Can Bible scholars please help out? One of the issues that has perplexed me for years now is the one of Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, son of Ahitophel and wife of Uriah the Hittite as narrated in the book of 2 Samuel 11 and 12. The story starts that it was a time when Kings were supposed to lead their forces in battles against the enemies of their nations. This time around, King David did not leave Jerusalem, the capital of his nation. He tarried for no just reason. He stayed back and sent his war commander Joab to lead the army.
One evening, he got off from his bed and was walking on the roof of his palace and saw a very beautiful woman bathing. He was attracted by her beauty and made inquiries concerning her. He was told she was the wife of Uriah the Hittite who, among other forces of David, was in the war field fighting the Ammonites an enemy nation of Israel. He sent for her. She came and David had an affair with her. But the matter did not end there. After a while, she sent a message to David that she had become pregnant.
Sin, we are told, begets sin. In a bid to cover this one monumental sin, David sent for Uriah who was at the war front. Uriah came and David subtly persuaded him to go back home in order that he may lie with his wife and save him from the sin he had committed with her. Uriah, a thorough-bred soldier, stoutly rejected that great ‘favour’ and slept with the gatemen in David’s palace. The following day when David discovered that Uriah was not persuaded to violate military ethics in order to cover his sin, he was alarmed. He again tried to get the man drunk so that in the fogginess of his mind, he will go home to be with his wife. David, again, failed.
In desperation, he wrote a letter and sent Uriah with it to Joab. The message was that he, Joab, should post Uriah to the front where the battle was the fiercest and withdraw troops away from him so he can be easily killed. And this was what happened to that great soldier. He died an innocent and unjust death in order to cover the greed of a lecherous king who cannot take his eyes off any good looking woman.
The Bible states that that thing that David did greatly displeased God who sent a prophet, Nathan, to him who outlined to him a menu of disasters that will visit him for his great misbehavior. The law against adultery in David’s time was death. But David was a favourite of Fortune and a king. No one could gather and pick up stones to stone him to death as the law said they should do.
But the fate that awaited him was no less calamitous. And they came in a series. One of his sons, Amnon, raped his half sister, Tamar. The brother of the half sister, Absalom, killed his half brother in revenge. The matter did not end there. One of his favourite sons- Absalom, brother of the violated Tamar, went into exile; was returned and restored and rose up in rebellion against him, seeking to overthrow him as king. While David fled from Jerusalem, Absalom his son caused a tent to be erected in his father’s palace where he slept publicly with the ten concubines David had left behind ‘’to keep the house’’. No fitting public disgrace could have been greater than this.
While all this went on, Bathsheba whom David had taken on as wife, marched on unperturbed. The Bible did not even mention whether or not she was aware of the fact that this series of misfortune came about because she was a willing partaker in the sin of adultery, murder of her own innocent and patriotic husband and attempts to cover their sin.
The impression is created that in the matter of sexual sin/crime, it is the man and only the man who is guilty. It is true that in most of the cases, women are usually not the originator of the first move to get into that sin but even if they are not, they have the option and responsibility to say no. in our story, when King David sent for Bathsheba, her instinct must have told her what was on his mind. Her husband was in the war front fighting David’s war. She was not a war supplies contractor. Neither was she a war commander. It was her husband who was one so she ought to know that there is no earthly reason why the King will send for her if he did not have sex on his mind. And she also ought to have thought to herself that if her husband had died in the war front, all the king needed to do was to send a delegation to inform and console her on his death and not send for her to see him. For what? And God has endowed women with that instinct to smell sex sins several miles away!
But the king had sent for her and she was willing, ready and available to go to him. She must have taken time to adorn herself and wear a sweet smelling perfume to arouse David’s libido. She then stepped out as if on a cat walk. She marched majestically, boldly and unashamedly past the security gates and the security men into the chambers of the King. When he introduced the idea, there is no record that she offered any kind of women’s usual resistance—weak, lame and compromising. She did not say, ‘’how can I do this with you, oh king, when my husband is fighting a war you ought to have been a part of?’’ She just offered herself like a willing, humble and innocent lamb for sacrifice. And when she was done, partaking in her sin with the king, she marched back, unashamedly, past the conspiratorial whispering of security men back to her house. Only for her to have the effrontery to send that she was carrying David’s child from that affair.
It is not debatable at all that all the thoughts that occupied Bathsheba’s mind at this moment were how she can become the Queen and the mother of kings and princes. She may also have been praying that her husband should not survive the war so that nothing can stand on the way of her becoming David’s wife. No single sorrowful thought about her husband. No, not one.
All of these create the impression that in the matter of adultery, it is all the man’s fault. That, women are innocent victims of men’s scheming to satisfy their lust. That, women are playthings with a weak will who cannot say no with a capital N and that at any rate, they do not have high destinies to worry about and that since they are not usually the initiator of the act, they are, therefore, blameless.
This attitude towards women has been carried till this day. Today, when a major sexual scandal breaks out, all the blames are heaped on the men. The persons who fall from high offices are usually the men. Is this attitude correct and in accordance with God’s will? Can Bible scholars please intervene? Are women innocent victims of adultery who are therefore exonerated or exempted from punishment?
