it? Test? What is meant by that? And why do you think this story lends itself towards that in a way that maybe other biblical stories don't? Yeah. So some stories are more fulsome in their details.

They tell you what a character is thinking or feeling and they kind of give enough context that you're kind of following along and you know why people are doing what they're doing. This is not one of those narratives It's very sparse and we as readers have a lot of questions. I have Three almost three pages single spaced of questions that arise in this story that like we're not sure What is going on? And so give us a couple examples like just yeah, yeah, sure Maybe three or four that jump out sure was David expected to stay home from the battlefront Like is this normal for Kings to stay home or does it point to a character flaw on his part or some sort of lapse?

In kingship is like is this normal or is this not normal? Why is David getting up from his bed in the evening? Has he been lazing around or is this a normal siesta that part of the world is hot in the afternoon? And so this would be normal. Why is the woman washing herself where she can be seen? Is this intentional? Is this accidental? Does she have other options? Where do people normally take baths? Is there indoor plumbing in the houses in this part? So some of our questions point to a cultural gap. We don't live in ancient Israel. And so we have questions about like what's normal,

but others of the questions relate to the way the narrator is telling us, almost like not giving us quite enough info to sort of pull us along. And the reason I would call it a Rorschach test, so Rorschachs are, these are the tests that psychologists use that are like inkblots. And they give them to someone who's in therapy and they're supposed to identify. And apparently it tells a lot about you and is that it exposes our assumptions about what's

normal and not normal and how things should be. Because without even realizing we're doing so, we fill in the gaps to make sense of the story. Okay. So maybe just give us a sense of some of the different ways people take this. Now in your ETS article that you sent me, I mean, you go page after page going back centuries of how people going back to John Calvin and before debated made sense of this passage. But what are, if you're going to put into

like maybe two or three camps of how people differ from the past to the present. What would that be? And what are the key issues really at stake here? So my paper focused particularly on the characterization of Bathsheba. As I said, I have pages of questions that we could ask or gaps that we end up filling, whether we're supposed to or not. And I thought, I can't do all of those in one paper so I zeroed in on the questions that relate to the character of Bathsheba because what I've noticed on Twitter and in other places in venues is that Bathsheba is often vilified the people try to pin blame on her for what happened now I haven't heard anyone blame her entirely for what happened David Now, I haven't heard anyone blame her entirely for what happened. David is still a sinner in anyone's estimation. So I don't see anyone like completely exonerating

him. Although I have found interpreters who say, well, what he did wasn't so bad. And they kind of hedge and kind of try to paint it in the best light possible. But the real question is, is there any indication in the text that Bathsheba wants this, that she's trying to catch David's attention, that she doesn't have deep feelings for her husband? I mean, some people even say that when her husband dies and she goes through mourning, it's just perfunctory. She doesn't actually feel any grief about his death. So there's actually quite a lot of filling in that people do as far as motivations, which the narrator doesn't give us. I think part of why we're quick to fill in her motivations is because of art history and music history. It is very hard to disentangle our vision of this story from the images that we have seen of it, where Bathsheba is completely naked. She is lying voluptuously in a bathtub, where, you know, seeming like beckoning towards David and trying to get his attention.

There's a Leonard Cohen song that talks about bathsheba being on the roof bathing and so there's actually a long tradition of singing about and depicting artistically that bathsheba was naked on the roof trying to get david's attention and that is what's most what's was most interesting to me and what prompted me to write this paper. Because as I read the biblical text, we're not told that Bathsheba is naked or that she's on the roof. It's David who's on the roof. It's from the roof that he sees her. And so I'm trying to bring to bear on this question,

what do we know about the archeology of the city of David? What do we know about bathing practices? What does the narrator actually know about bathing practices what does the reader actually say about her and what she's doing where does the narrator actually pin the blame for this story so that that's that's what my paper focused on that's really helpful and i mean i i think back of i used to give a talk i think i gave it at Biola so this is in my 20s and I interpreted it I don't know if it was a Rorschach chest or just the way I had heard other people teach on the passage to students she's bathing on the roof she's naked wants attention girls don't be like

Bathsheba like that was my take-home message years ago. I just didn't read the text closely enough. And it wasn't until years later and really dive into this. I'm like, okay, what's cultural? What's assumption? What's really there? And there's so much at stake with this. So if you're going to, I want people to understand there's debate about this. So you talk in your paper, we won't go into here. You talk about people like John MacArthur have weighed into this, Bishop Barron has weighed into this, John Piper has weighed into this, and these people are on different sides of this discussion and debate, interestingly enough. And so you have an article here, and then Clay Jones, who used to teach in our apologetics program, takes a very different perspective. When it's done, people can read the two and compare and contrast, but I want people to realize there are Bible-believing evangelical Christians who process this passage very differently. Before we jump into some of the

details, maybe just kind of tell us where you land and how you make sense of this so we know where you're coming from? Maybe it would be helpful to say part of why there's a divide in interpretations of this passage today is so the Me Too movement kind of raised people's awareness, raised public discourse around the question of rape. And then the Church too movement shown an even greater spotlight on the power differentials in church context where maybe a previous generation would be tempted to call it an affair if a pastor, say a youth pastor, had an inappropriate sexual relationship with one of the teenagers in his youth group that might have been characterized as an affair by a previous generation. And now people are like, wait, she's a minor.

