We know little about Bathsheba whose story is overshadowed
by King David’s. But we do learn this:
From strange circumstances, great good can come.
The skeleton of the story (2 Samuel) is well-known: David
sees Bathsheba bathing on the roof. As Frederick Buechner
describes the scene in Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who,
“He saw both that he had to have her at any cost, and that
the cost would be exorbitant.”
Attracted by her beauty, the king sleeps with Bathsheba
and they conceive a child. Then he arranges to have her husband,
Uriah, killed. After Uriah’s death, David and Bathsheba
marry.
SPONSORED LINKS
 Pawn in a Royal Game
What’s stunning is that we know
nothing of Bathsheba’s reactions to
dramatic changes in her life. She is
bathing innocently, unaware of
who’s watching. Then, suddenly,
the king sends for her. That is not an
order she can easily disobey, nor can
she resist the king’s advances. She
becomes a pawn in a royal game.
Did Bathsheba love Uriah? We
know he has integrity, refusing to go
home, as David wanted, while his
soldiers camped: Going home would
have provided the handy excuse
that Uriah was the dad.
Uriah has such noble loyalty to
David that it provokes the Prophet Nathan’s famous parable,
accusing the king of being like the rich man who steals
the only lamb of a poor man. When David is outraged at the
injustice, Nathan reminds him, “You are the man.”
At Uriah’s death, Bathsheba “made lamentation for him”
(2 Samuel 11:26, NRSV). After mourning, she marries David
and bears his son. Again, we hear of David’s prayer for the
sick child who dies, but we can only imagine hers. We know
little of her motherly grief except that the king “consoled”
her and she later bore Solomon.
When David is dying, Bathsheba acts to ensure that
Solomon inherits his throne (1 Kings chapters 1-2). By then,
the mature woman has taken charge. As the future king’s
mother, she has an independence she didn’t have as a girl.
If we could have a cup of tea with Bathsheba, she might
point to her personal drama as a prime example that we can
play roles we can’t imagine, that our little lives are bits of a
vast, divine pattern.
In her novel Evensong, Gail Godwin draws on Father
Raymond E. Brown’s book A Coming Christ in Advent: Essays
on the Gospel Narratives Preparing for the Birth of Jesus (Matthew
1 and Luke 1). Godwin notes that none of the upstanding
patriarchal wives, such as Sarah or Rachel, are mentioned in
Matthew’s genealogy. Each one who is named has “scandal
or aspersion attached to her.” Bathsheba takes her place
with Tamar (Genesis 38) and Rahab (Joshua 2 and 6) to
prove that Jesus provides “an equal opportunity ministry for
crooks and saints.”
That complex mix of nobodies and hooligans who formed
the genealogy of the Savior tells us
that we play our parts, too. God uses
our peculiarities and gifts for powerful
reasons we never guess.
Godwin concludes, “Who of us
can say we’re not in the process of
being used right now...to fulfill some
purpose whose grace and goodness
would boggle our imagination if we
could even begin to get our minds
around it?”
From Nathan’s criticism of David,
we know that God doesn’t take
kindly to using or possessing people.
Indeed, the death of David and
Bathsheba’s first child is read as punishment
for the king’s arrogance.
But why must the innocent mother
and child suffer?
The unanswered questions raised by Bathsheba’s story prepare
the way for a Christ who never manipulates or demeans
anyone. Indeed, he is actively concerned about the welfare
of the most apparently insignificant woman.
Buechner, in the book mentioned earlier, imagines David
on his deathbed looking back on the lovely young woman
who had inspired such fatal consequences. From that perspective,
David realizes that the story wasn’t about them.
Instead, it was a step toward “the child of their child of their
child a thousand years thence who he could only pray
would find it in his heart to think kindly someday of the
beautiful girl and the improvident king who had so recklessly
and long ago been responsible for his birth in a stable and
his death just outside the city walls.”
Next: Gehazi
Kathy Coffey, the mother of four, has won 13 writing awards from the Catholic
Press Association. She gives retreats internationally. Her newest books are
Women of Mercy (Orbis Press) and The Art of Faith (Twenty-Third Publications). |
