At some point over the last few years, the interpretation of the story of David and Bathsheba became a matter of frequent contention on social media. Every few months, some tweet will revive ‘Bathsheba discourse’ and several days of heated argument will follow. At the heart of the dispute is the question of whether David raped Bathsheba. For some on both sides of the dispute, answers to this question have come to function as tribal or theological shibboleths, indicative of contrasting and often opposing stances regarding crises of sexual abuse and the (mis)handling of them within churches.
On one side, people claim that David raped Bathsheba, insisting upon the unilateral and coercive character of his actions. Bathsheba was not complicit or responsible and was the innocent victim of a radically violating act. Such a characterization of the episode helps to accent the severity of clerical sexual abuse by analogy, offering a biblical narrative from which such sin can be addressed, its character exposed, and its wickedness condemned.
On the other side, people resist or recoil at such presentations of David’s sin. They disagree with claims that David’s sin was unilateral. In contrast to 2 Samuel’s account of the rape of Tamar, they observe that nothing is mentioned of Bathsheba resisting David or protesting his actions. Most go beyond this to suggest that Bathsheba was not just non-resistant, but was willingly compliant or even actively complicit. A few go even further, claiming that Bathsheba was the one who initiated the forbidden union, seeking to seduce David by her disrobing and bathing.
The force with which such claims are made tends to arise less from matters native to the text than from opposition to the ways the narrative has come to be used. The claim that David raped Bathsheba is seen to operate in service of a wider cultural script, for which it seems to many that female agency related to illicit, regretted, or undesired sexual acts can be denied or radically diminished, absolving women of almost any responsibility or blame. Those opposing the claim that David raped Bathsheba see it as one of many occasions where, when a power differential between a man and a woman is supposed to exist, the agency and culpability of women can be radically minimized or even denied in situations where they were compliant or complicit in, or even initiating of sexual acts. Examples of such situations might include regretted drunken sex or illicit relations with figures in authority over them.
I have no intention of litigating these wider debates here. Both sides of this debate can reasonably point to genuine injustices and abuses that demonstrate the importance of their causes. It is challenging to speak clearly in volatile and fraught conversations about situations where the responsibility or culpability of parties to acts are of profoundly different or incommensurable degrees, orders, or characters. For instance, the responsibility of the child who carelessly left his bike unlocked is utterly different in degree and kind from that of the thief that stole it. Or the responsibility of the king who commanded a wicked action from the servant who, under threat of imprisonment, complied. Speaking of such things in the same breath or in close proximity to each other, seems wrongfully to equate them, or to use a much lesser and radically different form of responsibility to deflect attention from the key culpable party.
My interests are those of a hearer of Scripture, concerned that our ability to listen attentively to the text not be overwhelmed or undermined by concerns of our immediate contexts. I am persuaded that, when we listen to the Scriptures closely and on their own terms, we will understand them much more deeply and, in turn, their voice can speak much more distinctly into our contexts.
If we are to hear the Scriptures well, we might be best advised to begin by suspending loaded terms from the conversation—terms like ‘rape’, ‘power dynamics’, ‘consent’, and the like. In place of questions and frames provided by our own contexts, we should prioritize questions and frames that emerge from close engagement with the text itself. ‘Did David rape Bathsheba?’ is not a promising starting point for our enquiry. Truly to understand David’s actions, we should listen closely to the account and framing of them within the text itself. Perhaps at some later point we can reintroduce our own terms, frames, and questions in a more careful fashion.
How might this help us to read the story of David and Bathsheba?
At the outset, many rightly look for analogies with other biblical narratives. Such analogies allow for comparison and contrast, helping us to categorize actions. One common narrative that is appealed to as an analogy is that of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife in Genesis 39. While a slave in the house of the Egyptian official Potiphar, Joseph is repeatedly pressured by his master’s wife to have sexual relations with her. Joseph continually resists her advances until one day, as she begs Joseph to have relations with her, she grabs hold of his garment and he flees the house. She then accuses Joseph of seeking to rape her and Joseph is placed in prison by Potiphar.