You can't call that an affair. This is rape. This is abusive. So there was a swing towards, wait, when else have we not noticed that something is abusive or an abuse of power? And then people kind of swung back to this story and went, wait, David's the king of Israel. There's a huge power differential between him and the woman next door whose husband is out fighting on the front lines and whose husband works for David and is under his command. So there's a huge power differential. The question comes in with our discussion of that power difference some people

feel like the power difference has been overplayed and that people even uh you could read my previous article on this topic for ct and conclude as some people did and this isn't this isn't what i think but i think it's fair that people drew this conclusion that I think if there's any kind of power differential, then there's no possibility of consent. And I wouldn't say that. I do think it's possible for a woman to sin sexually. I do think it's possible for there to be a power difference between a man and a woman and for them to have a consensual sexual relationship. My question is when we come to the story of David and Bathsheba, is that what we're seeing? Do we have any evidence from the text that Bathsheba wants this or is complicit in it? And I think we have only a very thin, thin basis for that assumption.

And the thin, thin basis is the one sentence that says she came to him instead of they brought her to him. So it sounds like she's exercising some agency when she comes to the palace. But I think personally that it's important not to over read that sentence because he also sends for Uriah and Uriah came to him. Uriah had no indication that he was being asked to do anything illegal or unseemly. And I would argue neither did Bathsheba. When she's summoned to the palace, it's not like the mess messengers are gonna show up at her door and say hey uh the king wants to have sex with you so if you could just like gussy up a little bit and then we'll bring you in um like i don't i don't imagine that's how the conversation went down it's like

the king wants to see you and as a woman whose father and husband are on the front lines maybe she thinks there's a message for her about the battle i don't know she goes okay so oh sorry yeah it's just i think it's hard to read i think it's it's dangerous for us to read too much agency into her like well why didn't she argue against him or why didn't she refuse to come well do we know that she knows why she's being summoned it doesn't say that she does so that's that's the key and we're gonna get to some of these particulars is it doesn't say that she did know it doesn't say that she didn't know right so when you said I imagine this all of us have to try to imagine yeah something we have to we can't avoid it yep what is the text actually saying now let me run this by you before we jump into some of the particulars one of the things that clay points out in his

articles he cites Larry Taunton he's argues that sent saying that David rape as Sheba is a relatively new idea he checked 20 commentaries he says written prior to 2000 and said, quote, this is taunting. Not a single one of them addressed the issue of rape, meaning that wasn't on the table. That just wasn't an issue they were addressing. They're unified that she was committed adultery too. None of them took the view that she had been raped. Now, it seems to me either there's a couple possibilities here, either that we are seeing it now because it's an issue by me too, which has drawn our attention to it. And now we're reading stuff into it that wasn't there because of our new mindset, or it's just helping us see things that we didn't see before. So is that, I guess, what's at stake?

Or do you agree with that? Are there any other ancient commentaries that describe it this way apart earlier than the Me Too movement? Yeah. I have not been able to find... So I have found people who blame David entirely and vindicate Bathsheba before the Me Too movement,

but nothing before the pre... Like, nothing before the modern time. So I also didn't find any ancient interpreters who call this rape. Although there are people who chastise David. John Calvin says, Bathsheba is not to be condemned because she bathed, but she should have exercised discretion

so as not to be seen. For a chaste and upright woman will not show herself in such a way as to allure men." So I think John Calvin is also making some assumptions here about how and where she's bathing and what her expectations are. But he doesn't condemn her for the bath. So like, he's among those who are maybe a little more, or a little less condemnatory of Bathsheba. I think personally, my suspicion is that part of the reason we have more people willing to call this rape now is because before 30 years ago, there really were not very many women in biblical studies. And the more we have women in the room having the conversation, the more we have a kind of sensitivity like, wait, did she have an option of saying no to

the king when he summoned her? Like, is she literally going to say no when she's being summoned? And so there's a greater recognition of the power differential. Not that everything can be explained away by power, but I think as a woman reading the text, there's maybe a greater sensitivity to this issue from the other side than what we had in previous centuries. That's a really interesting perspective to think about. I haven't studied this issue. I don't know if it's true or not, but I had a woman ask me, and I never thought about this. I did my dissertation on the martyrdom of the apostles, and a mom said, so did Mary have to watch both of her sons, Jesus and James, get martyred. And I thought, oh my word, I studied this now 13 years and never

thought about that. So maybe that's what's going on here. I have no idea, but that's a really interesting angle to think about. So maybe let's hone in on a little bit of the power differential. This seems to be where some of the debate is. You can clarify where you're coming from. Here's one of the questions Clay asked, and he's not here, obviously, to defend himself. I'm just going to kind of use this as a springboard. Maybe that's a follow-up conversation in due time. But what he calls like the David raped apologists employ the idea that, for lack of a better term, it's in a Christian research journal article. Yeah, okay. I would be happy to be called an apologist. I wouldn't label myself a David raped apologist. I actually don't. I think both terms, either calling it adultery or calling it rape, are misleading in certain ways to certain audiences. And so I think anything we call this

