Did David Rape Bathsheba?

seemed to use the David rape accusation/theory to imply there is endemic sexism in the Judaic-Christian system, or at least certainly the church. The SBC in particular. That seems to go further than most conservative interpretations of David’s actions. I myself have said on this board that David raped Bathsheba, but I did not imply that there was a system wide coverup of that rape to this day. And to use it as a basis to imply this attitude continues today. Perhaps some liberal scholars have said that in the past, but Rachel’s point is a new approach for so-called conservatives and complementarians.

Mrs. Denhollander might be excused for that assumption of rampant sexism from the responses she’s gotten from a lot of those who’ve interacted with her on Twitter, don’t you think, Mark? :^) For that matter, if you can watch Paige Patterson’s “built” sermon/talk without inferring there’s a certain amount of sexism in SBC circles, let’s just say we’ve got a cordial, but emphatic, disagreement.

Systematic coverup? Well, look at the commentaries. I believe portions of the Talmud, not to mention Matthew Henry, make the case that it’s adultery. Also J.D. Greear, MacArthur, and others. Probably other commentators, though I don’t have the time to look through that now. Wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs. Denhollander had, to be honest. She tends to do her homework on these things.

And what do we have if indeed our most likely conclusion (not airtight, most likely) is rape, but the commentators we respect, and the other teaching we’ve heard, don’t say it? We have a blind spot, same as the church had regarding slavery in the 19th century, no? A great part of the genius of Sola Scriptura is that we can fix our mistakes, because the Bible, and not Henry or the Talmuds or Calvin or Wesley or whoever, is our authority.

I’m probably not supposed to state the following in this day of “me too,” but here goes.

In some cases, men have doubtless put too much blame on Bathsheba for enticing David, and not enough on David for initiating an adulterous tryst. Now, it seems, the pendulum has swung the other way, and David is charged with all the blame and Bathsheba with none. Surely we must recognize at least some degree of guilt on the part of Bathsheba. “And it happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king’s house. And from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold.” (II Samuel 11:2)

Bathsheba was exposing herself in such a way that she aroused sexual passion in David. It would have been virtually impossible for her not to know that she could be observed. It is likely that she knew that she could be seen from David’s palace, and hoped he would notice her. At the very least, she was careless with her nudity.

Does that make her equally responsible? Not in my estimation. David followed sinful passion with sinful action. Adultery would not have occurred unless David initiated it. But Bathsheba doesn’t get a complete pass. Only God knows how much guilt to assign to each, and clearly David bears the major portion. But the evidence does not suggest an unwilling woman. Both are to blame, though to widely differing degrees.

I think it is wise to read the story in light of the original intent of the author rather than re-read the story in the light of our current social and political environment. The story does not hesitate to characterize David as an adulterer, a thief, and a murderer. Nor does the same author hesitate to characterize Amnon as a rapist. The author could easily have used that term regarding David, but chose not to. God had given David Saul’s harem. God had not given David Uriah’s wife. He stole her. The text is silent regarding Bathsheba herself. Why? The story is not about her; it is about David. Whether she was complicit or resistant the author does not say. Keil and Delitzsch say, “she came without any hesitation and offered no resistance to his desires” (2 Sam, p. 383). However, the text omits any mention of hesitation and/or resistance. The critical phrase, David “slept with her,” is an idiomatic Hebrew expression indicating sexual intercourse. That’s all we know and all we will ever know. Speculation will not help us here. After the unnamed child died, David comforted his wife, had sexual relations with her, and God honored this union with the birth of Solomon. God took the lives of David’s four sons, allowed Absalom to take David’s harem publicly, took the life of the unnamed child, and caused his Kingdom to be rent in two. God also forgave David and spared his life. Whatever the true nature of David’s actions toward Bathsheba, God dealt with it thoroughly and graciously. Both David and Bathsheba are honored by being in the line of Christ. Christ is still called the Son of David. In the Gospels Matthew styles his genealogy into three generations of fourteen. Fourteen is the number arrived at by adding up the numerical values of the three Hebrew consonants in “DaViD” (daleth, waw, daleth) which is respectively 4, 6, 4 = 14. Matthew screams to his Jewish readers, King, King, King. In spite of David’s exceedingly sinful past, Christ is the Son of David and the Son of God. Fully man without any sin or sinful nature and fully God. What condescension!

