July
26th, 2015 “The Fall” Rev. Heather Jepsen
Summer
Sermon Series: Dancing with David
2
Samuel 11
Our summer sermon series, “Dancing
with David” resumes this morning with the Biblical account of David’s affair
with Bathsheba. Although this is a story
that you have all heard before, I am willing to bet that you haven’t spent very
much time thinking about it. As
believers, we are not very fond of considering the sins of those we deem to be
our Biblical heroes. Following the
commentary by Bruce Birch in the New Interpreter’s Bible, I propose that we
would rather argue away David’s sin, and thus our own, than to face his evil
acts head on.
The story begins by setting the stage;
it is the spring of the year and the time when kings go out into battle. David’s forces, under the leadership of Joab
are out in the field fighting the Ammonites but David the king has remained
behind in Jerusalem. As they say, “idle hands
are the devil’s playground” and it won’t be long before David gets himself into
trouble.
While strolling on his roof one
afternoon, David spies the lovely Bathsheba taking a bath. He sends a messenger to find out who this
beauty is, only to discover that she is married. One would hope our hero would now turn away,
as this woman belongs to another, but of course that does not happen. David, seeing another challenge before him,
another conquest to be had, decides that regardless of her marital status, this
woman is his for the taking.
Many Bible translations soften the
language here, saying that David sent messengers to “get her” but that is not
what the Hebrew says. A truer
translation of the Hebrew is that David “sent and took” Bathsheba, and she lay
with him. I’m not going to mince words
here, what David does is akin to rape.
He is the king, and Bathsheba has neither the right nor the power to
turn down his advances. David saw her and
he took her, using his royal power to satisfy his personal desires. David is not interested in a relationship
with Bathsheba at all, he simply wants to satisfy his sexual needs, and so he
sends her straight home after his conquest.
After some time, Bathsheba realizes
that she is with child, and sends word to David telling him that she is
pregnant. This is a big problem for the
king as he can now no longer hide his act of lust with her. The text makes clear when Bathsheba’s last
period was to prove that the child could only be David’s. So, let the scheming begin.
David’s first plan is to get
Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, to sleep with her so that the child will appear to
be his. David sends word to the battle
field to have Uriah sent back home. When
Uriah arrives at the royal palace he tells David about how things are going out
on the field of battle. David tells
Uriah to go to his house and to wash his feet, which is a euphemism for
sex. But Uriah cannot stand the thought
of going home at such a time; all the other men are still out on the battle
field and so he will abstain from the comforts of home in order to stand in
solidarity with them. David is
frustrated and on the second evening he feasts with Uriah and gets him
drunk. Surely the drunken man will
wander home and sleep with his wife.
But, Uriah remains true to his battle honor and sleeps at the palace
with the servants rather than go home to Bathsheba.
Thwarted, David sees the need to take
drastic measures, namely to have Uriah killed.
He sends Uriah back to the battle field, carrying the very note to the
commander Joab stating David’s evil plot.
Uriah is to be put on the front lines in hard battle so he will
certainly die.
When news of the battle reaches David,
he shows no signs whatsoever of being upset or even feeling guilty. He sends word back to Joab saying, “Do not
let this matter be evil in your eyes,” (Again our readings soften the
translation.) “For the sword devours now
one and now another.” David is clear
that the death of Uriah is to be thought of as nothing more than one more loss
on the proud field of battle.
When Bathsheba hears that Uriah is
dead she goes through the proper period of mourning and then becomes one of
David’s wives. She will be his eighth
wife to be exact. As with many women in
Biblical times, she really has no choice in the matter, as she is pregnant and
could not survive on her own. She will bear
a son and David seems to have literally gotten away with murder until we read
the last verse of the chapter. “But the
thing that David had done was evil in the eyes of the Lord.” (Again, our readings soften the translation.)
It is amazing that this story of
David’s great sin has survived into the Biblical record. Since the time that it was written, readers
have been uncomfortable with the great evil committed by David. When David’s story is retold in the book of Chronicles
this portion is understandably left out.
Rape and murder are certainly not the acts of a man who was after God’s
own heart. Throughout history in both
academics and popular culture, people have attempted to soften David’s sin.
The most common (and I believe most
troubling) way that people try to argue away David’s sin is by scapegoating. Throughout the ages, Bathsheba has been
painted as a seductress and co-conspirator in the fall of David. In his commentary on the Old Testament, turn
of the century scholar Morton Wharton goes as far as saying, “No one of good
moral character could have acted as she did in her seduction and conquest of
David. She doubtless exposed herself
that the king might be tempted; she willingly came to the palace when she was
sent for, and she conspired with David for the murder of her husband.”
To scapegoat Bathsheba as the
temptress who leads David astray, is a clear attempt to soften David’s
guilt. Even more troubling, commentator
Birch points out that “these efforts to make Bathsheba the initiator are
unfortunately consistent with a common defense in cases of rape and abuse of
women: ‘She asked for it.’ Even our
modern translations softening of the verb ‘take’ to make David’s messengers
merely ‘get’ Bathsheba shows our unwillingness to face the coercion in David’s
action.”
When we examine the text, it gives us
nothing to go on regarding any guilt on Bathsheba’s part. Bathsheba is hardly a character outside the
object of David’s lust and she is frequently only referred to as “the woman” or
“the wife of Uriah” rather than her own name.
She is nothing more than the object of David’s lustful desire until her
pregnancy becomes the problem that he must solve through murder. Furthermore the text makes it clear that it
is the actions of David, and David alone, that are seen as evil in the eyes of
the Lord.
Another way we try to avoid David’s
guilt is through rationalization. Some
have wondered if Uriah wasn’t an abusive husband and David saved Bathsheba from
a horrible relationship. Some have thought
that it was Satan who led David to sin and who should carry part of the
blame. Or perhaps David’s repentance was
so great that somehow his sin was absolved.
None of these arguments are supported in the text.
The final way we try to soften this
story is by romanticizing it. It makes
us feel better if we imagine that David and Bathsheba were somehow in love and
couldn’t help themselves. This has been
Hollywood’s treatment of the story, as Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward famously told
it in David and Bathsheba. In that film Uriah is a busy soldier who
neglects his wife, and David is the lonely king. Together David and Bathsheba find true love
and happiness. Unfortunately, as much as
we love a good romance, the Bible gives us none in its telling of the story.
As I have stated, all the Bible give
us here are the plain facts of rape and murder.
This is the story of the fallen hero, who has done great evil in the
eyes of the Lord. As believers, we
struggle with this story, and for good reason, for who wants to see a good man
go down. Birch says, “the difficulty we
have in facing the harsh reality of this story is a testimony to the ease with
which we excuse our own sin. But if we
can face David’s sin for what it is, we may better face our own.”
Our newspapers today are full of
stories of the powerful succumbing to sinful behavior. From scandals of bribery, to lies about having
affairs, to the culture of sexism that reigns in many of our halls of
government, our world is full of examples of those who would use their power and
authority to manipulate others. Many
would argue that our world is going downhill, but the ancient story of David shows
us that it has always been this way. If
we are willing to truthfully face David’s role in the rape of Bathsheba and the
murder of Uriah, then we will be more inclined to truthfully face our own
sinful nature.
To face the dark reality of one of our
greatest Biblical heroes helps us to face the reality about ourselves. It is all too easy to argue away our own sin,
or the ease in which we attempt to manipulate people and circumstances in order
to cover up our wrong doing. The truth
is that we have all sinned. Thankfully,
we have redemption through Jesus Christ, whose lineage can amazingly be traced
all the way back to David . . . and Bathsheba.
Amen.