needs nuance and clarification. So I wouldn't call myself a David-raped apologist, but anyway, continue. Fair enough. And I don't think it means it as disparaging, obviously, just looking for terms. But he takes the angle that King David, the argument is that King David had all the power

and Bathsheba had none. So David's power was so pervasive, Bathsheba's power was non-existent that she didn't even have power to consent to David's request. Now his pushback, and then I want to know what you think, is that if this were the case, you know, in principle, all of David's wives didn't really have an option to marry him. So that imply King Saul's daughter, Michael, would have been raped potentially as well. He says, we really believe that an adult can't tell a more powerful adult, even a much more powerful adult, please don't do this. I don't want to have sex with you. You shouldn't do this. I'm a married woman and so on, argues that she had some recourse, even like, what is it, Deuteronomy 20 or Deuteronomy 22 about a woman who can shout out

and say things. Like clearly he had the majority of the power here. Right. But I guess the question is, did she have some means of consent? And he gives an example about how a woman can be at a power disadvantage, but still give consent. That's a part of the issue that's really at play. Your thoughts on that? Yeah, I would definitely say she's at a power disadvantage. And I would say, yes, all of David's wives are in a position where consent is not a category that's very meaningful. David collects wives like he collects trophies. By the time he takes Bathsheba into the palace, he already has seven wives. So this is a man who has plenty of access

to sexual encounter. And these women are available to him whenever he snaps his fingers. It's not like they decide when they're in the mood. You can see this in the ancient world with the practice of if somebody, and this is not what God commands, this is just the way things work on the street. But if somebody wants to make a claim on the kingdom, one of the ways to assert their dominance or make that claim is to rape the king's wives. You see this when Absalom comes into Jerusalem to take over from David, David flees, Absalom rapes David's concubines on the rooftop of the palace. An interesting intertextual link with this because now we have sex on the roof with David's women and it's like, yes, okay, David maybe thought he could have what he wanted when he wanted it, but now it's turning

about against him and his women are being raped by someone else so it's um i i don't think consent is a meaningful category or is the most meaningful category to use for ancient marriages particularly royal ones i don't think women were sitting at home um in angst over that situation the way we would be today if we were in that situation. Like this was just normal dynamics. Men, it was a patriarchal world. Fathers negotiated for the marriages of their daughters. Women didn't choose who they were going to marry. So it was a man's world deciding uh deciding where a woman would be who she would marry and then um you know who would have access to her that was that was decided by men so there's definitely a power disadvantage here not to mention that she's in a military context, so her husband is one of the elite fighters of David's army. She would have, and her father was as well, so she would have grown up in a home where their

whole family life revolved around following orders from David. And I just think in a modern military context, if you talk to any military family, when the commander says jump, you jump. And the whole family understands this. You don't get to decide whether you want to move across the country. If they say it's time for you to move, you go. And so I think that military context needs to be taken into consideration when we think about what are Bathsheba's options. So the Deuteronomy 22, 24 passage is what it is. Commands if a woman has sex with someone to whom she's not married to, then, quote, you shall stone them to death, both with stones, young woman, because she did not cry out for help, though she was in the city, and the man,

because he violated his neighbor's wife. And it And it says purged evil from the midst. Now, it seems like in this case, one could say, well, we don't know if it would have done any good. We don't know if they would have hurt anybody. This king has all the power. But we, I guess we don't know that. That's where we're filling in the blanks with an assumption, right? Very much. We don't. from it seems to be where the divining line is. Maybe an appropriate analogy would be a plantation in the American South before the end of slavery. The plantation owner takes one of the slaves into his bed or visits her in her shack and rapes her. Who's she going to cry out to?

Like he's the boss. Like everyone on that plantation is under his command it's not like someone's gonna come to her aid against their boss and i i think that's relevant here could she have cried out yes i do think she could have and it's also true people often like to point out that the word rape there is a word for rape in Hebrew, and it is not used in this chapter. It is used in the following episode, the story of Amnon, David's son, raping his half-sister Tamar. So the word rape is used there. And so some people use that as proof that this one wasn't rape. I would see it more as the narrator's laconic style. They're being very careful to sort of hold things open

because they want to draw us in so that we make our own assessment. And then by the end of the story, there's like a gotcha at the end of the story, right? Nathan, the prophet comes to David. He presents this parable to him that David understands to be a real situation. And he condemns the man who stole his neighbor's lamb

and slaughtered it, right? And then Nathan turns to him and says, thou art the man. And he realizes that he's just condemned himself because he is the one who took his neighbor's lamb. And I think what's interesting about the way the narrator tells the story is that we're kind of with David to a degree so that the moment when he gets condemned, do we, are we like, oh, whoops,

