Reflection by Joy Kingsbury-Aitken on 2 Samuel 11:26 – 12:15 & Matthew 5:1-12, 4 August 2024,
“You are the man!”
When working towards the Bachelor of Theology degree in the 1990s, I had the privilege of studying the Old Testament under the guidance of the late Reverend Dr Judith McKinley, who was the Senior Lecturer in Hebrew language and the Hebrew Bible in the Department of Theology at the University of Otago. Judith was particularly interested in the women in the Bible. With regards to their stories she insisted her students exercise a hermeneutics of suspicion. That is, Judith insisted that we look for the untold stories buried within the recorded story. We were to consider what the people who don’t speak might have said if their voices had been included in the narrative? We were to think about whose perspective the story was told from, and whose agenda was being supported by the telling. We were encouraged to identify the bad behaviour that was being whitewashed and the bad behaviour that was being excessively condemned. Was the hero of the story truly heroic, was the villain really all that villainous? By asking searching questions of the text, it might be possible to get a glimpse of the experiences, and perhaps the motivations, of the secondary characters. In a patriarchal text like the Bible, women are always secondary characters in the storytelling. To recapture their stories requires insight and imagination.
The court historians who wrote the books we know as First and Second Samuel were spin doctors when it came to minimising King David’s many failings. One certainly needs to employ a hermeneutics of suspicion if one is to perceive just what a ruthlessly ambitious man David was for much of his life. However, the one sin the ancient historians couldn’t diminish in importance was David’s seduction of Bathsheba and murder of Uriah her husband. David’s sinfulness was great but perhaps Nathan’s courage in confronting the king was even greater, and perhaps the story of this confrontation had become legendary in the court of the kings of Judah, so that it was impossible for the historians to overlook this story or sweep away the king’s culpability. So they write, “David did what was right in the sight of the LORD, and did not turn aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.”[1] Notably, this story isn’t included in the record of David’s reign in1 Chronicles.
We know what happened well. The Hittite Uriah was away fighting with the Israelites against the Ammonites, and therefore was not at home to protect his wife. What’s more she was a beautiful woman which made her especially vulnerable. Ancient homes didn’t have indoor plumbing. Bathsheba had to go outside to bathe. She would have chosen a private place for her ablutions. Perhaps she was washing herself on the roof of her home, which would have been fenced[2] and thus she would have been hidden from view except from someone at a higher elevation, who should have looked away once he spotted her. She was not bathing for purely hygienic purposes but was performing the cleansing rituals a devout woman underwent to purify herself after the completion of her monthly menses. She was, in essence, engaged in an act of religious devotion when David observed her from the rooftop of his palace, and lusted after her. She also was clearly not pregnant but in the stage of her monthly cycle that enabled her to become so.
David made enquiries as to her identity, and learning that she was the daughter of one of his bodyguards and the wife of another[3] he should have lost interest in her, out of loyalty to the men who were loyal to him, in addition to being out of respect for an honourable married woman. David had a long history of taking what he wanted and doing what he liked, however, so instead of leaving Bathsheba alone he had her brought to him, and he seduced her undoubtedly against her will. She would have had no ability to resist the demands and desires of the king. The result was that Bathsheba became pregnant, and then to cover up his sin David eventually brought about the death of her husband by instructing Joab, the commander of the Israelite army, to send Uriah into the forefront of the hardest fighting and withdraw support from him so that he would be killed. David wrote down the orders that would get Uriah killed and had Uriah deliver the letter containing his death sentence to Joab himself. There is something particularly cynical and vile about that aspect of the story. Then while Bathsheba mourned the death of her husband, David coldly instructed the messenger who brought news of Uriah’s death to say to Joab, “Do not let this matter trouble you, for the sword devours now one and now another.”[4]
For all his efforts, David wasn’t able to hide his sin from the members of his own court. Nathan the prophet knew about it, and undoubtedly so did others. Throughout the account Bathsheba is referred to as “the wife of Uriah”, or as “the woman”. She is only referred to by name once, at the beginning of the story, when David is informed that she is “Bathsheba the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” She is commodified. She is someone or perhaps something David takes, and he adds her to his harem to join his seven other wives and his numerous concubines. The analogy of David being like a rich man who steals the one much loved pet lamb of a poor man to feed an unexpected guest rather than select an animal from one of his own flocks to slaughter is an apt one. David is, of course, incensed with the injustice of the rich man’s actions, and says the man is worthy of death. However, the Mosaic Law doesn’t condemn to death a person for stealing sheep. The thief has to compensate his victim with four sheep for every one stolen.[5] Nathan then revealed that he was not speaking hypothetically of a selfish rich man, but of the king himself. “You are the man,” he says to David. Unlike the sheep stealer, David was worthy of death for ensuring the death of the man whose wife he took. David was forced to acknowledge his sin against God, but didn’t confess to sinning against Uriah and Bathsheba. Sinning against God is inseparable from sinning against people.
Nathan pronounced God’s punishment of David, which didn’t result in the king’s demise. Rather David was to be burdened with a highly troublesome family. God didn’t need to curse David’s family. The appalling behaviour of David’s sons was inevitable, for how could a man who takes another man’s wife and then ensures her husband’s death instil peaceful coexistence and high moral values in his sons. In the subsequent chapters of the Bible we read about the rape of Tamar by her half-brother Amnon, the revenge murder of Amnon that Tamar’s full-brother Absalom had his servants carry out, the usurping of David’s throne by Absalom aided by David’s former counsellor Ahithophel, who happened to be Bathsheba’s grandfather, and finally while David lay dying the contest for his throne between his son Adonijah and Bathsheba on behalf of their son Solomon. David’s family life was a mess.
The lectionary portion ends at verse 13, with Nathan’s statement to David, “Now the LORD has put away your sin; you shall not die.” The lectionary avoids, but I don’t think we should avoid the really troublesome statement Nathan makes next, which is, “Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the LORD, the child that is born to you shall die.” Why should an innocent child die because of his father’s sins? This is not how a just and merciful God operates. Until the development of modern medical interventions, infant mortality was high. In my own family history, two of my mother’s brothers died before their first birthday. There was no suggestion that my grandparents were being punished by God through these deaths. As Ezekiel says, “A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child; the righteousness of the righteous shall be his own, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be his own.”[6] Perhaps we can simply say that the historians who wrote the books of Samuel and Kings simply did not comprehend the grace of God and, in addition, by not understanding the physical causes of the child’s death attributed it to God’s will.
The tragic story of David and Bathsheba reminds us of our human brokenness, not that we need much reminding. Today we commemorate Peace Sunday (the Sunday nearest to the 6th of August, the anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb of Hiroshima). Today our hearts are breaking for the peoples caught up in conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, the Sudan, and many other places. James, the brother of Jesus, made some observations about the causes of conflict: “You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts.”[7] He offers us a solution, however. He tells us that God yearns for God’s spirit to dwell in us. God’s spirit is a spirit of peace and this Peace Sunday let us be people of peace for “a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace,”[8] and as Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Amen.
[1] 1 Kings 15:5
[2] Deuteronomy 22:8
[3] Compare 2 Samuel 11:3 with 2 Samuel 23:34, 39
[4] 2 Samuel 11:25
[5] Exodus 22:1
[6] Ezekiel 18:20
[7] James 4:2
[8] James 3:18