Theology in the Raw - Taking God's Name in Vain and Interpreting the David and Bathsheba Story: Dr. Carmen Imes

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

Dr. Carmen Imes is an associate professor of Old Testament at Talbot School of Theology and the author of a few books includingBearing God's Name: Why Sinai Still Matters. She releases weekly Torah Tuesday videos on YouTube. We talk about two different debated issues in the OT: 1) what does it mean to “take” (bear) the Lord’s name in vain (hint—it’s not what you think), and 2) Was David’s sin with Bathsheba a consensual affair or something closer to rape. Carmen's article on David and Bathsheba: https://www.christianitytoday.com/2022/07/rape-david-bathsheba-adultery-sexual-sin-prophet-nathan/ Register for the Exiles and Babylon conference: theologyintheraw.com -- If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe to my channel! Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw Or you can support me directly through Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Visit my personal website: https://www.prestonsprinkle.com For questions about faith, sexuality & gender: https://www.centerforfaith.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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of what Logos is capable of doing. And rather than lugging hundreds of books with me to the coffee shop when I'm going elsewhere to study, all I need is Logos. It's a lot lighter than a hundred books. So whether you're a pastor in a church, taking a seminary class or leading a small group, there's never been a better time to join the millions

who are already using Logos. And okay, so they just released a new version and it's more affordable than ever. And here's the thing, you can try it for free for 30 days. And if you go to Logos.com forward slash theology, you can take advantage of an exclusive theology in the raw extended two month free trial. So go try it, try it out. It's risk-free. Go check it out. Logos.com forward slash theology. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is my friend, Dr. Carmen Imes, who is an associate professor of Old Testament at Talbot School of Theology

and the author of a few books, including Bearing God's Name, Why Sinai Still Matters. She also releases weekly Torah Tuesday videos on YouTube. So go check out her YouTube channel under Carmen Imes. In this episode, we talk about two different debated issues in the Old Testament. We first of all talk about what it means to take or bear the Lord's name in vain. Just a quick hint, it's not what you think. And the second issue we wrestle with is around David and Bathsheba. Was David's sin with Bathsheba a consensual affair or something less consensual, something closer to rape or power rape? This is a hotly disputed issue and Carmen has done a lot of thinking about it. So, please welcome back to the show, my friend, the one and only Dr. Carmen Ives. Carmen, welcome back to Theology of the Rock. Whatever number this is, two or three or whatever

it is, glad to have you back. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. So, I have been wrestling with the question, what does it mean to take the Lord's name in vain? And for some reason, I didn't realize that this was a subject of your dissertation. It was. Because, have you ever published a popular level book on this? Have you? Yeah, I have. Oh, you did? So, you and I talked before about Being God's Image, which is like a companion volume to Bearing

God's Name, but we didn't talk about Bearing God's Name. This is the popular version of the published dissertation, which is Bearing Yahweh's Name at Sinai. So yes, I spent like five years studying this one verse, Exodus 20 verse 7, to try to figure out what is going on here. Can you recite it in Hebrew? That's the first half. Do not carry or bear the name of Yahweh your God in vain. You've got a good Hebrew accent. That's pretty good. Thanks. I do not. I've got Hebrew tattoos, but I don't pronounce them well. What led you to want to study this topic? Is there a story there or was it just no one's done it?

Yes, this is a kind of a funny story. So when you apply to the PhD program at Wheaton, you have to apply with a topic in mind for your dissertation. Most schools have you go through coursework first and you're kind of thinking of topics as you go through your coursework and then you propose a topic for a supervisor. And at Wheaton, they front that process. So you choose a supervisor and a topic for a supervisor. And at Wheaton, they front that process.

So you choose a supervisor and a topic before you apply and apply with that topic. So it has to be a topic they wanna work on and that they think needs to be done. And the idea is to shorten the time of the program so that you can be working on it from the beginning. In reality, I don't know if that's the reason, like if that's how it actually pans out usually.

But in my case, I had some ideas and I ran them by Dan Block. He was like, that sounds like a good sermon, but I don't know if it'd be a whole dissertation. I thought, I just didn't feel like I was in a position to know what needed to be done in the field. I was a stay-at-home mom doing seminary on the side. I was like, I haven't read all the books in the library. I don't know what still hasn't been studied. So I reached out to Dan Block, and I didn't know if this was cheating.

But I just asked, hey, you're nearing retirement. Are there topics that you want to supervise before you retire? Like, what do you think needs to be done? I figured he was in a much better position than I was to know. And he very graciously replied with a list of, I think, seven topics that he thought needed to be done. And on the list was, and I wanted to work in the prophets, I loved Hebrew poetry, but on his list was the command not to take the Lord's name in vain, which he was convinced that we had been misunderstanding for centuries. And he had just preached a sermon on it and

attached the manuscript of the sermon. And so I could read it and kind of get his approach to it. And I read that sermon and went, wow, this is not only really a compelling idea, but it's the kind of thing that I'd be interested in. I don't think I would stop getting interested in it, stop being interested. I don't think I would be tired of studying this or even talking about it. So our podcast today, Preston, is proof

because my popular level book came out more than five years ago now. It came out in December of 2019, right, before the pandemic. And the dissertation came out the year before that, and I started working on it in 2011. So we're talking, we're now like more than 13 years later, and I still love this topic. Wow.

I mean, it has a lot of practical ramifications. You know, I did my PhD in New Testament, but it was on an Old Testament verse, half a verse, Leviticus 18.5b, and how it's used in early Judaism and in Paul, the one who does these things will live by that. Oh, yeah. Paul contrasts it with Habakkuk 2.4, and then in Romans 10.5 contrasts it with faith. It's like, wait, what does he have? What issue does he have with Leviticus 8-5? So yeah, people are blown away. Wait, for three years you studied half a verse.

I'm like, well, it was the history of how this has been interpreted. So it's more than just staring at Leviticus 8-5 for three years. But unlike you, I no longer have any interest in this topic. I burned myself out on Leviticus 18. Well, I find this topic really interesting. We were coming into the academic world since being missionaries.

So we were missionaries overseas. We were in the Philippines working among Muslims. Then we were in Charlotte. My husband was working at SIM's headquarters while I was doing seminary. So we were still support raising missionaries when I did my masters and actually still were when I was doing the PhD. So, partly, part of what I loved about this was that it's a missional reading of the command. So in a nutshell, I argue, and again, the idea came from Dan Block.

It wasn't original to me, But I kind of sussed it out, like investigated it from every possible angle, and I found it persuasive, that the command is not telling people how to say God's name or when to say God's name. It's not about speech. But it's connecting in with this wider theme of bearing God's name. So at Sinai, the idea is that at Sinai, God is putting His name on His people saying, you belong to me, like stamping them or branding them with His name, belonging to Yahweh. And then He's saying, now that you belong to me, you bear my name, go out and live like you belong to me. Live as my people.