I read this story wrong. I was, here I was thinking she was at fault. And now the prophet is condemning David exclusively. The narrator is condemning David exclusively. And David owns it at that point. And he doesn't say, but she made me do it. So I think that might account for the reason why the word rape isn't used at the beginning part of the story, because it draws readers in for a gotcha at the end. Fair enough. Now we're going to come back to this, but here's where it gets tricky is you're

right in that passage. He's condemning David. Maybe he had a similar fitting conversation with Bathsheba and it's not recorded. Maybe, right? That's an assumption, but it's possible. Maybe he's condemning David and just doesn't mention her there because she's guilty but not as guilty like that's where these things get so difficult and i think the example like it's helpful that you said to compare like a slave owner but there's a certain level of property of somebody that's built in and even in that context she was somebody else's property. We don't have to nuance this, but this is just where these debates go and make this passage, I think, so difficult. Let me pivot to this question because when I used to teach on this story, I would say, you know, David is home.

He's supposed to be at war. He's bored. He's just kind of walking around. But I looked more closely at the passage, and I don't know if it says that it says so this is second Samuel 11 verse well we'll read one and two so it says in the spring when Kings marched out to war David sent Job with his officials and all Israel. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, but David remained in Jerusalem. Now, there is an obvious contract between what kings are doing and what David is doing. Yes. But it doesn't say he, twice it says that he remained

in Jerusalem and the kings go out, but it doesn't say he was supposed to. It doesn't say there's exceptions. It doesn't indicate at all in the passage he's doing anything wrong. And in verse 2 it says, One evening he got up from his bed and strolled around on the roof of the palace. And that's where he sees the woman bathing. But we don't know what he's strolling and doing it doesn't seem to me it says that he's bored now that no it doesn't say that yeah like a reasonable inference to draw but that

might be an example of us reading into it so was he supposed to be off at war or not and what's the evidence for that and do we know he was bored because again the way i taught him this is like david's supposed to be at war and i students, when you're not doing what you're supposed to do, open yourself up for temptation. It's true. This is how it works. And that's the way I taught this passage, but it doesn't technically say that. So give me your take on whether you're supposed to be in Jerusalem or not. And if we really know that he's bored. Okay. So I don't have the reference in front of me, but I think Clay refers to it in his article that the men had actually previously asked David

not to come to war with them because they didn't want him to be at risk. So let us do the fighting. We can't afford to lose you is the basic idea. So it is possible to read this in a charitable light that David is kind of capitulating to the wishes of his men and not going out to battle. However, in chapter 12, when the battle against the Ammonites is just about to be finished, chapter 12, verse 26. Meanwhile, Joab fought against Rabbah of the Ammonites and captured the royal citadel. He then sent messengers to David saying, I fought against Rabbah and taken

its water supply. Now muster the rest of the troops and besiege the city and capture it. Otherwise, I will take the city and it will be named after me. So there is a sense here that like, hello, if you don't, if you, if you're going to take credit for this battle, you actually have to be here to do the work. And if you don't, I'm taking credit for this. So there is a kind of a smackdown. That's interesting. Here at the end. And so David musters the army and he goes and attacks it. And so then they have this sort of royal fiction. Look what great military leader david is because he came in for the kill after they had like run the enemy ragged and they were just on the verge of of disaster so okay at the beginning of the story

it would be so nice if the narrator would just have said and this was evil in the eyes of the lord but that is part of the genius of the way this story is told the narrator doesn't tell us what to think about it he leaves us to our own assumptions and it's a kind of guess and check like like we have a hypothesis and then we test the hypothesis by reading the rest of the story and i think when we get to the end of chapter 12, it suggests that it's not altogether a good thing that David has stayed home. The first time we see that something is evil in God's eyes is at the end of chapter 11. So he has just told Joab through a messenger, don't let this upset you, which in Hebrew is don't let this be

evil in your eyes, that I've just asked you to kill one of my top army guys. Like, don't let this be bad to you. And then the narrator tells us, but the thing David had done was evil in the eyes of Yahweh. So David's trying to spin what he's done as like, this is okay. This is all part of love and war. And, and the narrator's like, yeah, God's not buying his propaganda. Yahweh doesn't look kindly on this. So I think that's the first place where we get the narrator finally is like sticking his head in the frame and saying, no good. This is, this this is not good and that's when the prophet shows up and and begins to shine the spotlight on his sin honestly carmen the more i read this passage the less i'm certain exactly what's going on and maybe this is a part of the brilliance

which we can come back to but i found the passage you were referring to. This is from Robert Bergen. He has a commentary, 1 Samuel. And he argues the king's absence from the battlefield at this time should not be understood as a dereliction of duty. Again, this is his interpretation. He said, David had previously remained in Jerusalem when the Ammonites were attacked. So that's Crawford reference, 2uel chapter 10 the chapter before you were talking about yeah and then earlier in david's career which is cross-referenced in chapter 21 they plead with him to avoid an active role in military campaigns out of concern for the king's safety and the best interests of the nation that's one example he gives yeah he cites robert vanoy in the cornerstone