In several ways, Joseph’s story both parallels and inverts the story of Hagar and Ishmael. Hagar was an Egyptian slave in the house of a Hebrew master, whose mistress sought to use her sexually for her own ends. Hagar and Ishmael were cast out, after Sarah accused Ishmael of mocking Isaac. After being brought down to Egypt by Ishmaelites, Joseph was a Hebrew slave in the house of an Egyptian master, whose mistress sought to use him sexually. He also was cast out as the mistress of the house accused him of ‘mocking’ them.
A slave’s sexuality could be treated as something their master could dispose of as they desired. Sarai could seek to use Hagar as a depersonalized means to get a child for herself. Nevertheless, the text resists Sarai’s framing of her action, describing Hagar as Abram’s ‘wife’ (Genesis 16:3). At no point does Genesis say anything about Sarai or Abram asking Hagar what she thought about the situation—her will simply did not weigh much. Hagar was used by Abram and Sarai and, when she became a problem, afflicted and discarded.
The Lord, unlike Abram and Sarai, sees Hagar. The story of Genesis (and not merely chapters 16 and 21) is narrated in a manner that demonstrates God’s seeing of her. Her subjectivity, volition, and agency come into view in the text, while Abram and Sarai were formerly blind and indifferent to them. And, later in the story of the text, in Joseph’s story, for instance, narrative themes introduced in the story of Hagar reappear and are addressed.
In contrast to the story of Joseph, there is no evidence in the story of Hagar that she offered any resistance to Sarai and Abram. However, in Joseph’s story, Potiphar’s wife is pressing him for compliance in an adulterous relationship with her, betraying his master and her husband. That she repeatedly speaks to him over time suggests that she is aiming to persuade or even seduce him, to secure some degree of willing involvement on his part in her sin, a willing involvement that Joseph refuses. That she is acting against her husband and Joseph’s master is important here too: she cannot merely assert her supposed prerogatives. No such process of persuasion or requesting of willing compliance is suggested in the case of Hagar: Sarai takes Hagar and gives her to her husband and Abram goes into her.
The story is framed as a Fall narrative, and Hagar is initially cast in the role of the fruit, an impersonal object sinfully acted upon. As in the case of Hagar, the text does not present David as seeking to seduce Bathsheba. No mention of her resistance is made, but no mention of David trying to secure her willing involvement is made either. Whether she was willing or unwilling was irrelevant: her will simply did not count for much in the situation. As with Hagar, whatever Bathsheba’s desires, her situation was one in which a man who had immense power over her felt entitled to her sexually and was acting accordingly.
Some closer analogies to David’s actions than that of Joseph are probably seen in figures like Pharaoh (Genesis 12), the Abimelechs (Genesis 20 and 26), or Shechem (Genesis 34). David is a powerful king who can take a woman when it pleases him. As the patriarchs knew, anyone obstructing such a king’s desire was probably in grave danger. We should recall the way Abraham and Isaac got their wives to claim they were their sisters. While a brother could potentially be negotiated with to get a desired woman (and could play for time), a husband was a direct obstacle to be removed (probably violently). Indeed, the patriarchs’ ploy probably failed because they did not adequately take into account how the entitlement of such kings might lead them to ignore or override the standard cultural norms, simply seizing their wives, rather than negotiating for them.
David was later prepared to kill Uriah to cover up his sin. Uriah was one of David’s closest mighty men, as was Bathsheba’s father, Eliam (2 Samuel 23:24-39). Bathsheba’s grandfather was David’s chief counsellor, Ahithophel (2 Samuel 23:34). David’s desire for Bathsheba placed Bathsheba’s whole family in danger.
David was also not merely the king, but the spiritual leader of his people. As James Jordan observes, Bathsheba was a young woman who had likely grown up in David’s court, looking up to David as a spiritual guide all her life. In addition to his immense human power over her and her family, David was also uniquely positioned to exploit his spiritual authority to deceive and mislead Bathsheba. This greatly compounds David’s sin.
In Nathan’s parable to David in 2 Samuel 12, Bathsheba is represented as a little ewe lamb, weak and dependent. She is not presented as a willing and active party to a sin, but as a vulnerable lamb who is seized from her devoted protector, killed, and consumed by a rich and powerful man.