Don't live like the pagan nations that surround you. So the Hebrew that I quoted a little bit ago is, you shall not bear or carry the name. And interpreters have just assumed, well, this must mean carry it on your lips. Because what do we do with names? We say them. So this must be a figure of speech or an idiom related to saying God's name, bearing it on our lips. And I would argue that that's not what's going on.

We don't have the clues in the context that would limit this to speech. It is much broader than that. So it would include speech. If you drew a Venn diagram of what does it mean to bear God's name, it would include within it how we talk. But it would also include how we treat other people, how we drive, how we spend our money, how we spend our time, that our whole lives are supposed to be oriented around the honor of God's name, because we're the people who belong to Him.

So we are like the PR project for God. We're His PR team. And if we misbehave, if we live out of alignment with His character, then people will get the wrong impression about Yahweh. So the translation, you shall not take the Lord's name in vain, that's a, was that word take kind of misleading? Because I automatically hear speech when I hear, maybe it's because of how people... Yeah, no, you hear speech because of the long tradition in the English language of understanding this command as being about speech. I don't think we don't take, I don't take Preston Sprinkle's name in vain.

We don't ever talk about that language with regard to anyone other than God. And so, I think that actually the word works okay if we can divorce it from its interpretive history, if we could say they're the people who take on God's name, they receive it, so that they're stamped with it at Sinai, and then they go out and live as God's representatives. I think it kind of works, but I think it would be much clearer to say, you shall not bear my name in vain. Are there any translations that say bear and not take? No, sir.

Are you advocating for that in revisions? Well, sure. I mean, yes, I would love the NIV translation committee to fix this and I'd love the NLT to fix this. I've got friends on both committees and I'd love for them to get this right. Sandy Richter, she can... She was my second reader on my dissertation. Oh, no way. So she's well positioned to get this fixed. She agrees with you? Yes. Ironically, Dan Block was on the NLT translation committee. Yeah, that's right. And he advocated for this translation.

Really? You know, it's a committee, it's not a one-man show. And so, you can't just have one person come in and say, I think we should do it this way and break with all the tradition. You need to have a critical mass of people who are convinced that this is a better way to communicate it in the English language. I think we may be at the place now where enough of these scholars have read my work and become persuaded by it, that we could actually see it changed. For those who don't know, I mean, he is, in my opinion, top five easily evangelical Old Testament scholars. His two-volume commentary on Ezekiel is just exquisite. Yeah, it's still the gold standard. Yeah.

Yeah. So when I wrote the dissertation, there were no commentaries on Exodus in existence that took this interpretation of the command. But as I was writing, what's his name? Victor Hamilton released his Exodus commentary, and he kind of goes through the traditional view and then he says, there is this other possible way of reading it, and he sort of lays it on the table as a possibility. So that was the first. It came out while I was working on mine. And then last year, Chris Wright released his Exodus commentary for the Story of God series, and he wrote

the foreword to my book. No way! Bearing God's name, and he became persuaded of this way of reading it by reading my book. And so, he actually takes that view. So, his is the first that's like all in. Here's what it means. Of course, when my Exodus commentary comes out in a couple years, it will also take that. You're writing a commentary on Exodus? I am, yes.

Fantastic. Yeah. Okay, take us back. Walk us through the different views on how to interpret this passage, and then I would love for you to present the best exegetical arguments for your view, and then I would love for you to steel man pushbacks to your view with the best counterarg arguments or best arguments for alternative viewpoints. We're going to get real scholarly here, folks. Okay, so I, the first chapter of the dissertation after the introduction is a survey of the history of interpretation. And I identified 23 different ways that this command has been interpreted over the years. 22 of those take the phrase bear the name as elliptical.

That is like an ellipsis where you put in the dot dot dot in a sentence because something has dropped out. 22 of the 23 interpretations think that there's something being assumed or implied but not stated directly. So you shall not lift up your hand to the name would be you shall not swear an oath, like to lift up your hand and pronounce a name would be to swear an oath. Or you shall not lift up the name on your lips, that is to say it, or lift up the name on your lips in order to call upon it.

Like lifting the name on your lips as you address an idol. So you're attributing that idol to belonging to Yahweh or representing Yahweh. So I made a diagram in the dissertation and you can see that it's kind of a flow chart of all the different ways that people have conceived of it and then how they interpret it. So, some people are thinking of this as a prohibition of false teaching, a false prophecy, of being irreverent, of giving a sacrifice at the temple without, sorry, of coming to worship at the temple,

but coming empty handed without a sacrifice, or using the name in magic, or using it abusively, or using it in a context of idolatry. So there's just one non-elliptical view, and that's my view, and that is to read it as a, it's non-elliptical view and that's my view. And that is to read it as a... It's non-elliptical, but it's metaphorical. The idea is that the people are carrying God's name or they're bearing it on their person. And so, I would say that the arguments in favor of the other views that I don't take are usually built on parallel, so-called parallel

passages. There's a few Old Testament passages that use similar language. One example is Exodus 23 verse 1, I believe. Do not spread false reports. So, you shall not lift up a false report. So, it uses Nassau lift up, just like the command does. And so, if you think in vain, in the name command means falsely, then this sort of seems like a similar, you shall not lift up a false report. Another parallel that people point to is Psalm 16 verse 4. This is where the psalmist is saying, I am not ever, ever going to worship other gods. And he says, those who run after other gods will suffer more and more. I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods or take up their names

on my lips. And so, this is that same, it's using nasasa and Shem, and then it adds on my lips. Many interpreters say, this is the fuller expression that we're seeing a fragment of in the name command. It's just assuming you're taking the name on your lips. Okay. So Nasa is used in other similar contexts where speech is more clearly implied. Yes. So I have a chart in the back of the dissertation that has all the places where Nassau is used and what it means, what's being carried and how it works. Any time where,

let me remember how I stated it here, it's now been a few years. This is actually a chart of all the 157 passages where Nasaw is translated by Lombano in the Septuagint Because that's the word used in Exodus 20 verse 7 and I'm trying to figure out what is the semantic overlap between the two Words real quick Lombano is the word used in Exodus 22. That's a typical Greek word for take. And that's, I think, where we get take. They're kind of following the Greek. And I think the Greek is understanding

what's going on properly. But I think our English tradition of understanding the command in a particular way has shadowed, overshadowed what the Greek is communicating. So the Septuagint translator, you're saying, understood it correctly by… Yes. Although, if I were to go back and address the Septuagint translation committee, I would say, hey, guys, can we just go with Pharaoh instead of Lambano? Because that's really clearly Keri. That will preserve what's going on metaphorically in Hebrew, that the people

are carrying God's name. So what I found is that there is no case where nasa is used to indicate speech without there being some clear indication in the context that speech is in view. So either mouth or lips or speak or something, there's some key noun or verb that tells us we're talking about speech here. There's no other place where Nassau is used to indicate speech without that. So I think the burden of proof is on those who want this to be about speech. There's even people who take potential parallel passages outside the Bible. There's even people who take potential parallel passages

outside the Bible. There's an Egyptian text that talks about names. Let me see if I can find it. OK, the Nefer Abu Stele from Dayer el Medina says, I am a man who swore falsely by Ptah. Stop pronouncing the name of Ptah falsely is what it says on that stele. And it's from the 13th century BC, which would fit sort of the context, depending on which date you hold to the Exodus, it's roughly in the same zone. But again, that text specifically uses the word for swearing.