biblical commentary where he points out there's also no indication that david fought in all the battles against edom which is first kings 11 first chronicles 18. now the fact that there's no indication he fought in those doesn't mean he didn't find fight in those it just means it doesn't indicate that he was there yeah so it's really hard to draw a conclusion when i look at this verse it's interesting he said in 28 so uh so this is first samuel 12 28 the one he cited says therefore assemble the rest of the troops lay siege the city and capture it otherwise I'll be the one to capture the city and it will be named after me. Now, one interpretation is,

hello, David, you're supposed to be here all along and you missed it, hence you're supposed to be at war. Or, hey, don't forget, we wanted you to rest at home and be there, but now is the time to show up. Yeah. And I don't know that the text itself answers that so at least minimally to me there's clearly a tension between the time that kings are at war

and david is not there yeah we're drawn attention to that a couple times but i don't see any culpability for david for this and at least some precedent that there were reasons he wouldn't go to war at certain times. And so where do we get the benefit of the doubt? That's an interesting question. Do we give David the benefit of the doubt or not? And on one hand, I don't want to pile on David anymore. This is what we were debating in the Talbot faculty session. Like, wait a minute. If we say he raped and he didn't, we're piling on David. On the other hand, we don't want to miss it and pile on Bathsheba if she's innocent. That's why there's so much at stake here that translates towards modern day ways that we approach sex abuse.

But I guess for me, I don't know that I fully see any culpability, or at least that he's supposed to be at war. We're just told that he's not. And it just, it does seem to me like it's just raising a question mark that is sort of one of those open file folders at the beginning. Like, how are we supposed to feel about this? Kind of, it sort of decenters us.'s there's actually one other factor in that verse chapter 11 verse 1 that i find fascinating there's a text critical uh issue with the word kings in the spring at the

time when kings go off to war the word kings which is melek or malakim, sounds just like the word for messengers, who are Malak, the Malak Yahweh is the messenger of Yahweh. So some of the versions actually have this as at the time when messengers go off to war, or is it the time when kings go off to war? And the ambiguity between those two possible words almost like plays into the big question we're asking is this the time when kings send messengers to go do their war for them or is this the time when they go themselves how are we supposed to feel about this but i think i think you're right sean that that what really matters about um the way that we teach this story, the way that we talk about it, is that there are people in every audience who have experienced unwanted sexual experiences.

Um, they ha- Whether it's defined as rape or as someone crossing the line, uh, without their consent. And the- the way we characterize Bathsheba as we talk about her, I think sends a signal to people that tells them how are we going to handle their story? Are we a safe person for them to disclose what's happened to them? Or are we going to victim blame? And it does seem to me that Bathsheba, we're not told whether she wants this. And what's interesting to me is how certainly so many commentators and pastors who are preaching sermons, how certainly they seem to know that this is what Bathsheba wants. Oh, she's trading up.

That's a real thing that women like to trade up or she wants this or otherwise she wouldn't have been bathing where she is. And I think to characterize her as wanting this when the text does not clearly say that sends a signal to others who have been victims of sexual assault that they must have wanted this too, or that we're going to assume they wanted it. That's where I think the rubber meets the road. I think that's really helpful. We're going to bring that back kind of full circle at the end, because you're right, the interpretation, the way we cover passages sends messages out on all sides of this. And this is especially kind of pointed one where those touchstones really hit.

Let's unpack a couple of the other just controversial points at play, I think, for people. One of them, as you read the story you wrote in the CT article that related to Bathsheba being pious, that this was no ordinary bath either. She was purifying herself ritually following menstruation. Yes. And this kind of shows that she's a keeper of the Israelite purity law. Now that, like, that makes sense to me, obviously not a woman, but one of the things Clay and his wife bring out is that, you know, maybe Piety had something to do with it, but what woman doesn't want to bathe when her period is over it seems obvious that one would do this anyways and so the text doesn't really say she's necessarily pious and then when you look at proverbs chapter 7 we could walk we could walk through this they

make the case that it's about a married woman seducing a man, even a potential king since Solomon's writing to his sons. And what she does is assure him that she's actually pious. She says, I offered sacrifices. Today I've had my vows. So I guess there's two questions. Do we really know that she's pious? And if she is, that doesn't necessarily mean she's not seducing him. In fact, given the warning in Proverbs 7, maybe Solomon's reflected on what happened in the past from a woman who's pious and especially by his mother, a woman to look out for. Maybe. What do you make of that? I mean, this would be him writing about his mother in that way, which I find a little bit harder to swallow. He wasn't there. I don't know what he would have been told about it. I'm not sure of a better word to use than pious to describe that she's following Jewish

law. So I agree that sometimes people can go through religious motions in order to sort of check all the boxes so that they're okay. What is interesting to me is her husband's not even at home. She's at home presumably by herself. Maybe there are servants around. But she's continuing to follow ritual purity laws even when her husband is away, which tells me something. It seems to me it shows an inherent law abiding quality about her. Like that's the only thing we're told about her is that she's purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness. Now,

Clay and his wife seem to be assuming that the bath, that this is like a normal washing. And I would assume she's washing herself every day, as one would want to do while having a monthly period. But there's a certain kind of washing that's done that has ritual significance at the end of a period. So I don't think this is just like, well, of course she wanted to wash. This is a specific kind of bath or a specific kind of washing. And I think it's worth noting that there, and this is just bringing in the archaeology, there was no indoor plumbing in the city of David. And the palace of David has now been found, and it looks down on the courtyards of homes that are just below him on the hill.

