Bathsheba
Bathsheba play an important role in the effort to make Solomon king, but the type of women she really is, the outline of her character is sort of blurry. She also plays an important role of mediator in the prophet-politician encounter between Nathan and David. , and this is not unusual given the other mediator figures in Kings. Not to mention the roles played by female mediators generally in the ancient Near East. Still, this is not the only role she plays. By combining two verses together, we can determine a couple of things. One, that she is the daughter of a man named Eliam and two, that a man named Eliam is the son of Ahithophel, one of David’s royal counselors ( 1 Kings 23:34). Whether these “Eliams” are one and the same person is one and the same is not easy to determine. To complicate matters further, the only name we have in Chronicles is “Bathshua” (1 Chron. 3:5). So, we simply cannot say for sure whether Bathsheba, as some confidently argue, is in fact the granddaughter of Ahithophel, no matter how this might make the episodes involving her more dramatic.
Faced with sketchy details, many simply colorize her character. Alice Ogden Bellis, for example, portrays the young Bathsheba as “an innocent victim of David’s lust.” Other authors view her not as a “victim” but as a shrewd conspirator who entraps David, then replaces him with the fruit of her womb, the result of their sexual relationship. Another author takes an anthropological approach, and suggests that David’s seizure of Bathsheba is a classic example of a king abusing a subordinate (Uriah.) Others simply wonder whether the lack of clarity regarding these events might actually be part of the author’s strategy, i.e., to make the reader reflect on Bathsheba’s character.
Initially, in 2 Samuel, Bathsheba is a “flat” character whose function is simple a) to be a married woman and b) t have adulterous sex with David. Later, as Abishag replaces her, her role matures from “sexual partner” to “favored wife” to “queen mother.” So, some it is fair to claim that the second mention of Abishag the Shunammite attending David in 1 Kings 1; 15 so strongly contrasts with the paragraphs’ opening description: “Bathsheba, who was once young and attractive like Abishag, is herself now again, and has been, in a sense, replaced with Abishag, just as she comes for the purpose of replacing David with Solomon.”
Later, when Adonijah comes to Bathsheba to ask for Abishag as a “consolation prize” (or more likely, as his ‘agent’ to help bid for the throne), Bathsheba’s response is measured and cautious. Either she is naïve, or indecisive, or last but not least, she intentionally plots revenge to try to cripple David.
All of these possible interpretations are interesting, but we need to examine them carefully against the story’s intra-textual context. Reading this story in this context allows us to see something which we should not see otherwise-that the story of “Bathsheba’s Plight” is really the story of Bathsheba’s plight. It seems to me that many interpretations fail to observe that in this episode, and others Bathsheba goes through a string of injustice. Not all of the stories are identical but issues raised are clear in 2 Kings *:1-6, 1 Kings 21:1-29 and 2 Kings 21:1-26. These Biblical stories take us deep into the lives of the social down and outers, as well as rich and powerful people.
Both Bathsheba and the homeless Shunammite are powerful women forced by tragic circumstances to beg for help. The parallels are remarkable. Both women lose their sons: Bathsheba at the hands of God (2 Sam. 12; 18); the Shunammite women by an unnamed illness (2 Kings 4:21). Both women find themselves marginalized by circumstances beyond their ability to control; the Shunammite by famine, Bathsheba by Jerusalem’s ever changing political situation. Both women work alongside God’s prophets to get their message through to the king: Bathsheba with Nathan, the Shunammite with Elisha. Both women have their sons’ lives prophetically saved: Elisha miraculously; Nathan politically. Also the preservation and maintenance of her ancestral land is an issue (Ruth 3:1). Like Esther, Bathsheba has to figure out how to save innocent blood, her own relatives’ no less, from coming destruction (Esth. 4:11).