It's not using a linguistic, like a similar idiom. So this is a man who swore falsely by Ptah. We shouldn't do that, right? But I don't think you can make this parallel to the name command unless you import a whole lot with it. So you would have to decide first that the name command is about swearing and then this becomes a parallel. But we actually don't have anything in the name command itself that makes clear that it's about swearing.

What about 2016 where it says you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor? Yes. Is that the same? Is that Nassau as well? It's not. No, it's not. You shall not answer your neighbor as a false witness, is what that reads. This is actually an argument, I think, in favor of my interpretation. If you take those two commands, we've got God's top 10, a short list of the most important commands that are going to be, these are the stipulations of the covenant, they're setting the parameters for the covenant community. Wouldn't it be strange if you had two commands in the same

list that were talking about the same thing? Hmm. Okay. Like, they're talking about different things. So, if you make the name command about swearing falsely, and then you have another command saying not to swear falsely in a court context, like in a court case, then why say that twice? So I actually feel like that supports my view. Another thing that supports it, I think, is the fact that this command comes near the top of the list. There are different views about how to count the 10 commandments. Believe it or not, it's very difficult to count them.

There are different ways to get to 10, and you can find articles that kind of list the ways that people break it up into 10. I call the name command the second command. Most others in our zone would call it the third command. But if you go with me, and I have exegetical reasons for this, and call it the second command, then you've got the first command is no other gods.

Don't worship other gods. The second command is don't misrepresent me, which is a way of in a nutshell giving the covenant formula. I will be your God and you will be my people." This is weighty enough, in my view, to warrant a place at the top of the list. If this is about the attitude you have when you say God's name or a false oath or something, it seems like that would fall lower on the list. Okay, yeah. But these are like the two things that kind of set the trajectory for everything else.

So wait, do you take, so verse three, you shall have no other gods before me, and then verse 4, you shall not make yourself an idol. You're taking that as the same, that's one command? I am, yeah. So, wait, do you have nine, is there nine, or you still get ten command? I still get ten, because it's clear in Exodus that there are ten. So, I think the traditional last command can be split into two, because it has not coveting, and there's two different. It appears twice, not, let me just pull it up so I'm not... Your neighbor's house or your...

So, don't covet your neighbor's house, and don't covet your neighbor's wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. I think that can be counted as two. Or, you can put, you can make, I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Verse two could be its own word. The Bible does not call these the 10 commandments. It calls them in Hebrew, the 10 words. And so it doesn't need to be a command for it to be on the top 10. So some people, I think Jewish interpreters count verse two as its own word. I would include verse two with the first command because I think there's a little chiasm happening in verses two through six.

You have I am Yahweh in verse two, and you have I am Yahweh again in verse two, and you have, I am Yahweh again in verse five. And then those are sandwiching a series of prohibitions that I don't think makes sense to split up. So when it says in verse four, you shall not make for yourself an image that's singular. Verse five, you shall not bow down to them or worship them. That's plural. Okay. So to get a plural antecedent, we have to go all the way back to verse 3, you shall have no other gods before me. The gods are what you're bowing down to. Okay. That makes sense.

So, my basic thesis here is you wouldn't be an ancient Near Eastern person. If you're an ancient Near Eastern person and you have an idol, you have it so that you can bow down to it. And you're not going to bow down to a God without an idol, like the two go hand in hand. So I think the first command is about other gods, which are represented by idols and worshiped in that form. So that's the first thing that's prohibited. So according to your interpretation, which so far I'm pretty convinced, are there parallels to that elsewhere that use similar language of bearing God's name?

Yes. So, once this sort of clicks into place and you see, okay, this command is about not misrepresenting Yahweh, and then you read through the Bible, you'll see it everywhere. There's lots of places that echo this. So, I haven't made the case for it yet, but let me just point to where it goes. Psalm 23, He leads me in paths of righteousness for His namesake. Why would it be for God's namesake that I walk in right paths? Well, if I'm someone who bears God's name, that is, I'm his PR person, then the way that I walk actually matters for his reputation. It's for his namesake that I walk

well. Because as soon as I don't, as soon as I commit adultery, I'm the next headline of, you know, Christian podcaster falls again, you know, and then God's name is brought into disrepute. So this happens over and over again when pastors fall into some kind of sin, God's name is dragged through the mud. And Psalm 23 is reflecting that. Okay. Second Chronicles 7-14, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, then I will hear from heaven and heal their land."

What does it mean to be called by God's name? In Hebrew, it's, if my people over whom my name is proclaimed will humble themselves and pray, then I will hear. So they are the people who've been verbally branded with the name of God at Mount Sinai. And that's why when they pray and repent, God hears and responds because they are the people who belong to Him. It makes me think, it makes me go all the way back to Genesis 1, your second book, you know, that we are as image bearers, we are God's idol set up in creation to represent

Him in the world. Yes. There's a parallel, there's a kind of parallel between the two ideas because both identities or vocations are representational. All humans represent the presence of God on earth. The covenant people bear God's name and represent Yahweh more specifically, Yahweh the covenant God. So, I don't want to merge the two ideas entirely. I think they're kind of parallel to each other because every human being is the image of God, but only the covenant people bear God's name.

So they're not exactly the same, but they're analogous to each other. When Jesus prays, in the Lord's Prayer, when he prays, hallowed be thy name. This used to bother me as a kid. I'm like, why do we have to say, may your name be holy? Isn't it already holy? Yeah. Like, why is Jesus bothering to state the obvious? And then I did this study and I discovered,

oh, the prophets are very concerned because God's name, Yahweh's name, has been profaned among the nations, Ezekiel 36. Everywhere they went when they had to go out of His land, everywhere they went, God's name was profaned because people said, ah, these are Yahweh's people, and yet they had to go out of His land. And so, Jesus recognizes that for Yahweh's name to be honored requires the right living of His people. Otherwise, God's name is dishonored and made unholy or profaned. So, I don't think Jesus is just stating the obvious. I think He's actually committing Himself to be among those who consecrate God's name by His life. This episode is brought to you by Jitasa, an organization that offers bookkeeping and

