Bathsheba and David

I was thinking about David and Bathsheba today. It’s a story from the Bible that looks deeply into the pits of human nature. Consequently, I think it’s worth talking about. Mostly because I spent a lot of time dwelling on it and I want to write about it. So like usual, we’ll do a quick recap of the story and then I’ll provide my specific thoughts at the end.

With that said, the story, one of the most shameful recounted in the Bible, is found in 2 Samuel Chapter 11. To recap, by this point, David has come into his own. He’s the established king of Israel and God has blessed him richly. He has multiple wives already, he’s living in relative luxury compared to his citizens, and the man has just about everything a person could reasonably ask for. That is to say, all his needs, even his sexual needs, are being met. If there is anyone who should be content, it is him. No one in the kingdom of Israel has a better life than he does.

Yet we see that in the springtime, at a time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the army but stayed in Jerusalem himself. Had he ventured out with his men, all the subsequent problems could have been avoided. He didn’t though. So, one evening, David found himself walking about on the roof of the palace. From his vantage point, he spotted a woman bathing. The woman was noted as being very beautiful. David then decided to send someone to find out about her.

The man tasked with this reported back that the woman was “Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite”. After hearing this, David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. The text notes that she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness. After the deed was done, Bathsheba went back home. Naturally, she ended up getting pregnant. She sent word to David who then presumably panicked.

He sent word to the front and had Joab send Uriah back home. David’s grand master plan was to have Uriah bed his wife upon his return. This would allow Bathsheba and David to pass off the offspring as Uriah’s child. Unfortunately, Uriah proved to be of more noble character than the king himself. Instead of going home to sleep with his wife, he slept on the palace steps with the rest of the king’s servants. The next day, David tried getting Uriah drunk in the hopes that the plan could still be salvaged by the power of alcohol. Unfortunately, just as on the night before, Uriah didn’t go home to sleep with Bathsheba.

Naturally, this puts David in a bit of a bind. His solution to the problem is to write a letter and have Uriah deliver it to Joab. The letter contained orders telling Joab to put Uriah where the fighting was the fiercest and then withdraw the rest of the troops so Uriah would be struck down. Joab did this and Uriah died.

When Bathsheba heard this, she mourned for her now-dead husband. After the time of mourning was over (seven days later probably) she moved into the palace with David. She became David’s wife and bore him a son. However, “The thing David had done displeased the Lord”.

So, God sent Nathan the prophet to David. Then Nathan told David a story. I’m going to quote it verbatim because it spells out what I mentioned right away. 2 Samuel Chapter 12, “… There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup, and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”

After hearing the story, David burned with anger. He said, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over because he did such a thing and had no pity.”

To that, Nathan said, “You are the man!” Then he delivered the Lord’s judgment on the situation. This is what the Lord said to David through Nathan, “I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.”

To his credit, David immediately said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

To this, Nathan replied, “The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the Lord, the son born to you will die.”

Just as Nathan said, the child died despite David’s prayers and pleading with the Lord. After the mourning was over, David “comforted” Bathsheba and made love to her. As a result, she conceived again and gave birth to Solomon. The Lord loved Solomon and through him, the line of David to Jesus was reckoned.

That’s the heart of the story pertaining to David and Bathsheba. As far as David’s story goes, it’s the turning point of his life. Things go downhill from there. There is incestuous rape among his children in the story of Amnon and Tamar. Absalom, one of David’s sons, kills Amnon and later tries to overthrow David to take the throne for himself. Sheba rebels against David. There are wars and overall, the whole thing is a cascading mess. And it all started with David deciding to take Bathsheba in the night.

Looking at the story as a whole, a couple of thoughts come to mind. First is that it’s often a little temptation that brings down a whole kingdom. This speaks deeply to human nature. We as humans seem to have this innate evil that drives us to push the envelope into areas it shouldn’t be. I think of my own life and the times when I knew what the right thing to do was, yet I still persisted in evil. Now granted, I’ve never stolen someone’s wife. Nor have I murdered anyone to cover up an unplanned pregnancy. But I know the feeling well enough to understand how David probably felt at this moment. For him, life was probably a lot like being the main character in a video game after beating the game. He accomplished everything he set out to accomplish. He had it all. There was no longer any meaning to playing the game. He was bored.

On account of that, I totally understand where he was at. It’s very relatable. I’d like to think that I wouldn’t do what he did but like usual, I can’t really say as much for sure. The scary part is that you have to be most worried when you think that you wouldn’t do what the baddie did in the story. That’s when you’re most vulnerable to screwing up. So overall, regarding this first thought, the best way to avoid destruction is to never take a step down the path that leads to it. In other words, when you see a naked woman bathing on her roof, shield your eyes and go do some push-ups or something. Realistically, David could have just gone and had sex with one of his other wives. Michal was shut down for business on account of the dancing incident, but David still had Abigail, Ahinoam, Maacah, Haggith, Abital, and Eglah for sure.