It’s important here to note what the Scripture actually says she was doing; she was performing a Mikveh, a ritual bath after her period, in the evening. The rabbis count that today when one can see three stars in the sky—in other words, when it’s starting to get dark. Moreover, as we’d guess from Deuteronomy 22:8, you would have any number of people on their roofs “when kings went to war”, or late spring and early summer—when it got hot and people went on the roof to catch a cool summer breeze. Having the ritual bath outside enables both the collection of water from a building’s roof (the Gihon spring is low in the city and could not be used for this purpose) and quite frankly the warming of that water in the sun. Anyone who’s ever taken a cold shower, or swum in Lake Michigan, can appreciate this. No?

So the argument that she was flirting/trying to seduce David assumes that she would do so while performing a religious ritual to become ritually clean as soon as she could (indicating some degree of piety), at a time of day when her silhouette but not her full beauty could be seen, and in view of anyone in the city (could be hundreds or thousands of people), not just David. In doing so, she’d end up the very next evening out at that same Mikveh where the neighbors could see and wonder how she’d become ritually impure again without her husband being around.

I think it’s far more likely that she simply thought that she wouldn’t be seen clearly. This is especially the case because Nathan describes the lamb (Bathsheba) as being “prepared” (slaughtered and cooked) for David and his guest. One can argue “it’s just part of the story”, but when it so clearly points to Bathsheba being brutalized, that’s a rather odd argument to make.

The case isn’t quite airtight, but the hypothesis of David raping her fits what we know about life in Jerusalem a lot better than that of her seducing him.

For that matter, perhaps we can do well to stop speaking/writing of women “enticing” men simply with their beauty. When we read of harlots enticing men in Scripture—e.g. Tamar of Judah in Genesis, the harlot of Proverbs 7—we’re talking about women wearing veils so that they’re not recognized and executed, as Judah proposed to do to Tamar until she revealed his guilt. Same basic thing with the harlot of Revelation 17—there’s a lot more going on than just a glance at her beauty there.

One thing that comes to mind regarding the notion that trying to understand the scene in which David and Bathsheba found themselves amounts to “speculation”, that the verb we understand as “have sex” literally means he “lay down” with her. Would we then say it is “speculation” to say he had sex with her, or would we admit that we can reasonably infer that there was something more going on than “lying down” because she became pregnant? Sex is, after all, not the primary meaning of the verb!

So let’s be serious, brothers; a valid inference is, as I’ve read from Kevin Bauder, as good as something being said outright. When it suits our purposes, we do it—well or poorly—all the time. And as I noted in my response to Mark Smith, sometimes we need to come to grips with our reticence to address some of these “hints” the Scripture gives us.

To put things differently, if we’re not going to “clue in” to these hints from 2 Samuel and elsewhere, we simultaneously are not going to “clue in” when a survivor at our church drops a hint she’s been abused. This is, again, much bigger than a specific interpretation of a situation 3000 years ago.

Yup, there’s a lot of condescension and speculation for sure. Here’s some of it:

Bathsheba was exposing herself in such a way that she aroused sexual passion in David. It would have been virtually impossible for her not to know that she could be observed. It is likely that she knew that she could be seen from David’s palace, and hoped he would notice her. At the very least, she was careless with her nudity.

There are at least five separate times where motives are assumed and not supported from Scripture in that post, and I didn’t even look hard.

The author could easily have used that term regarding David, but chose not to. God had given David Saul’s harem.

And yet David felt the need to steal another man’s wife, prepare her, and eat her, as per Nathan? This is a consensual affair that Bathsheba wanted to be a part of? Are we talking about the same thing? What kind of lamb says “Hey, I’d LOVE to be your dinner this evening! Let me go get myself butchered for you.”

Whether she was complicit or resistant the author does not say. Keil and Delitzsch say, “she came without any hesitation and offered no resistance to his desires” (2 Sam, p. 383). However, the text omits any mention of hesitation and/or resistance.

The author does not say but Keil and Delitzsch do, so settles that, I….guess? Why should we take the silence of Scripture when the speculative commentary from hundreds of years later will do?

If we’re going to use commentaries, then what about JFB’s theory that says that Bathsheba deliberately set all this up and then made a deal with King David so that her (second) son (not daughter, either - she knew it would be a boy) would be the heir to the kingdom:

But David had to make a promise, or rather an express stipulation, to Bath-sheba, before she complied with the royal will (1 Kings 1:13; 1 Kings 1:15; 1 Kings 1:17; 1 Kings 1:28); for, in addition to her transcendent beauty, she appears to have been a woman of superior talents and address in obtaining the object of her ambition; and in her securing that her son should succeed on the throne-in her promptitude to give notice of her pregnancy-in her activity in defeating Adonijah’s natural expectation of succeeding to the crown-in her dignity as king’s mother-we see very strong indications of the ascendancy she gained and maintained over David, who perhaps had ample leisure and opportunity to discover the punishment of this unhappy connection in more ways than one (Taylor’s ‘Calmet’).