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that's jetasagroup.com or just click on the link in the show notes. Jetasa. Help us or maybe tease out like in vain. What is that just when you're... Yeah. So I would see it as kind of like in an empty manner, like the reality doesn't match the behavior. So you say you belong to me, but you're living just like Canaanites. You know, read Judges 19 to 21 and you're like, huh, this sounds exactly like Sodom and Gomorrah, instead of sounds like God's people. So that would be bearing God's name in vain. It's like putting a fish on the back of your car and then raging through traffic and being unsafe and breaking all the speed limits and whatever. You say you belong

to Jesus, but you're not living like it. My non-Christian, I think grandma or uncle, both of them have passed, but they used to call them those fish people. Those fish people are always so bad on the road and stuff. So funny. Something more like hypocrisy or inconsistency. You're saying one thing and doing another. So if you don't mind, it'd be good to circle back because I sort of said, here's what I don't think it means,

but I haven't made my strongest exegetical case for why I would read it this way. So the command says, you shall not bear the name of Yahweh, your God in vain. The closest passage to this one that has bear the name in it is in Exodus chapter 29, sorry, 28. When it's describing, God's describing to Moses what the high priest is supposed to wear, and it says in verse 29, so this is Exodus 28-29, whenever Aaron enters the holy place, he will bear the names of the sons of Israel over his heart on the breast

piece of decision as a continuing memorial before Yahweh. So Aaron has on his chest a special pouch with 12 gemstones, and they're engraved like the engravings of a seal, so they have the names of each of the 12 tribes. And he physically is bearing them. He's carrying the names, and that signifies his representative role. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. It's the same word, Nassau?

It's the same word, Nassau,'s the same word, Nasa Shamot. Then the next thing we're told is that He has a turban on His head, and in verse 36 it says, "...make a plate of pure gold and engrave on it as a seal, holy belonging to Yahweh, and fasten a blue cord on it and attach it to the turban." It'll be on the front of the turban. So Aaron literally bears the name of Yahweh on his forehead. It doesn't use the word Nassah there, but it's talking about him wearing the name of God on his forehead. So the idea is,

Aaron is the intermediary who moves between these two worlds. He's representing Yahweh to the people, and he's representing the people to Yahweh. And I think this is teaching us how to read that command. I think that Aaron is a visual model of what's true of every Israelite. They are the people who bear God's name. And I don't think it's a stretch to say that because right before the Ten Commandments in chapter 19, the first thing God says when they get to Sinai is, you will be for me a kingdom of priests. So they all are like priestly, but they don't all wear the priestly garments and actually do the priestly stuff in the tabernacle. Aaron's going to do that

as their representative, so he will literally wear the names. So if we take that idea forward into the book of Numbers, in Numbers chapter 6, we get sort of random other things that they need to know about life after Sinai. And it says at the end of chapter 6, Yahweh said to Moses, tell Aaron and his sons, this is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them, may Yahweh bless you and keep you. May Yahweh make his face shine on you and be gracious to you, may Yahweh turn his face toward you and give you his peace. So they shall put my name on the

Israelites and I will bless them." So verse 27 to me is crystal clear. When the high priest pronounces the name of God as a blessing over the people, which is part of his ordination ceremony, and his first day in office, he pronounces this blessing. That is the moment in which the name of God is put on them. So Mike, the NASB says, the New American Center says, and they shall invoke my name, but I have a little footnote and it says put. Put, yeah. It's really put. It's that he's setting it on them. There's like a moment of verbal

branding. And so, we can read about that moment when he first pronounces the name is in chapter eight of Leviticus. So, some of these texts are overlapping. Chapter 8 is the ordination of Aaron and his sons. Chapter 9 is the day that they begin their ministry. So, they've all been ordained, and now they're starting their ministry. Aaron's now wearing the stuff that he's supposed to wear, including all the names. And then, after the offerings have been made, he walks out of the tabernacle, and it says, then, verse 22, then Aaron lifted his hands toward the people and blessed them. And that's when the glory of Yahweh appears and fire comes out and

consumes the offering and all of that. So, wonderful climactic moment. It's the moment of blessing. And then number six tells us, by the way, here's what you're supposed to say when you do this. And it's conferring Yahweh's name on them. This makes a lot of sense. And I think the linguistic support is pretty strong. The million dollar question is, if I stub my toe and drop a GD, am I free to do that now? Or is it probably still wrong, but you're just not necessarily violating Exodus 20 verse 6?

I think this doesn't put less weight on our speech. I think it actually puts more weight on it. So it's not just about, okay, be careful how you say this name because it's like this magical thing and you want to like, maybe we should just not say it at all so we never break this command. You know, that sort of the history of interpretation has shied away from saying God's name in efforts to honor it. And instead, this understanding of it says, oh, it's way bigger than this.

So what's your attitude when you stub your toe? Not just what comes out of your mouth, but how do you treat the people around you when you're in pain? Are you representing me well? Or are you taking out your rage on other people?" So, I wouldn't advocate that people start swearing using God's name, like say, oh, that's not what it means. I think actually we need to hold God's name in high regard, but our whole life needs to be oriented towards that, not just our speech.

Interesting. You might find this fascinating. This is an old Bible I've had since I was, it's like almost 30 years old, actually. I mean, it is torn up. I'm missing Genesis, the first few pages of Genesis. I took it to Israel with me 25 years ago. I mean, notes, first sermon I ever preached, Nehemiah 8 or one of them.

I don't know where this came from. You're not going to read this, but it's scribbled right next to Exodus 20 verse 7. And I have a little note that says, Nassah, carry or bear. And I have another note that says, not necessarily a curse word. I don't know where I got that. And I have another note, I can't even read what I, I have another note off to the side. I'm curious what this says. So I wonder if somebody I read or heard was kind of hinting at this.

And this, it's not unheard of. I've seen it in blog posts. I've heard it in sermons where people are talking about this. Like if you can read the Hebrew, you look at the Hebrew and you go, huh, how did we get from that to swearing? And it goes back really far. Like some of the Targums, so Aramaic translations of the Old Testament go one of two ways with it. There are some that talk about swearing. So already before the time of Jesus, potentially,

people were limiting this to swearing. But there are others who don't limit it to that. And there's evidence in the early church that they saw. So there's some really interesting, I think it's Clement who writes about baptism as the taking on of God's name. So when you're baptized, you're stamped with God's name. Therefore, when you come up out of the waters, don't go take it in vain. Which is exactly how I'm seeing it. So this idea is not just a brand new one. It's not like Dan Block came up with it out of nowhere. There have been other people who've seen this and going back very, very far. I think the theme is clear in scripture and I think there's a human tendency to want to say, like, just

tell me exactly what I can't do. Just like spell it out for me so that I can, you know, at the end of the day, I can just check the box. Whoop, didn't do that. Like, I'm still good. And we have this tendency to sort of downsize what's expected of us. Is this the source of the tradition in Judaism where they don't say the name Yahweh? There's debate about that. It's too long ago now for me to articulate it carefully, but I have heard a good case that that's not where it comes from. And other people who have said this is where it comes from. I think it's fair to say that by the time of the New Testament, people were already avoiding saying the divine name. So this is really old.

