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Bathsheba’s Bath
By Skip Moen
“Now when evening came David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king’s house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful in appearance.” (2 Samuel 11:2 NASB)
Bathing – Inexplicable.
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Oh, did you think that what was strange about this verse was David’s sin?
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No, there’s a lot more to it than that.
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First, let’s notice that this verse begins with the same “accidental” wording as the previous verse.
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Vayhiy (or vayhi’) - and it happened - but for some inexplicable reason, the NASB chooses to render this as “now.”
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In other words, the accidental engineering is obscured.
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We don’t see that it is just as odd that David is at home when kings should be at war as it is for him to be on the roof at sundown.
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But this is just the beginning of our inexplicable verse.
The second element is that fact that David arises from bed at sundown.
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Oh, yes, the verse says “late in the afternoon,” but the Hebrew is le’et ‘erev.
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Do you practice ‘erev shabbat? Then you know that this expression is not “late in the afternoon.”
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It is just those few minutes immediately before and after sundown.
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This should cause us to ask a few questions.
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First, why is David in bed before the sun goes down?
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The text tells us nothing, but perhaps the fact that he is not where he is supposed to be (at battle) has led him to introspection and mental exhaustion.
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Now he gets up. The sun is just going down. He goes up to the roof. What does he see? A naked woman bathing.
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Perhaps his already diminished defenses are caught off-guard and instead of looking away, he observes.
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Understandable? Certainly. But this act also requires some explanation.
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David has already had at least seventeen other women as wives or consorts. Bathsheba will be number eighteen.
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So David is not a man of sexual restraint. In fact, sex and politics have been part of his life since his first encounter with Saul.
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You might review the intrigue of sexual maneuvering surrounding Saul’s daughters and Saul’s wife. David is no stranger to another sexual partner.
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But in the past, beauty has not been the primary motivator. Politics dominates David’s sexual liaisons.
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Now (as it happened), something else takes over, something else catches him at a moment when his resistance is low.
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Inexplicable? Maybe not, if we know a bit of David’s history.
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The big difference here is that this woman offers no political advantage. And maybe that’s why she is so appealing.
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Sex with her does not require careful evaluation of inter-dynastic impact.
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It’s just pleasure and, at this point, pleasure is a nice escape from the trauma of avoiding the responsibilities of a king. Why not just forget about it for one evening?
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And then there’s Bathsheba. The inexplicable element of Bathsheba’s side of this story is why she is on the roof in view of the palace in the first place.
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If she is the chaste, innocent victim of a king’s lust, how do we explain her choice to bathe where only the king can observe her?
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Are we to imagine that this woman of virtue is so naïve that she pays no attention to the fact that someone on the roof of the palace can see her?
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If she were really the pure woman we want her to be, would we not also be shocked at her exhibitionism?
Inexplicable. Except—
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What if she bathed naked on the roof in order that the king might see?
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What if it were her purpose to provide enough sexual temptation to a man that she knew had few sexual restraints so that she might advance herself?
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According to the story, it just happened that David’s one-night stand with her resulted in pregnancy. How likely is that?
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Are we to assume that Bathsheba didn’t know that she was at a fertile time of the month?
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Are we to believe that it “just happened”?
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Or does it make more sense that Bathsheba engineered the circumstances so that she had the greatest potential to bear the son of a king, and thereby become part of the king’s dynasty?
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How much of this bath was about the baby?
Dorcas
Mary Magdalene
The Man Who Desired a Mountain
You might also like:
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The Woman Whose Dressmaking
Made Her Famous
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Mary Magdalene
The Woman Who Had Seven Devils
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The Man Who Desired a Mountain
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