The church goes through this so regularly it's almost a part of the liturgical calendar. On one side are voices that cast Bathsheba as a vile seductress, bathing at night in the mikveh where David could see her. From another box come the voices of those who cast the blame on David and Bathsheba equally, as two adults who consented to an adulterous liaison. A third group considers the relative power of an Iron Age king and a woman whose husband is away from home and concludes that since Bathsheba lacked the power to safely and confidently say no, that David was a rapist.
It's a powerfully affecting story, as evidenced by the strong passions it elicits. To understand it properly we need to consider the dynamics each of the players bring to the drama, and then ask ourselves which character we should emulate, if any of them.
For starters, there's David. As a former war hero and as king, David enjoyed a high profile, and the things he did drew notice because of who did them. Sent an army to war? People knew. He stayed home? They would have seen that too.
It was ordinary and proper for kings to lead their troops to war. It could spell trouble if a general led the effort and came home victorious and popular with the troops. Thrones had been lost over things like that. In fact it was precisely his high profile in the campaign against the Philistines that had endeared the people to David over King Saul, his predecessor.
David may have had good reasons for staying in Jerusalem. Maybe he had injured his leg, or he was receiving an important embassy. It could be had a serious illness, or it could even have been as pedestrian a thing as getting older. Who knows?
The point is, he stayed. People noticed.
Then one night when he was unable to sleep, he looked out across the city and saw Bathsheba bathing in her mikveh and he sent for her. He didn’t go himself. He sent someone for her.
Bathsheba's husband, Uriah, was away at the front. Someone arrived at her house and told her that her presence was requested at the palace. She had no choice in the matter. The king had sent for for her, so she went. She ended up staying overnight.
A king like David has secrets, but this was never one of them. Whoever went to summon Bathsheba and escorted her back to the palace knew. The guards on duty knew. By morning there would have been whispers all about the palace. Kitchen staff knew. Servants who scrubbed the flagstones knew. Lunch wouldn't even be on the table the next day before everyone in the palace knew. Nothing flies faster than gossip, and a story like this would have had wings
They might not know the particulars, though some surely did; but they knew enough. Rumors spread like fire, even when it’s risky to repeat them.
Bathsheba’s visit was an open secret.
A few weeks later Uriah showed up at the palace, drawn home from the battlefield by personal request of the king to deliver a report any number of other people would have been better suited to give. Maybe someone felt sorry for the soldier and told him the rumors about what had happened weeks earlier, and maybe they didn’t. But however far the embers had died down, Uriah's unexpected appearance blew fresh air on them and added tinder too. Before long what David did had become the most open secret of his entire reign.
Then Uriah tragically died at the front, and David took a personal interest in comforting his widow, whose pregnancy by this time was becoming more evident.
People can do the math. They knew Uriah wasn't the father, but David was the king. No one dared to say a thing.
No one but Nathan,
In one of the most amazing stories in 2 Samuel, Nathan strolls into David's presence with a tale of a wealthy farmer who stole the only, beloved lamb of his poor neighbor and butchered it to feed a guest rather than butcher one of his own sheep. David, incensed, orders the wealthy man thrown into the dungeon for the rest of his life for his act of cruelty.
And then Nathan springs the trap: "You are the man."
This is what makes Nathan one of the most memorable prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures. He performs no miracles, appears in no other books, and makes no prophecies. But he sees sexual exploitation and abuse, and unlike everyone else, he calls the king out.
Nathan speaks truth to the powerful. He risks his life to call David to account for raping Bathsheba and murdering Uriah. We all love Elijah with his theatrics, but Nathan is the prophet for our times.
The Catholic Church covered up sexual predation for decades, and moved wolves around so they could find new flocks to prey on.
The Southern Baptist Church ignored Bathsheba when she spoke up, and told Nathan he was harming David as he did God’s work. Leaders like Denny Burk even complained that the money being spent to address the history of sexual abuse and bring justice would be diverted from the more important missions work of the church.
And 3,000 years later we’re still pooh-poohing what David did, as though it were equally Bathsheba’s fault, and not something so vile that Scripture singles it out as the one thing God held against David.
Stop making excuses. Be like Nathan, and have the courage to blow the whistle on sexual abuse when you see it. Especially when the guy doing it is hiding behind the mantle of how much he loves God.
He’s doing more damage to God’s kingdom than calling him out ever could.
Copyright © 2022 by David Learn. Used with permission.