Jesus doesn't say it. But also, how would one say Yahweh in Greek? There's no Y, and there's no H, and there's no W. Good luck. Good luck trying to pronounce a name which lacks all the requisite consonants. Can we take a hard turn here and jump over to 2 Samuel? Yeah. All right. So, David and Bathsheba. Speaking of taking God's name in vain, David does. That's actually a good segue.

Why don't you maybe explain the different viewpoints on this incident and then would love for you to make your case. And I know this one's a little bit more, shall I say sensitive. You've got some online negative reactions against your interpretation, which I thought was a little shocking because you wrote a great article in CT Christianity Today. Maybe I'll put a link in the show notes where you lay out your case pretty well, actually Jennifer, I think. So yeah, let us know how this event has been interpreted and how we should interpret this event. Yeah, it's kind of funny because my interpretation of the name command is breaking with the majority

of church history interpretation for most of the centuries. And I've had almost no pushback to it. People are just like, oh, yeah, that clicks. That makes sense. Thanks for helping us moving on. Nobody seems personally offended by it. I would love to know what that is after you explain your view. Let's return to that.

Yeah. That's an interesting point. The David and Bathsheba story is different. For some reason, it is very polarizing and the conversation is polarized in our context now. I think that it's because this story has become a kind of touchstone story that people keep coming back to in the wake of the Me Too movement. So, I think the Me Too movement sent people back to in the wake of the Me Too movement. So I think the Me Too movement sent people back to the scriptures more sensitive about power dynamics in sexual relationships. And they started asking themselves, wait, why has Bathsheba been getting a bad rep all this time?

What choice did she actually have when the king summoned her? What she's gonna say no, she's gonna say sorry. I'm already in my pajamas. I'm going to bed now like you know Call on me tomorrow or something like when the king summons you what choice do you have? And so there were there have been people who've spoken up about it preached about it John Piper is among those who has said this is clearly rape really Yes kind of an unlikely ally because what has emerged for me over the past several years is that this story cycles through the Twitter sphere probably every five months or four months or so. Really?

Like multiple times a year, it's trending again and people are talking about it. And usually it's a reaction to a sermon on one side or the other, where someone either blamed Bathsheba or put the blame squarely on David and then it sort of activates everybody's reaction to it. What I've found fascinating is that it tends to be the people who want churches to be held more accountable for abuse of the vulnerable. For example, when the SBC was first revealed, there's this list of 700 pastors who have been abusers. And the debate erupted like, should these names be made public?

Should there be a list? Should there be a database? Should an independent entity be allowed to come investigate the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention and figure this out or not? Should it be handled internally or externally? Around that debate, you had people who were calling for accountability, who were reading the David and Bathsheba story one way, like Bathsheba's innocent and David's the guilty one. The people who were saying, no, this is an in-house issue, and these are isolated incidents, and this is not a systemic problem, and also Bathsheba is a seductress. So what I found really interesting was just how the two groups got so entrenched.

And I don't know how to say it other than to say that this story seems to function as a kind of Rorschach test, like the ink blots where the psychologists are seeing something about you based on what you see in it. Like if you tell me how you read this story, I can probably predict how you're going to respond to abuse allegations in your denomination. That's interesting, wow. That's what kind of fascinated me.

So this past semester, I presented a paper at the Evangelical Theological Society meetings called Taking Another Look at Bathsheba, where I was kind of surveying the history of interpretation of this passage to see just specifically around the question of was Bathsheba innocent or do we put blame on her. around the question of was Bathsheba innocent or do we put blame on her? And you'd be kind of shocked to hear how hard people are on Bathsheba, even though the narrator never condemns her. The prophet Nathan, when he confronts David,

does not confront Bathsheba. And David does not turn and say, she made me do it or it's her fault or if she hadn't been bathing where I could see her, you know, whatever. So the text seems very clearly to place the blame on David and yet sermons and blog posts and other articles seem very persistent in placing at least some of the blame on her.

And that blame tends to revolve around a couple of assumptions about her that actually are not in the text. One of the assumptions is that Bathsheba was naked. This might seem like a silly one because she was bathing and don't people bathe naked. Well, in third world context, in majority world context, bathing often happens in public, fully clothed.

Like there are, if you don't have the privilege of indoor plumbing and your own private bathroom with a locked door, then bathing happens out in the street where the water source is or in the courtyard where the water can drain away. You're not going to bathe in your living room where there's no drainage. So, in the city of David, there is no indoor plumbing. There are no water sources within the city. That's why Hezekiah had to build a tunnel through solid rock because the only water source, the Gihon Spring, was outside the city walls. So, they had to bring it into the city. Nobody has a bathroom in their house. So I think we need to start by more accurately considering what are her options for bathing. And if the typical way of getting clean is to go out to the spring and get water or to go to the pool, then Bathsheba being at home bathing

is actually more private, not less private. And again, it does not say whether she has skin showing or not. She could be, she could have a loose fitting dress on and she could be scrubbing underneath that or whatever. We lived in the Philippines for two and a half years. In rural areas, people don't have indoor plumbing and they go out to the public spigot and they

have ways of getting the water under their clothes and scrubbing up men and women standing right next to each other and nobody sees anything they're not supposed to see. So that's one issue that is just an assumption that interpreters often make, that she was naked. Number two, that she was on the roof. This is deeply entrenched in songs, in art. I was just at the Getty Museum on Friday, and I found a painting of Bathsheba, and she's just sort of voluptuously laying there, where he could see her,

and the text does not say that she was on the roof. And she's just sort of voluptuously laying there where he could see her. And the text does not say that she was on the roof. It says he was on the roof. And from the roof, he can see her. So if you're in the city of David, it's built on a hillside. And anyone at the top of the hill, which is where the palace would, of course, be, is looking down

into the courtyards of the neighboring homes. So she doesn't have an option. Like if she has no indoor plumbing and she's bathing at home, outside would be the normal place to do it. And she would not have a way of hiding from David while she does it. I had several people talk to me after my paper to say, oh, I used to live in Nepal, where there's steep mountains and the houses are built sort of up, you know, on terraces going up the mountain. And culturally, it's expected that if you live above someone else and you look down and see something that's private going on, whether it's bathing or lovemaking or whatever

is happening down below and you happen to see it, it's your job to turn your face away and look away. It's not their job to hide themselves. It's like culturally understood. Like you don't look down because that's exploitative. So I think those two factors are ones that I hear over and over and over again, like, well, she shouldn't have been naked on the roof flaunting herself. And I just don't see that in the text. In fact, what the narrator tells us is that she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness, which

is in conformity with Levitical law, she's cleansing herself. She's washing herself. It actually doesn't say bathing. She's washing. She's washing herself after her period so that she's ritually clean, which tells me everything I need to know about her. She's pious, right? She's a Torah observant citizen of David's kingdom. And he is going to prey on her by summoning her to the palace. Her purification, though, it says that in verse four, David's, it's after he laid with her, that's when she purified herself.

