David and Bathsheba and Modern Word Games
If you've been paying any attention to the Evangelical internet for the past six weeks or so, you’ve no doubt come across the claim that what happened between David and Bathsheba in II Samuel 11 was not actually consensual adultery, but an incident of rape at the hands of the king. David, apparently, was a rapist and Bathsheba an innocent victim.
King David in his Palace by Balage Balogh
For the sake of brevity, I don’t want to get into the reasons behind all of this hoopla. I’ll leave that to you, the reader, if you so choose, to find out who’s saying what and to surmise why. (Most of you probably know already, anyway.) What I would like to do, however, is to address this issue head-on, first by dealing negatively with some of the assertions that have been made about the scriptural account and then to posit some new ones of my own to try to bolster my case.
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David did not send ‘armed guards’ to fetch Bathsheba.
The word translated “messengers” in 11:4 is מַלְאָכִים֙, (transliterated ‘malakim’, the plural of ‘malak’), and it means “messengers”. It does not mean armed guards. Ever. Anywhere in the Bible. Whether this is pure imagination on the part of the people who make this claim or a deliberate twisting of the account, I’d rather not speculate. Either way, it’s absolutely wrong.
The point of Samuel’s parable is not that Bathsheba was a slaughtered lamb.
Perhaps my biggest point of contention with this theory comes from the atrocious handling of Samuel’s confrontation of David over the incident in II Samuel 12:1-6. The proponents of the “David raped Bathsheba” theory claim that Samuel compares her to a slaughtered lamb and even go so far as to say that, (and this is a direct quote): “This is the *exact* imagery for rape from the [Old Testament].” Now, setting aside the fact that I have no idea what particular imagery the slaughtered lamb is allegedly referring to, the point of Samuel’s parable is *not* to describe or illustrate rape, but to expose the lust and avarice of David in taking something that was not his. Looking at the text, verse 4 clearly indicates that a lamb was to be slaughtered in celebration of the arrival of a guest. Are we really supposed to believe that Samuel was instructing David to rape one of his own wives instead of Bathsheba? Of course not.
Further, Samuel’s language in regards to the poor man’s lamb is disconcerting if we are to take it as directly as these people claim: verse 3 states that the lamb was “purchased” by the poor man and, “was like a daughter to him.” The overly earnest interpretation of this parable runs into serious issues, to say the least.
No, the point of the parable is found in verse 8-9: “I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.”
The point God is making through His prophet Samuel is that David took that which wasn’t his. The slaughter of the lamb as imagery for rape does not stand up to scrutiny.
The Bible knows how to indicate rape when it wants to.
In II Samuel 13, just two chapters after this affair, we read the account of Amnon and Tamar. In that account, we come across verse 14: “But [Amnon] would not listen to [Tamar], and being stronger than she, he violated her and lay with her.”
In the account of David and Bathsheba, we are told, “…she came to him, and he lay with her,” in verse 4. Two chapters later, it’s “he violated her and lay with her.” These are clearly two different kinds of interactions.
Furthermore, if we turn to another place in the scriptures, such as Judges 19, we see the word “violate” again in verse 24 and then, in verse 25: “And they knew her and abused her all night until the morning.”
The Bible knows perfectly well how to tell us when someone was raped. It does not feel the need to subtly imply it.
Bathsheba became David’s wife and was comforted by him after the death of their child.
At the very close of chapter 11, in verse 27, we are told that Bathsheba became David’s wife after Uriah’s death. Then, in chapter 12, after their illegitimate child dies, we read that, “David comforted his wife, Bathsheba, and went in to her and lay with her…” These certainly don’t seem like the kinds of actions a victim of rape takes after the fact.
Bathsheba did not follow God’s directives in regards to rape.
Deuteronomy 22:23-24 gives clear instructions as to what women who are being assaulted in cities were to do: cry out for help. A woman’s cry was an indication of non-compliance, and would be her protection against any accusations of adultery or illicit sexual behavior. However, if a woman refused to cry out, she was to be stoned along with the man for being an adulterer. In short, the cries of protest functioned as evidence that the activity was non-consensual. There is no record anywhere of Bathsheba protesting or doing anything at all to indicate she did not want to be a part of this liaison with David.
Now, some have already said, the rape in question is more of an implicit one because of the power deferential. David was king and could have her killed simply for refusing his advances, so what was she supposed to do?
In short, she was supposed to obey God. Now, setting aside that absolutely nothing in the text even hints at the idea that Bathsheba was an unwilling participant, it is important to emphasize the fact that modern, 21st century, Western, progressive definitions of rape and sexual assault *may not* always accurately indicate what rape truly is (according to the God of the universe, anyway). Claiming that Bathsheba was raped because popular feminist theories insist that sex of any kind between people of different stations or positions of power automatically qualifies as such is hoisting a modern conceit on the Word of God. It’s sloppy, disingenuous thinking, for one, and it’s both biblically and historically errant.
Now, this writer is not denying that anything David did in this scenario was inappropriate or sinful. I am not claiming that there was no seduction or convincing at play here. But the simple fact of the matter is that we don’t know exactly how things went down. All we know is what the text tells us: that David sent to her, she came to him, and they had what can only be known as a completely consensual affair. Applying historically recent and politically correct definitions to the term “rape” in order to see the incident through those particular lenses is completely inappropriate, as it forces the Bible to conform to our own contemporary standards instead of judging our contemporary standards by the Bible.
In review, to say that David raped Bathsheba is to ignore certain evidence within the biblical text, distort facts and insist that certain brand new concepts of rape be made universal throughout history. Why some people are insisting on this interpretation of the events, I am certainly unable to say. But one thing we ought to make sure we never do: we should never spin the biblical narratives to justify our current concepts of things like victimhood, identity politics, or sexual dynamics. Given the ideological predispositions of some making these claims about David and Bathsheba, it seems likely that this may be exactly the kind of thing that is going on here.
And, lastly, those who insist upon the “David raped Bathsheba” theory ought to be made to articulate why, exactly, so much of the history of Christianity seems to have missed what is apparently to them such an obvious fact. I am unaware of anyone trying to defend any element of what the Bible tells us David did here. What I am aware of, however, is people throughout the history of the Church manipulating and altering the teachings of the Bible in an attempt to get it to say what they want it to say. The pushback against the “David raped Bathsheba” theory is not a defense of David but a defense of the veracity of the biblical account and its superiority over and above the constantly shifting definitional sands of our day and age’s woke political correctness.
This kind of claim cannot be made it a vacuum. It must be accompanied not just with evidence that comports with solid interpretation, biblical context and simple truth, but with a plausible explanation as to why untold generations of God’s people seem to have completely missed it.
Otherwise, all we’re doing is playing socio-political games. And the Bible is anything but a board upon which to play games.
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