Now sure, it’s possible that Bathsheba was so incredibly beautiful that these other six paled in comparison to her. But I find that unlikely. As with most things in life, human beauty follows the diminishing returns curve as well. As far as female beauty is concerned, just being in good shape will get the vast majority of women most of the way to being very attractive. I’d say that being in shape will get a woman 80% of the way there. All this is to say that Bathsheba couldn’t have been so much better looking than David’s existing wives. As a matter of fact, the Bible describes Abigail as both intelligent and beautiful. In conclusion, David had no excuses. There were many other viable options. Realistically, he could have probably searched the virgins of Israel and found himself a woman more beautiful than Bathsheba to take as a new wife.

The next thought I’d like to talk about is how it’s so darn hard to find a good woman. Now to be fair to Bathsheba, if the King summons you, I don’t suppose you can say no. However, that doesn’t free her of culpability in the matter. She was a married woman. At the end of the day, she made a choice to betray Uriah while he was away at war. Now sure, maybe Bathsheba was lonely or horny or whatever, but it matters little. Had she said no, she could have been hailed as one of the few noble women in the Bible. If she had been taken to David by force, it would be one thing. However, the text makes it seem like she went quite willingly.

This willingness lines up pretty well with woman nature as observed in the present era. Women with no higher principles tend to gravitate to high-status men. David was the highest-status man in all of Israel. Being a guy, what follows is speculation, but when I think this story through, I just don’t get what Bathsheba was thinking. Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22 both list adultery as a capital offense. For both the adulterer and the adulteress. I’m assuming that David and the people of Israel were following the Mosaic Law still at this point. According to the letter of the law, both Bathsheba and David should have been put to death. I assume that Bathsheba maybe thought it was okay because it was the King.

At any rate, Bathsheba could have chosen to be loyal to her husband Uriah. Instead, she decided not to do that. Instead, she decided to have sex with the King even though the King already had seven other wives. She wasn’t even getting a ring out of the deal. It was a one-night stand where David used her. That was the extent of it. Now this is the part I was talking about regarding speculation. From what I understand, girls are wired a bit differently than men in terms of what gets them going. For guys, seeing attractive girls naked is what starts the engine. This is the reason why porn is even a thing. Guys get a dump of brain chemicals whenever they see the forbidden bits. Girls on the other hand are apparently more attention and narrative-driven.

When I first realized this, it was eye-opening. Like we’re talking revolutionary. As an innocent young kid, I always wondered why girls sent nudes. In our current state of degeneracy, OF at least makes sense. In theory, the main reason girls are on there is for money. However, the typical teenage girl in high school isn’t getting paid when she decides to send a racy snap to her boyfriend. So, what exactly is the girl getting out of the exchange? For years, I never knew the answer. But it turns out the answer is male attention. The theory is that girls crave male attention and praise like men crave porn and such. Using this theory, you can explain Instagram models and all the free nudes that are slung around. These girls are getting compensated in male attention instead of dollars.

On a more personal note, I often wondered what my first girlfriend was getting out of our relationship. At that point, I was still pretty young, and I didn’t have much to offer. It wasn’t until much later that I realized she was there for the attention. She, and the majority of girls in general, would never admit to that much. They like to keep it a secret that they’re getting the tingles from getting attention. In the case of this girl who I was dating, there are actually some parallels between her story and the story of Bathsheba. I’ve talked about this before, but while I was in my last semester of college, things were really busy, and I had to cut the level of attention I was giving to this chick drastically. I didn’t have time to juggle her and my classes and workload. In a sense, I was off to war like Uriah. I was in the trenches of mechanical engineering if you will. Like David, a useless guy with no actual morals, took advantage of this to swoop in and start providing attention to my girlfriend while I wasn’t around. It didn’t take her long to do the exact same thing Bathsheba did in the story. She broke up with me and started seeing the aforementioned unscrupulous loser once a customary period of mourning was over.

Now, fortunately, I managed to get out of all of this without getting put to death by some Ammonites. However, the story is interesting, nevertheless. If you think about it in terms of attention, for girls more attention is better. Moreover, attention from higher-status guys is better than attention from lower-status guys. So, in Bathsheba’s case, the attention from the highest-status guy in Israel was all it took for her to throw away her marital vows and betray her husband Uriah.