So depending on what translation you're looking at, that sentence is often in parentheses in the NIV. It says, now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness. And it is, in terms of the discourse structure of the Hebrew, it's like a flashback. It's not part of the, like, it's not put chronologically. It's grammatically a flashback. And I think the narrator is very cleverly waiting to tell us that then, so that we'd understand, ah, now they've had sex, when

she becomes pregnant, how are we going to know whose baby it is? No care. Oh, wow. We didn't have a question about parentage before that point, but now that they've been together, we wonder when she's pregnant, how do we know that's David's child? Well, because, yeah. She's also silent in the story, right? She does not speak at all.

She is silent, yes. She's a passive character from a narrative perspective. The only action we see from her in this first part of the story is she came to him in the second half of verse four, or first half of verse four. And this is the very thin basis on which many interpreters say, see, she wanted it, she was all in. It doesn't say they dragged her or she was taken. It says she came to him, which implies volition on her part.

I don't have the Hebrew in front of me, but it says, right before that though, it says, David sent messengers and took her and she came to him. So I... That's right. He saw and he her and she came to him. Yes, that's right. He saw and he took and she came. So then the question is like, did she want to come? Or did she know, I mean, I think there's so many questions.

Did she know why she was being summoned? Her husband is one of David's top military leaders. He's out on the front lines fighting. If the king summons her, and he's the commander, you know, he's above Joab, the commander, wouldn't you imagine if you were her military wife, that there's a message for her about her husband, that she wants that she's being summoned to the palace to hear either like, Oh, he's, he's dead or he's being honored or something. We have no indication that she's being told, that she was told why she's being summoned. So the people who argue that, well, this can't be rape, she must have wanted it because she

didn't scream and she didn't resist and she came willingly. It's like, well, we don't know what she knows at that point. In verse four, David sent for her and she came. We don't know what the message was that she was given. What about, okay, so the language, we talked offline just a bit that, I guess the best counter argument to this view is that the typical Hebrew word for rape

is not used here, right? Is that- That's correct. Do you find used here, right? Is that that's correct Do you find that to be an issue at all or do we have other instances where it's clearly rape given the context with a Word for rape is that is not used. That is a great question. There was a conversation going on online About the story of Shechem in Genesis. Hmm. Is it just 34? Yes, Genesis 34. Jacob heard that. Tom May, he had defiled Dinah. His heart was drawn to Dinah.

He loved her and spoke tenderly to her and said, get me this girl as a wife. It's kind of similar. Like go get the girl. Oh. Tell people to, go get the girl. Oh. People go and get the girl. Oh, in verse two, it does seem to say rape. Yeah.

OK. He took her and lay with her by force. Yeah, he took her and laid with her by force. Yeah. He saw, took, and raped her. OK. So good question. I haven't done a thorough study

of like all of the sexual encounters in the Bible to see what language is used in which ones. That would be a good next step. This is not actually my area of specialization. It's just sort of a side thing that has happened. But it's true that the next story after this one is the story of of after this whole scene or cluster of scenes is done. In chapter 13, the second Samuel, we have the Amnon and Tamar story. And Amnon

forcibly takes his sister and it does say that he rapes her. So people put these two side by side and they say, ah, see David isn't a rapist because if he was, it would have used the same word as it used in chapter 11. Are you necessarily suggesting that it is, well, we would ask, it's so sensitive. So please help me out here if you need to is this cat It should just be category categorized by what we would call rape or as an abuse of power slash

Seduction where it's not like a physical Forseen, but basically he's used his power and she can't say no to His his his advances upon her. So what we would call power rape, maybe. So I actually feel like how we label this is kind of a separate question. The thing I'm most concerned with is do we ascribe blame to Bathsheba? And that's what's happening in the pulpit all the time. In youth groups, hey girls, don't dress like this, don't act like this, don't do this because

this might happen to you kind of thing. Like it becomes a tool in the purity culture arsenal to try to keep young people from misbehaving. And I think, yes, dress modestly, don't flaunt yourself. But I don't, the reason why I think it's problematic to use this story as an example of that is it assigns blame to her that the biblical text does not assign to her, not in any kind of clear or unequivocal way.

Is there a possibility that Bathsheba wants to trade up, as many people on Twitter have assured me? Wants to trade up? That she's trade up, as many people on Twitter have assured me. Wants to trade up? That she's trading up, that she is angling for a baby from David. That's what she really wants in her heart of hearts. Is that possible? There is a slim possibility that that's what she wants, but we have no evidence in the text to suggest that, right?

It's a blank. And so I'm hesitant to fill in that blank in that way because there is a significant power difference between David and Bathsheba, and the narrator and the prophet and David himself don't ascribe blame to her in that way. So I don't know what gives me the right to do so. Yeah, it's an argument from Silas. Is it the only other time we hear,

the only time we hear Bathsheba speak, if I remember correctly, is in First Kings? Well, she says here, I'm pregnant. Oh, right. Okay. She says one thing. And that's actually part of the point that I made in my paper and others have made this point.

This is not actually a story about a sexual encounter. The sexual encounter between David and Bathsheba takes up a very small part of a wider narrative complex that begins in chapter 10 and stretches through chapter 12. And it's about the battle with the ammonites. That's what this is really about. And you can tell that it's really about that when you pay attention to the proportion of space given over to dialogue. Because dialogue is where the narrator is slowing down and sort of teasing out all of the implications. And that's where the plot is really going to simmer. And the place we have dialogue is as soon as Uriah shows up.

Then there's back and forth and back and forth between David and Uriah. This is not really a story about David and Bathsheba. It's a story about David and Uriah. The incident with Bathsheba is like setting the stage for a conflict between two men. And so that's part of where we go wrong is we sort of zero in on this sexual encounter and we want to classify it. Is this adultery? Is this rape? Was there consent?

Was there force? And that gets in, we got all entangled in that conversation and that prevents us from seeing that this is really a wartime story and David is going to war against the wrong guy. Right. It's like Saul chasing David. David is aiming at Uriah

when he should be thinking about the Ammonites instead. And in first Kings one, Bathsheba is portrayed positively, if I remember correctly. She is. David's portrayed negatively. Well, everything from the latter half of the Samuel. David is impotent. David's impotent at that point. And Bathsheba is angling for her son to be the next king on the basis of a promise that he supposedly made to her, that we don't have a record of that promise, but he affirms that he had promised her that.

So it's interesting what people will do with that because I ran across one interpreter that said, we know that Bathsheba was angling for sex in chapter 11 because she was angling for her son to be king in Kings. And I'm like, oh, wow. So anytime a woman is in a sexual encounter, we'll know what her motivations were in that moment if we just sort of track the rest of her life. And if she ever shows any kind of agency or leadership or motivation, then we know that she wanted that sexual encounter.