The point of the deepest parallels comes when each mother has to gather their courage and go up before the king. Having just lived with the Philistines for seven years the Shunammite returns to Israel only to find herself thrown into an unjust situation, the loss of her ancestors’ estate that was rightfully hers. Bathsheba’s plight is even more desperate. Waiting for David to keep his promises, she wakes up one morning to find herself thrown into a dangerous role of “rival queen mother.” The “son of Haggith” (Adonijah) and the “son of Bathsheba” (Solomon) cannot occupy the same throne at the same time. So becoming somewhat desperate. She apparently decides that the only way out of their situation is to beg for mercy. Otherwise both she and her son will become criminals. The story shows us the harsh realities of an unjust situation. Life can become hard when promises are ignored and the land is seized, when children are sacrificed and covenants are broken. This theme is a raw nerve in Israel’s memory, it throbs constantly, and nags persistently and simply will not go away. Bathsheba’s plight is the same as Naboth’s, the peasant farmer who stands up to his powerful king. Her pain is the same as that which surrounds and invades the lives of those parents who watch in horror as Manasseh kills their children in ritual human sacrifice. Preservation is what motivates this mother; we are talking about survival, not selfish-ambition.
I know of another mother who is fighting hard, like Bathsheba, to save her son. She wants to save him from many things: financial struggles, social troubles, spiritual death, and marital anguish- all of the demons who haunt young people today. The odds against the mom are stacked against her. Her ex-husband, the boy’s biological father, is physically abusive, religiously fanatic, sexually perverse, and emotionally disturbed. Instead of providing for his son, he stalks him like a predator. Between the rounds of being drunk and jobless, he shows up to harass his ex-wife and tear down his son, even when the court orders are supposed to keep him always.
The son loves his mother very much and wants to love his dad as well, but he is so full of rage that he does not know what to do. Because of this rage, no one really knows what to do with him either. Our church had tried hard to welcome him into the youth group, but it did not work. The kid picks too many fights with the other kids, and other parents are asking his mother and the youth pastor to “do something” about him- but no one really knows what to do. He has enough rage inside him to fuel ten more teenagers not just himself.
To make matters worse, his Mom is dying of a terminal disease. Many doctors have pronounced her incurable, and many times her friends have taken her to the emergency room. Her only request has been to see her son graduate from high school, a request she puts before the Lord every day. Her plight really reminds me of Bathsheba’s plight, and leads me to suggest the following possibilities for interpreting this text.
First, life is not always fair, and stories- especially biblical stories- do not always have neat and tidy “happy endings.” We need to be honest, with others and with ourselves. To argue otherwise is to live in a fantasy world, and not the world of the Bible. Simply put, it is poor theology. Who knows what Bathsheba is thinking when she first receives that summons from David? Who knows what she feels when she first hears the news about Ammon’s murder, then Absalom’s rebellion, then Adonijah’s coronation? It is clear that David’s death does not force her into a future as hopeless as the Hindu widows who throw themselves on their husband’s funeral display. Still it does not appear that she imagines that she will have to plead for her son’s life from his own father.
Second, justice is postponed. To put it another way, people do not always do justice on our timetable. As in the story o Tamar, sometimes there is a long wait (Gen. 38). As in the story of Jesus, sometimes justice fails to be dished out in this life at all! Naboth’s relatives watch helplessly as Ahab and Jezebel get away with murder. The parents in Manasseh’s kingdom lose their children to the horrors of child sacrifice. “They did not see the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance” (Heb. 11:13).
Third, God remains faithful. One of the members of our church, for example, anonymously took on responsibility for this family as a special project. Checks arrive monthly to pay for rent and food and court costs and medical bills and anything else she needs. Just as Nathan helps Bathsheba, so God uses a Christian couple who happen to be wealthy farmers to save his sister-in-Christ and her family. Faithfully and regularly the checks come, even as progress in the families’ lives seems to be slow. The farmers do not just talk about serving, they serve. What they do not do is stand around complaining about the “irrelevancy of the “Church.”