I've stood there. Interesting, yeah. Okay, sweet. So the possibility... Um, what this suggests to me is that she is bathing in a more private space than the average Israelite citizen. Because there wasn't like home bathtubs. And we think of a bath and we like picture this porcelain tub where she's got lots of bubbles and like all of this water. But there were no water sources inside the city of David.

The only water is outside at the Gihon Spring. And you would have to go yourself or send servants to go carry water jug by jug to your house. It's so unlikely that there would be a whole bathtub filled up with water. Bathtubs were not a thing. And so for her to be in the courtyard washing herself does not suggest to me that she's laying in a big tub but that she's cleaning herself in a in an enclosed private area again i'm making an assumption because the text doesn't say where she is all we know is where he is he's on the roof and he can see her after i gave my paper at ets a man came to talk to me and he said, I worked and lived in Nepal for many years where, you know, the mountains are steep and homes are built kind of above each other up the mountain.

And he said, everyone in that culture understands that if you look down and see into someone's home or onto their roof or into a courtyard and see something you're not supposed to see, it's your job if you're higher up the mountain to avert your eyes and look away. That's the only way to get privacy is if everyone up the hill takes responsibility for your privacy. And so he's bringing that to bear on this story. It's David's job to look away.

This is his neighbor's wife. He is supposed to be protecting his neighbor's marriage, not making moves towards his neighbor's wife. Here's what makes this so challenging is that makes sense. Of course, we're talking about modern day Nepal versus 3000 years ago in Jerusalem. And two things can be true. It can be true in principle that she was bathing in a place, whether roof or not, in which she knew that she would be seen. And it's his job to look away, right? I'm not saying that she was.

I'm just saying that it can be both of those. Now, tell me what would you make if somebody said this? Because you're right. We're told that she purified herself ritually following menstruation but we're not told why so given that very shortly she comes back and says i am pregnant could we be told that either because oh it makes sense she's just off menstruation or it's a shock, like that seems to be an at least equally reasonable explanation as saying it's trying to tell us that she's pious or do you think I'm missing something? Well, I do think one reason we're told this when we're told it, because we

don't, we're not told she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness when we're told she's bathing we don't find out why she's bathing until after she's been with david he slept with her and then we get this parenthetical note and it's grammatically parenthetical now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness and one thing this does tell us is she was not already pregnant she was not pregnant by her husband, Uriah, before he went off to war. And now David's taking a pregnant woman into his home. So if she's pregnant, it's not his. So this does clear up the question of paternity. But I think it's also one of the few clues we have about her character. And, you know, in absent any other explanation, it seems to me that this

is pointing to her piety in contrast to David's impiety. One of the, one of the things that I think is less often appreciated is that David had rules for warfare in which none of his men were allowed to be with a woman the whole time during war because they saw this wasn't just going to war. They saw every battle as divine warfare. And so you had to be in a state of ritual purity so that God's favor would be on the battle. So David required his men to be abstinent during battles. And here he is back at home while his abstinent men are on the front lines and he's taking advantage of one of their wives. That to me is really interesting because as the ultimate commander of his army, I would think the success of his army would in part depend on his abstinence,

at least by his own rules. That's what it mean and so he's he's he's breaking the rules in lots of different areas that we might not appreciate so it's an interesting point you raise because oftentimes the text is comparing and contrasting figures and we the reader miss it so we call it david versus goliath but i think it's a story of david versus saul he's comparing and contrasting who is supposed to go to war who's supposed to protect the sheep who's supposed to wear the armor? It's really about David versus Saul Seems to me in this it's less David being contrasted with Bathsheba He's like a pawn in this is David being contrasted with Uriah

Yes, Uriah is at warid's and not now if i draw this out this would make your point that david should have been at war because uriah is doing what he's supposed to do and david is not uriah is brought home refuses to sleep with his wife because of that rule doesn't even sleep with her when he's drunk that David gets him drunk. I mean, the way I used to say it, and I think I stand by it, is I saw it in your article. It's like he's a better man drunk than David is sober. Yes, it's true. It seems there's less of a contrast with David and Bathsheba, more with David and Uriah in the text. Do you agree with that? Yeah, I agree. And I think we call this, I mean, my NIV Bible has over this chapter,

David and Bathsheba. But I actually think this is the story of David and Uriah. And we can conclude that based on the amount of space and time that is devoted to the conversations between David and Uriah. Actually, narrative specialists tell us we need to pay attention to dialogue, because dialogue is where it slows down, and you can really see what the whole point is, and there's barely any interchange between David and Bathsheba. He doesn't say

anything to her. She says, I am pregnant. Like there's no dialogue. It's really this scene in verses two through five of second Samuel 11 is really background information to the real conflict, which is between David and Uriah. And that's where you get long dialogue and back and forth and day after day. And so not only is this not the David and Bathsheba story, it's the David and Uriah story, but the David and Uriah story is enveloped or sandwiched by this greater war story with the Ammonites. And all of that sort of applies pressure on how we should be reading this little scene with David and the wife of Uriah. We only hear her real name once. She's called the wife of Uriah over and over again, partly to highlight that this is really a conflict between David and Uriah.