That seems bizarre to me that we'd conclude that. Well, that would make sense. The narratable presentation of her in First King's One, she's the one that's holding him accountable for the promise that was made. It's not a negative portrayal grasping for power on her part at all. It doesn't seem like it to me. I think part of what I find really concerning about the way this story is told is there is a significant percentage in any audience of people who have had unwanted sexual encounters. And when a pastor gets up and berates Bathsheba for what she was wearing or where she was, when the Bible isn't actually reading her that way, but the pastor is reading her that way, that tells every woman in the

congregation who's been violated, oh, this isn't a safe place to disclose abuse because I'm going to be blamed for what I was wearing or where I was. That's what I think part of the cost is for us not doing this carefully. Now, this is not to say, I hasten to add, this is not to say that women cannot sin sexually or that women are never seductresses, or that any time there's a power difference, it's non-consensual sex.

I'm not saying that. We have other examples of that. We have other examples of women being seductive citizens. Yes, Potiphar's wife is a great example, right? Potiphar's wife or Lady Folly in Proverbs is a good example of a woman who's trying to, you know. I don't see that happening here. And I think let's leave those examples to the places where it's really obvious.

So I found one interpreter who is a Catholic priest who's been very hard on Bathsheba. I'll just read you a couple of selections for how he fills the gaps on the story. And this is a story that's full of gaps. There are lots of things the narrator doesn't tell us, and it seems to me like the narrator is kind of toying with our ability to read the story well. So he tells us very little, and we form conclusions or form hypotheses, and then we find out, oh, I was barking up the wrong tree there, or I was filling that in wrong, and we have to go back and read it again. And I think the narrator is actually teasing us with this story and that might explain why

we don't have the word rape right out there in front. Because it's part of the narrator's purpose to draw us in and go, wait, what just happened? We can't really tell what just happened until after Nathan shows up and gives his parable. Then we know what happened. The rich man stole a lamb and ate her for dinner. That's what just happened. Yeah, the parable Nathan tells supports your interpretation. The parable certainly does.

Okay, so here is from Bishop Robert Barron. He's a media sensation. He's got like three million followers on Facebook and other platforms. He's been on every major news network. And as a bishop, he's a person of spiritual influence. He says, according to the standard Jewish sensibility, a woman was particularly receptive to conception in the week or so just following menstruation. Therefore, one might be justified in thinking that the rooftop bath," notice the assumption he just made, that she's on the roof even though the text doesn't say that. He's been listening to

the Leonard Cohen song and thinking that was the Bible. "...the rooftop bath was far from innocent, but rather a non-too-subtle advertisement to the king that Bathsheba was interested in becoming pregnant. That Bathsheba is far from a merely passive object of manipulation is emphatically confirmed at the beginning of First Kings, where we learn that she cleverly and successfully lobbies the aged David to allow her son Solomon

to succeed to the throne. So step one is to attribute motives to Bathsheba, imagining that she wants David to impregnate her. And step two is to confirm these motives with a reference to her strength of persuasion during an incident more than 20 years later. And I find that alarming that a Catholic bishop who's a media sensation can so cavalierly characterize her in an age where victim blaming has led to so much hurt. That seems irresponsible.

He goes on to say, this is his step three, minimize any stain on David's character. So after painting her in the worst possible light, he says, Bishop Barron says of David, he is not presented as a sexual pervert or a self-involved power-hungry tyrant. Quite the contrary. He's a remarkably good man, one of the best that Israel ever produced, a new Adam. And yet, like the old Adam, he sinned. So he calls this incident David's adultery with Bathsheba, suggesting that these crimes of passion, quote, are relatively forgivable.

What does that mean, relatively forgivable? He seems forgivable. I don't even know what that means. So I find this really concerning because he's going to fill in the text in two ways. He's going to downplay what David did, and he's going to ratchet up what Bathsheba did and cause more blame to her. And I just feel like that's not a very careful exegesis.

Yeah, yeah. That's shocking. I don't know. I just know his name. That is shocking. Because again, the parable comes out pretty hard on David. I mean, and this is kind of the turning point, right? And the rest of second Samuel, David is just spiraling down. Yes. And to me, this is to read the story in this way is just irresponsible.

So this is, I think, the most important thing that I've ever read. And I think it's the most important thing that I've ever read. And I think it's the most important thing that I've ever read. And I think it's the most story in this way is just irresponsible. So this raises the question. He calls it adultery. And is it adultery? Well, yes, it's a married man and married woman, so by definition, that's adultery. But the problem is in our context, the word adultery implies consent. And I don't think that we have any clear evidence other than she came to David, which you could say suggests intent, consent. I don't think consent is the... I don't think we have enough information to call this consent.

But it says they took her and she came to David. So it doesn't, I don't think it's... It's ambiguous. It's ambiguous. Or at the very least, they came and took her. Yeah. So part of the problem, I think, is that this is a story that we're reading through modernize in which rape is defined as non-consensual and adultery is defined as consensual and I want to say like if we go back, I mean consent is not an entirely foreign category in ancient Israel because there is the passage about screaming, you know,

like she would have cried out if she was in the city and this this is the other, if we're going to steel man the other side, those who say she consented are saying, look, she didn't scream, she didn't cry out and she was in the city. So according to Deuteronomic law, she's equally guilty of adultery. If it had happened out in the country, she would have been given the benefit of the doubt because maybe no one would have hurt her. And I want to say, if the chief of police is raping you, you're going to call the police? Every person who was within earshot of her cry was his employee and his subject. What are they going to do? They have no power to stop him.

He's the king. And this is the problem. He's acting like he can do whatever he wants because he's the king. And Deuteronomy 17 makes very clear the king is not above the Torah. The king needs to write himself a copy of the Torah and keep it by his side and read it every day because he better not think he's above his fellow Israelites. And here he clearly is. Pete Can you speak briefly to our modern angst around interpreting this as anything other than a consensual adultery? Like, what's going on there? Because you made a good case, you showed it from the text, looking at the Hebrew, which you know well. And even if someone's

like, I'm not quite convinced, but you make it a good case, that's a valid way to read this. Maybe I'd still take the other view. We're scholars, okay. But the outrage that you would suggest something other than how this has traditionally been understood, where does that come from? You know, when I was reading Bishop Robert Barron's take on this story, it sounds to me like the kind of thing you'd hear from the good old boys club. These are my guys. Surely, he's my man. How could he have done that?

There is a tendency to gather around and defend our bro who just did something, but he's a good guy and this was a, you know, lapse. So I don't know to what degree that is operating in this story. I see it in judges when the rape and murder of the concubine takes place and the whole nation assembles and they come to Benjamin, the tribe of Benjamin and they're like hand over the men who did this. And the Benjamites could have been like, yeah, we don't want this stuff happening in our

neighborhood. But instead they double down, they're like, no, you'll have to come at us. And so there's a war instead of handing them over. And I feel like that's the dynamic that we're seeing over and over and over again. If it's somebody you know, you can't imagine that they would ever do such a thing. So, I think that's part of it. We know David. David's a good guy. David has his issues, but he's mostly good. So, I think that's part of it. We need heroes. Some of us are trained to come to the Bible looking for moral examples. That's not the right posture to take towards the Bible. Right.