I mean, why shouldn’t we argue that Bathsheba was a time travelling temptress who essentially interfered with David? Let’s go all the way and say that she was the reason David was hanging out in his palace and not at the front, where he should have been, as well!

Doesn’t the Bible say that David sent messengers (plural) to her home, knowing she was alone in the evening, and they ‘took’ her to the palace (11:4)? Does that sound like someone who was going to take “No” for an answer, particularly after the explicit warnings recorded in 11:3 are ignored? Are you going to march into the king’s bedroom to pull him away from another man’s wife? And even if you are, isn’t it likely that the king, inflammed with lust for another man’s wife, might order you put to the sword if you did?

Come on.

And how did David become “inflamed with lust over another man’s wife”? Oops. It sounds like Bathsheba’s rooftop bathing might, just might have had something to do with this episode after all. Bert’s speculation that it was too dark to see more than Bathsheba’s silhouette ignores the specific wording of II Samuel 11:2 which says “and from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful in appearance.” (NASB) The text says that David was attracted by the physical beauty of a woman bathing.

This conversation serves to strengthen my sense that the “me too” movement has swung the pendulum away from holding women accountable for their actions in any way whatsoever. It is important to recognize that some blame be assigned to women who act inappropriately, even while assigning a greater degree of accountability to the men who respond sinfully and commit more grievous offenses against women.

If we doubt that, let’s consider that no less than the Holy Spirit uses, in giving God’s Word to us, the word beautiful about Sarah, Rachel, Rebecca, and David. And despite this, we do not accuse the Holy Spirit of being perverse or even homosexual, do we? If a woman has extraordinary beauty, that does not mean she needs to wear denim jumpers or a burqa all the time, does it? That’s certainly not the witness of Scripture.

Put gently, if seeing a beautiful woman in a state of “less than modest attire” really causes someone to become inflamed with lust, I should have gone into an Onanistic frenzy while working out this morning. Please. Those women were NOT trying to flirt with me, and neither should we accuse Bathsheba of trying to do so with David. What we know about the situation—it was at dusk, it was a religious ritual of cleansing, she would have been visible to any number of people who also would have been on their roofs to escape the heat, etc..—suggests that in the “gloaming” she didn’t think she would be very visible.

Another thing that Scripture does not tell us, but that may be quite significant, is whether the Mikveh in question belonged to Bathsheba and Uriah specifically, or whether it belonged to the neighborhood—today, these baths are typically shared by a synagogue. So it is not even a given that Bathsheba had the option of shielding herself from public view.

Again, it’s important that in this case, we assign blame where Scripture does: on David. And we can quite reasonably infer from the situation that what he did to Bathsheba qualifies as rape. We cannot reasonably accuse her of being a slut, and that is precisely what defenders of the “adultery” theory are doing.

Yet another reason to reject the “slut” theory is that Bathsheba would have known she’d become one of about ten official wives of David, and would also have to share him with the additional dozen or so concubines David had gotten from Saul and perhaps elsewhere. In short, she’d get to see him, maybe if she became a favorite, once every couple of weeks or once a month. Any husbands out there game to share their wives with a dozen or so other men for a few million bucks? Didn’t think so. To draw a picture, Reba’s song “Little Rock” didn’t become a mega-hit because your average woman would trade give up the affection of a husband in return for riches.

And how did David become “inflamed with lust over another man’s wife”?

I don’t know, perhaps by shirking his duties and spying on a woman that wasn’t his wife while she was bathing, and then ignoring warnings that she was already married, and the granddaughter of his advisor?

Thank you, though, for putting the real issue out in the open:

“This conversation serves to strengthen my sense that the “me too” movement has swung the pendulum away from holding women accountable for their actions in any way whatsoever.”

If you think the #Metoo movement is simply an attempt to “[avoid] holding women accountable for their actions in any way whatsoever”, then you’re either ignorant or maliciously slandering people. I know that it may seem difficult, but it is possible to desire that rapists and abusers get justice without excusing every action of women at all times. You’d also know that there’s a pretty strong backlash against hypocrites like Asia Argento.

