Our wonderful pastor preached on 2 Samuel 11:1-15 yesterday – from one perspective, “the familiar story of David and Bathsheba.” She pointed out that historically Christian readers have carefully protected the Great King David’s reputation, even here.
The NRSV’s editorial heading reads “David commits adultery with Bathsheba.” Even though “commits adultery” presumes or assumes, and implies, Bathsheba’s consent to the entire situation. The text gives us nothing to hang that presumption or assumption on, other than our cultural predilections, our willingness to treat power as a warrant for whatever. David is the oriental despot. “Just say no” won’t work for Bathsheba, then or now.
So while the text may not go out of its way to urge us to compassion for Bathsheba, it does not accuse or blame her. We cannot say the same for the official readers of scripture down through the centuries. As if David needed the interpreters’ protection so much more.
The measure of how much we need or want David to be innocent, really, the real victim in the story, is how much we are willing to blame Bathsheba for everything that happened. Our need or want here seems to have been profound. Even today – our pastor quoted an up-to-the-minute commentary from the internet that ran something like “if Bathsheba had just thought more about what she owed her husband than about her own desires look how much sin could have been avoided.”
Comments like that demonstrate that imagining what the Biblical characters “must have been” thinking and feeling is a bad exegetical habit.
Our pastor’s take on the text is that we need to stop misusing the Bible to excuse powerful men’s abuse of power. It’s an important implication.
I confess that I got distracted in church because I was busy surreptitiously looking things up in the Bible, and realizing that the story of Amnon’s rape of Tamar happens just two chapters on (2 Samuel 13) – probably not a coincidence, more like a consequence. Like father like son.
And that the assessment that Saul’s successor – we read David – is a man after God’s own heart is offered by Samuel (1 Samuel 13:14). Not our most reliable narrator.
And wondering what all this means for the way we tell the story of the Messiah.
And thinking about the implications of ordaining women.
Image: “Butterfly on Lantana,” ShajiA at Malayalam Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Matters of Interpretation 
2 responses to “New Perspectives, and Their Implications”
Excellent post. Lots to ponder here. Our default approach is to be David on a pedestal, but oh how he falls off that pedestal in this incident… and then he has Bathsheba’s husband sent to his sure death! I wonder how this selection of Scripture would read if it had been written from a woman’s point-of-view.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi, Janet – thanks for the comment, and yes, exactly. And the lectionary doesn’t even include some of the other texts that disrupt our rose-colored glasses view of David (1 Samuel 27; 2 Samuel 8:2; 1 Kings 2). The text does not hide this stuff; we just don’t look at it.
Interesting you say this about the author. The contemporary comment about how if only Bathsheba had been a better girl was actually written by a woman, according to our pastor. (Sigh.) But one of my professors (Johanna Bos) has a theory that this part of 2 Samuel – “the court history of David” – might actually have been written by Tamar. It clearly needed to have been written by someone with intimate knowledge of the court, and someone with a steely eye when it came to David. Tamar is not a bad candidate. It’s pure speculation, of course, but more food for thought.
LikeLike