That's not the right posture to take towards the Bible. Nearly every person we meet in the Bible is narrated in such a way that we're supposed to see their flaws and not follow their example. And yet somehow the Sunday school way of reading has predisposed us to think, I need heroes. And so to make David not a hero is really troubling. So I think that's part of it. I think another part of it is actually, dare I say, a lack of education around sexual issues. So I looked up the definition of rape before we went on. And according to dictionary.com, it's unlawful sexual intercourse, and it gives more details,

with or without force, without consent. And I think a lot of people assume that rape requires there to be violent force employed, and they don't see any violence in this passage. And so then they think, oh, David didn't rape. But again, if we're looking at modern definitions, this would constitute it without for, you know, forgive the guys who dragged her to the palace or who came and summoned her and she had no choice. Whatever happens once she gets there, we don't know if there was force or not.

As long as there was not consent, it would still qualify as rape. We don't have any footage of the event to know for sure. And I think if you go back further, I checked the Webster's New World College Dictionary Fourth Edition, which I think I got back when I started my academic journey, and I thought one needed such things. This one doesn't actually talk about I thought one needed such things. This one doesn't actually talk about with or without force. It says usually forcibly. So the crime of engaging in sexual acts, usually forcibly with a person who's not consented. So I think maybe there's a shifting definition of rape and that might account for some of

the vitriol around this question? I guess I also want to push back on the simplicity of the modern concept of consent. That's just such a... I mean, if a guy with a, let's just say a guy with a strong personality manipulates a female into a sexual relationship and she verbally says yes, but deep down she has, maybe she's scared that he will rape her if she doesn't say yes, maybe she's just been manipulated, whatever, like the thought, a good thing, right? I mean, but it was a consensual. She verbally said yes, she didn't resist. That doesn't mean that's technically consensual, I wouldn't say, right? I mean- Yeah. If you're a Title IX person at an institution and you're dealing with these things, you know that like some, you know, people respond to trauma,

fight, flight, or freeze. If someone's frozen in the moment and they just can't get a word out, that doesn't imply consent. So I think part of it is a concern. I see this coming out in the Twitter debates, a concern that my reading of the text is a capitulation to Marxism because Marxism wants to boil everything down to power dynamics. Everything is always about power. Yeah. And to now blame David entirely because there's a power difference means that, oh, now anytime a school administrator or a pastor or somebody who has more power is in a sexual relationship, now we're calling it rape.

So I think there's a fear that it's going overboard in that direction. And so I would hasten to say, I think power is something we should pay attention to. I don't think it explains everything. Yeah. But like, it's become like a trigger word, right? You know, or fear of Marxism, fear of... It's a word interpretation. I hate the word, but wokeism or whatever.

It's like... Yeah. I was called a David-raped apologist the other day. In an article, there's a published article online that lumps me in with the David-raped apologists. I'm like, no, that's not how I would describe myself. I would say the exonerating Bathsheba apologist, that would be a better way of describing it because I recognize the complexity of labeling something using a modern definition. So the question came up in my last interview I did on this with Sean McDowell.

Was there such a thing as consensual sex for any of David's wives? So at this point, for those who aren't aware, David already has seven wives. When he takes Bathsheba, he's got a harem full, a household full of women available to him. So this is just to be really clear, this is not a matter of sexual need that's being unfulfilled. Right? If we're going to characterize it that way. He had options. He is, by taking his neighbor's wife, he is taking aim at his neighbor's, dare I say, property. Like in that context, the wife belongs to her husband.

This is not to say she's no better than stuff, but she belongs to him legally, and he's out at war, and so he's coveting his neighbor's wife. And any king, sorry, anyone who wants to become king in the ancient Near East, who wants to overthrow the current king and lay claim to the throne, one of the tools in the tool belt of the desire to become king is to rape the king's wives. David is already king, but he's acting towards his neighbor as though he's trying to usurp whatever power Uriah has. He's trying to add it

to himself. He's dishonoring Uriah. He's dishonoring Uriah's wife. This is why she's called the wife of Uriah all through the story, not Bathsheba. Once she's announced to him, it's announced to him who she is, she reverts to being the wife of Uriah, the wife of Uriahsheba. Once she's announced to him, it's announced to him who she is, she reverts to being the wife of Uriah, the wife of Uriah, which tells us she's off limits, she's off limits. Yeah, that phrase is subtly highlighting his sin. Yes, off limits, off limits. I think we talked about this offline,

but in Matthew 1, the genealogy lists four women, five, including Mary. And all of the women are portrayed as positive, they're all positive heroes in this storyline of scripture and the wife of Basiba or wife of Uriah is listed there. So it doesn't fit what Matthew is doing in the genealogy if she's just as guilty of David. And here's a fun thing about the genealogy that I just haven't heard anyone else talk about, but this is my new shtick. The women in the genealogy are not introduced as the wives of the guy in the list. They're introduced as the mother of the next one. And so Mary is the mother

of Jesus, not the wife of Joseph. And, you know, so each of them is introduced as a mother, and I think this is drawing on the Old Testament convention in which the king does not have a queen. It's not one of his wives that sits on the throne beside him. It's his mother who's the queen mother who would have a throne next to him. So which wife would he choose? If he was choosing a wife, he's got seven or eight of them or more. It's his mother who has the unique access to kingly power. And so I think the wife of Uriah is listed because of Solomon, not because of David. She becomes the queen mother when Solomon ascends the throne, that's why she's mentioned. And that sets us up to understand Mary as the queen mother,

because it's her son who's going to take the throne of David. Pete Oh, that's interesting. Carmel Fisk Well, Carmel, this has been really interesting. I hope my audience is going to go back and wrestle with these two really interesting passages. Thank you so much for being a guest again on Theology in the Raw. I really appreciate the work you're doing. And I just, I love the honesty with which you wrestle with the text. I just, it's a... Well, thanks for the invitation.

It's, this is not my favorite topic to talk about just because it's so polarizing. And I, you know, once it comes out, then I get attacked from every side by people who think I'm playing fast and loose with the text. And I'm like, I'm just trying to read it carefully and not trying to read into it modern assumptions. Well, my audience will not,

I will appreciate this very much. I guarantee that. I can't control what happens on Twitter when the podcast is posted. None of us can. None of us can. You know, that's always a wild, wild wet, but yeah, appreciate you.

Thank you for your time. All right, Thanks so much. Hey, so I'm launching a new season on the podcast, The Doctor and the Nurse. World renowned brain coach, Dr. Daniel Amon, joins me as a co-host as we dive deep into the mind and the brain of everything high performance. I've been fascinated for years as I've worked with top athletes, high powered CEOs, Hollywood actors, and all high performers

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