If you’ve read any of the accounts of Christian sisters who belong to the #churchtoo or #sbctoo movements then you’d know that they are usually quick to admit where they’ve gone wrong.

Let’s apply Ockham’s Razor to this one a bit. At the time when kings went to war, David has at least half a dozen wives and at least that many concubines, many or most of whom he inherited from Saul. Nobody forced him to take any of these women. Bathsheba had one husband.

Now if you’re going to accuse someone of being sexually immoral, a slave to his glands, unable to keep it in his pants, who are we going to accuse?

Hint; it’s not the lady fulfilling a religious obligation. It’s the guy who kept a harem despite Deuteronomy 17:17 when he could have given those ladies the freedom to marry someone who might have been able to give them a husband’s attention.

at the Care Well Conference, her point is not whether David raped Bathsheba or not. Her point is the church has covered up the incident for 2 thousand years. That’s her point. The system is broken, etc. And you as a SBC pastor (her audience) need to repent, apologize, and move forward with female leadership helping clear up your cluelessness.

[Mike Harding] I think it is wise to read the story in light of the original intent of the author rather than re-read the story in the light of our current social and political environment. The story does not hesitate to characterize David as an adulterer, a thief, and a murderer. Nor does the same author hesitate to characterize Amnon as a rapist. The author could easily have used that term regarding David, but chose not to.

I agree with Mike here. This is where I’m at with the whole rape vs adultery discussion. I don’t think Nathan’s parable helps us determine rape vs adultery either. He’s using a figurative metaphor.

Regarding women being able to make informed, consensual, and self-directed decisions in situations where there is a real or perceived power differential … let’s just say that I haven’t changed my opinion on that and that I do believe the #metoo and #churchtoo movements, while needfully exposing abuse and coverup, have actually served to harm women.

Regarding Mike Harding’s contention that it matters that Bathsheba was not “forced” (let’s use the root meaning, not our cultural meaning here), the simple fact is that David didn’t need to use physical force. The implied threat “if you do not do this, your whole family dies”, would be enough. So that point is moot in my view, because if you understand the scene, David didn’t need to use force.

Regarding the notion that adultery is mentioned, but rape is not, look at the passage. It doesn’t say “adultery”, either. We are at a point where we need to do some reasonable inferences, because (as Mike really ought to know and act on instinctively) the Hebrew language does not map 1:1 to English. We infer that sex occurred because Uriah is off to war and Bathsheba is pregnant and (most likely 5-6 weeks after the sex) contacts David when she misses her period for the second time and starts getting sick in the morning. We further ought to infer that it qualifies as rape because you simply have to “miss” too many hints of exactly that in Scripture to come to a different conclusion.

Regarding the claim that Nathan’s story doesn’t help us…PLEASE, let’s get some sense here. Again, pretty much everything else in that parable save the guest and calling Bathsheba a “daughter” instead of wife maps 1:1 with reality. You would think that the Author of Scripture would put such an obvious “hint” in there if it wasn’t grounded in reality? That David, who recognized himself in the rest of the story when Nathan said “you are the man”, would fail to quibble about that point if it were not true? That the author of dozens of the great Psalms of our faith would let such an obvious metaphor slide without objection if it were not true?

Finally, regarding the claim that #MeToo and #ChurchToo have had no beneficial effects….um, did I miss something, and is Harvey Weinstein still molesting actresses, and is Larry Nassar still abusing gymnasts or something? Has there been no repentance among a host of Southern Baptist leaders and a promise to learn to handle these kinds of issues better in the future? Is there no pattern, most recently seen with the Wes Feltner case, of churches only doing the right thing when victims go public?

Really, what’s going on with #ChurchToo is that for decades, sexual assault victims have been applying Matthew 18:15-16 with their churches, and have too often gotten nowhere. Now they are proceeding to verse 17, just as the deacons and elders who ignored their plight would have done to them if it had been them in unrepentant sin. That is, in a nutshell, what #ChurchToo is all about.

If church leaders don’t like it, they simply need to start learning about these kinds of crimes and to start handling reports made to them properly. If they don’t do this, then the hypothesis of rampant sexism and conspiracy against the right of women not to be raped will get even more evidence to justify it.

who said, “The Bible sure do shed a lot of light on them there commentaries.” It’s amazing how much some people can read into this account that is not there, while discounting elements that are there. Sigh.