David is taking Uriah's resources. He's doing what his son is going to do to him a few chapters later. He's taking Uriah's wife and pretty openly, he sends messengers to get her. This is not a secret at the palace that Bathsheba has come to him or the wife of Uriah has come to him. So it's such a fascinating story. There's so many layers to it. There are, there's so many layers. And I think this point is interesting because in part, what we're trying to get at for ourself and others is how many biases we bring to the text without realizing it. Now that's true in all stories, but it's more pointed here. I don't want

people watching this thinking that we're just relativists and there's a million ways to look at any passage. You can't have confidence. We've pulled out one of the most controversial and debated and discussed passages. There's a lot of passages in which it's just crystal clear exactly what's going on and there's not any debate related to it. Now, even the mere fact that we call it David and Bathsheba creates this contrast between them rather than just calling it David versus Uriah sets us up to interpret it differently. Now, one more thing I want to kind of lean into a little bit,

get your take on this. There's way more in your article. There's way more in Clay's article. But one of the things, you consider this strong. In fact, you say, for me, the clincher is this. The narrator is unequivocal in blaming David. know you've anticipated and thought this through, is that the fact that the narrator doesn't mention Bathsheba and her guilt doesn't mean she doesn't have any guilt. That would be an argument from silence, obviously. And you can have David be guilty and primarily guilty, whether it's because his power or he just took the initiative and her still be guilty on one level yeah um and then i guess some some would say i guess that the piece that's really interesting to me and maybe as a as a mom this would weigh in more to you is why would there be a punishment

of the lost child which is you know david, David already has, I guess, two things. Number one, he's a man. So maybe he processes it differently than a mother who carried this child for nine months and then nurses it for seven days. I don't know. He seems pretty distraught. He seems really distraught over the death of this child. In fact, we don't see anything about Bathsheba's reaction to the loss. And we see a lot about David's reaction to the loss.

So, yeah. Fair enough. But the point still being is if she did not have some guilt, couldn't an omniscient, omnipotent God have some kind of punishment that hurts David and not her? So we know it hurt her to some level, whether it's more or less than David, I guess is the secondary point. So tell me your thoughts on that. Yeah. So I'm going to approach this from a different angle. We as 21st century evangelical readers tend to read all biblical stories with our moral lenses on. And we're looking for moral examples, and we want to know the moral of the story and tell me how to live. And I actually think Samuel,

although it has moral lessons in it, I think in this regard, it's more interested in making a case for kingship and for rightful paternity and passing on of the dynasty to the next like i think we need this story later to explain that king solomon is not the fruit of rape or adultery whatever you're going to call it that solomon is actually born of a proper marriage between David and Bathsheba. So I think that's maybe more of the point here than, like, this is a punishment for what they did, and they have to lose this child. Like, the child dies, they pray about it, they mourn, but really the narrator is carrying us forward to the point where Bathsheba is going to become the queen mother, her son Solomon will be be king and if anyone had doubts about Solomon's paternity this story is making sure

everybody knows for all time that he was not born out of wedlock that he or conceived out of wedlock that he is the rightful child of David and Bathsheba after they were married so that doesn't really address the question you're asking but I think it's the question that the narrative might be more concerned with than we are oh okay so this is interesting correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me the fact that he's biological is the core issue not whether she was raped or it was adultery. Right. It would still be the legitimate heir to the throne. So it seems the means of conception is secondary.

Yep. And I think so. And I guess when I read this story, I'm thinking about poor Bathsheba. She's been taken advantage of and all of that. But I think the narrator is more interested in sort of telling us how did Bathsheba come to be part of this harem? And why is she the rightful queen mother? Like, why is it Solomon who gets the throne and not Adonijah, who's actually older than Solomon? And there's all this intrigue with David's sons and who gets to be king next. And this is an important story in just figuring out the dynasty.

And we come to it as modern readers and we want to moralize it. And for some reason, there's this strong impulse to try to lay blame at the feet of Bathsheba that she had some part in this problem. And I don't think that's what the narrator is interested in telling us. You're right Sean that we can't know for sure whether Bathsheba had any motive of wanting to be with David or being glad to be brought to the palace like we just that's it would be an argument from silence to say one way or the other but I think if the narrator is unequivocal in laying blame at David's feet, why are we even having a conversation

about Bathsheba's sin? Why preach about that? Why does that make its way into so many sermons if that's not what the narrator is trying to draw our attention to? That's a fair pushback. One of the things, you know, 1 Kings 15, 5 says, David did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn aside from anything that he commanded in all the days of his life, which is a little hyperbole.