This leads me to my third and final thought on this story. God doesn’t let the deed go unpunished. Jordan Peterson says that he’s never seen someone get away with anything. I thoroughly agree with this, however, I haven’t lived long enough to see it play out. There are still people in my life who I’m waiting for plot lines to be wrapped up. Likewise, I’m sure there are comeuppances God has reserved for me on account of the stupid things that I’ve done. Anyway, since David was the King, it’s pretty obvious that he was going to get away with it. This could be a big part of the reason why Bathsheba went along with it instead of having some morals and courage. It was easier for her to lay on her back than to stand on her feet. Obviously, people in the palace had to know that David bonked a married woman. Honestly, it’s amazing that no one told Uriah about the whole situation. People knew and David and Bathsheba weren’t stoned, so I’m sure in the first few days after the sin, the offending couple thought they got away with it. They got to have their hedonistic one-night stand. David got to have sex with a beautiful woman. Bathsheba got to bask in the attention of a king.

Then the consequences set in. I’m pretty sure there’s a divine law pertaining to risky sex. It kind of seems like any time people have sex outside of wedlock with their proper partner, their fertility rate skyrockets. Think of all the teenage pregnancies that happened even though they “Just had sex one time”. God is in control of everything. He can do whatever he wants. He also has the best sense of humor known to man. Heck, God invented the sense of humor. Obviously, David was going to knock Bathsheba up on the first try. There was no way God was letting that not happen.

The kicker here is the number of offramps. David could not have sent for Bathsheba. He could have gone and banged one of his seven other wives. Bathsheba could have said she was a married woman and that it would be a sin to see the King at this hour. After it happened, David could have admitted his guilt and tried to atone for it. Instead, he tried to cover it up by bringing Uriah home. When that didn’t work, David could have left Uriah alive and accepted the consequences that would occur when the baby was born later in the year. Yet despite all of these opportunities to not sin further, our Duo presses forward. They cover one sin with another.

There’s some real-life truth in this. Oftentimes, the disasters we find ourselves in are a consequence of multiple mistakes on our part. Multiple consecutive choices to take the easy road. God doesn’t play games with this kind of crap. He didn’t play games with David, and he doesn’t play games with us either. So, let’s talk about the consequences. Let’s start with Bathsheba.

For starters, she lost her character. That was destroyed the moment she let David bed her. She was also in a state of ritual impurity as well, which only added to the sin. After that, she lost her husband. Presumably, even if she was a true hoe, Bathsheba probably cared about Uriah at least a bit. It can be assumed that she and Uriah probably had sex a few times. Girls tend not to do well with meaningless sex, so one could maybe infer that she would have felt bad about Uriah dying. Especially if they had the level of intimacy that was described in Nathan’s story about the poor man and his ewe lamb. Following that, Bathsheba lost her first-born child. If she had any semblance of a heart at all, that’s about the worst thing that a mother can experience. Those were the consequences she paid for her choice to sleep with David.

Speaking of David, now let’s talk about his consequences. Hands down the biggest consequence for David was the destruction of his relationship with God. Psalm 51 recounts how busted up David was once his sin was brought to light. Aside from that, David damaged his character by becoming a murderer and an adulterer. He along with Bathsheba lost their first child together. David pleaded with God for the life of the child. He fasted and spent nights laying in sackcloth. It wasn’t something he took lightly. Per the 2 Samuel 12:10-12 line, God specifically consigns David to the consequences of this sin for the rest of his reign. David has a good deal of family chaos after this episode just as predicted in the 12:10 prophesy. He spends time running from his own son. Said son, Absalom, is eventually killed which causes David even more grief. As I said before, this is the turning point of David’s life. Everything after that is downhill. The man who was “A man after God’s own heart” ends up being remembered 3000 years later as a scoundrel. The kind of man who would bed another man’s wife and then murder the man to cover it up.

No one can accuse God of playing favorites. Despite liking David, God didn’t pull any punches. David got a pretty serious reckoning for this whole mess. But take heart, this is a good thing. God is just and he can’t be mocked. The fact that he didn’t pull punches for David is proof that he’ll be fair to all of us in accordance with his character. Moreover, God takes things one step further and blesses David despite this betrayal. God shows himself to be merciful, just, and faithful beyond measures that can be comprehended by humans.

Despite his sins, David still ends up in the genealogy of Christ. Moreover, David is still usually looked upon favorably as a biblical hero by everyone but me it seems. Despite the troubles that God sends upon him, David isn’t allowed to be destroyed by them. He suffers plenty, but he lives a long life and is able to make Solomon, his second child with Bathsheba, King of Israel. So overall, like a loving father, God gives David a good smack on the bum, but he doesn’t hang him out to dry. And that’s my thoughts on David and Bathsheba.