Oh, yeah. Wow. A lot of hyperbole. There's other examples where he, you know, the census, etc., except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. Ah, okay. You know, so maybe that would include the whole drama of it. But why not say Uriah the Hittite and Bathsheba whom he raped? Now, of course, an argument from silence, but these are the kinds of interesting points that are brought out, like Bathsheba is not named in the genealogy of Jesus. You know, if she had been raped and completely innocent, why not honor her by mentioning her name?

And of course, again, it's an argument from silence, but it's suggestive that's here. here and i guess i guess to answer your your question is is if we're we're drawn to this maybe the me too movement the church too movement draws our attention to look at stories in a way that maybe we hadn't before and the language that we had before, which can be fresh new insights. But both the church too, arguably, and the Me Too movement have ended up piling upon people who were not really guilty, and it goes too far the other direction. And it's kind of like, okay, wait a minute. Yeah. You should not be raked through the coals for this. And I guess the concern is, are we unnecessarily doing that for David? And just as our language needs to be done in a way that cares for women who've been sexually abused and we need to speak about that with utmost care, we also don't want to make the other mistake when it comes to David and just call them all these different names when maybe the text is not crystal clear. So I think I guess that's why people does that make sense?

Do you see it that way? I do have that concern. I do agree. I do have a concern. Clay mentions this in his article, this like cultural Marxism, this idea that everything is all about power all the time, everywhere, power dynamics are the main thing we need to pay attention to. And I would agree, yeah, that's going too far. I think we need to pay attention to power dynamics, but I don't think power explains everything. And so I want to be a careful reader of the text. I want to read it in

its historical and literary context so that I'm not missing the cues that the narrator is giving me or the clues from the historical context. When we do that, we risk importing our own modern ideas into the story that aren't there. I think that Matthew, in all likelihood, refers to Bathsheba as the wife of Uriah as a way of reminding us that women who the women who are part of Jesus' family tree have gotten there by unconventional means. And it reminds us of the way that the whole story puts pressure on David by repeatedly calling her the wife of Uriah. That's her name in the story. That's her title. And the narrator won't let us forget it because we're supposed to realize all the way through she's off limits. She's off limits. She is off limits. What are you doing bringing her to the palace? And so I don't see this as a slight

on her at all in Matthew. I see it more as a reminder of the way god worked through very unwanted and unlikely circumstances carmen this is super interesting the time has flown by to me and in many ways people watching this if they've stayed with us and find this interesting these are the kinds of conversations we have in class at talbot not just to have random conversations but to say let's shed away our biases Let's look at the text. Let's understand what it says and it has Implications for people in the audience when we preach and teach out of this Let's be careful how we do so so I loved reading your article. I loved reading one by clay

We didn't come close to settling here. He wasn't here to defend himself. I appreciate him saying in the article and just so people know he sent it to you as well, just so you're aware of it. Ongoing conversation. I'd invite people to go back. You can revisit this conversation. You can read those two articles minimally. Let's just read the text carefully, try to shed away our assumptions and get to what it actually says not what we wanted to say that's the big takeaway any last things that I missed or you wanted to share on this topic hmm I just hope that everyone out there will exercise caution and the way they talk about this a lot of people seem offended by the use of the word rape with relation to David, maybe because they want to

like him or they need to like him for some reason. Maybe it's because they think rape is inherently violent. The definition of rape doesn't include violence. It's just coercion. And so I'm hesitant to call this adultery, even though it is clearly a sexual relationship between a married man and a married woman. So it qualifies as adultery. When we use the word adultery, it implies that there's consent on both sides. And I don't see the book of 2 Samuel

giving us a clear indication of consent or desire on the part of Bathsheba. And that's why I think that word could be misleading to audiences today. Well, I wanna invite people to read both articles again and take a look at it. And please comment below. I tried to read as many comments as I can,

but I may be extra interested in this one to see. I mean, let's not attack people one way or the other. That's not going to solve anything. But what was missed, how do you see it and why? If there's other articles that are helpful, tag them below for people. Let's have a positive, productive conversation about this. You've had a few of these on Twitter for people that follow you and some are more given the way people weigh in better

than others, whatever, but you do a great job engaging people. So if you have a helpful, positive comment, make it below. I want to see and read this as I'm thinking through in my own mind. Carmen, thoroughly enjoy this. Before we click away, I want to make sure folks think about joining us here at Talbot. We've got programs in spiritual formation, Old Testament, pastoral programs. Of course, I teach in apologetics and we've got on campus and distance programs. We would love for those of you watching this to consider studying apologetics. It's one of the, if not the top rated apologetics program. We also have a certificate below and we are updating that right now, totally refurbishing it. If you're not ready for a master's,

but just want to learn apologetics, check it out. Carmen, thanks for coming back a second time. So far, we've talked about David and Bathsheba and rape and slavery. I just can't wait for the next time. Thanks for coming on. All right. Thanks, Sean.