Within the books of Samuel, analogies can be drawn between Bathsheba and the nation. The nation is like a woman—or women—placed in the arms of King David by the Lord (2 Samuel 12:7ff). David’s duty was lovingly to protect, but he seized a woman who was not his and also treated the nation in a similar manner in his actions in the census. Peter Leithart remarks upon the parallel, noting that ‘with Bath-Sheba, David committed statutory if not actual rape’ and that, in the census it was as though he raped the bride of the Lord.
James Bejon has also written perceptively about the close connection between the story of David and Bathsheba and that of Ahab and Naboth’s vineyard. Both stories describe predatory kings who want and take what is not theirs and conspire to kill those in the way. Bejon writes:
That Bathsheba is treated like an object is underscored by her lack of agency in the narrative. Bathsheba isn’t primarily an ‘actor’, but an individual who is acted upon (Bathsheba is not, however, entirely without agency; in response to David’s message, she is said to ‘come’ to him, 2 Sam 11.4). And, although some commentators portray her as a seductress, neither ch. 11’s narrative nor Nathan’s parable does so. Bathsheba doesn’t seek the attention of David, whom she wouldn’t have expected to be in the palace at the time of chapter 11’s events (compare 2 Sam 11.1) (and her bath is part of a purification ritual, not an attempt to seduce anyone); rather, David sees, seeks out, and sends for Bathsheba. Meanwhile, Nathan’s parable portrays Bathsheba as a woman of lamb-like innocence (and his speech lays the blame for chapter 11’s events squarely at David’s feet: 2 Sam 12.9–10).
The intertextuality between David and Ahab’s stories further underscores the point. Insofar as Bathsheba is the counterpart of Naboth, she shouldn’t be seen as an adulterer, but as a woman caught in a self-indulgent king’s crosshairs. Like Naboth, she initially attracts the king’s attention because of her adherence to the Torah, which the kings in the two stories grossly transgress.
Second, our stories’ intertextual connections highlight each man’s inability to ‘manage’ his sin in the absence of accountability. As awful as it is, the focus of 2 Samuel 11–12 is not Bathsheba’s ordeal, nor is the focus of 1 Kings 21 Naboth’s execution. Both narratives’ central burden is to describe the collateral damage caused by sin. Just as the cost of Ahab’s lust is borne by Naboth, so the cost of David’s is borne by Bathsheba and Uriah. Indeed, David’s mistreatment of both Bathsheba and Uriah is described in its full horror at the conclusion of Nathan’s parable.
Moving further in the narrative of 2 Samuel, chapter 13—which tells of the rape of Tamar—is closely paralleled to 2 Samuel 11, presenting both an intensification of David’s sin that reveals key features of it and a consequence of it. This is something that I have commented on before in an article for Theopolis. The following are some of my remarks upon parallels between the two stories.
In the story of Amnon, Jonadab acts as Joab did with David, with the craftiness of a serpent. He makes David unwittingly complicit in the rape of Tamar, much as David himself had formed a web of complicity around his sin (2 Samuel 13:3-7). Jonadab is a nephew of David, just as Joab was (cf. 1 Chronicles 2:13-17). Amnon’s feigning illness and remaining in bed, David himself being sent as a messenger to Tamar, Tamar’s mourning, and the movement between houses, all hearken back to David’s own sin. David himself had played the part of the ill king in 11:2, neglecting his duty to defend his country when it was under threat. He had sent messengers to get Bathsheba and had made her a mourner by killing her husband. David was made to feel some of the anger and disgust that God felt at his sin (11:27; 13:21).
Leithart recognizes the way that the story of Amnon sheds light upon the sin of David:
Crudely, verse 14 records that Amnon “laid her,” rather than the more common idiom, “lay with her,” which makes it clear that this was not consensual. …[A] parallel with David is being drawn: Though David did not force Bathsheba, Amnon’s use of his superior strength provides an unexpurgated view of what David actually did. Just like Amnon, David had used his superior “strength” to take a woman. In the more shameless actions of his sons, Yahweh was bringing to light the truth of David’s sin.
One feature of the story that renders it more complex is the fact that Bathsheba became and remained David’s wife. This presents some problems if we believe that she was strongly unwilling and even resisting throughout; their ‘marriage’ would represent a regularization and continuation of a rape, even after David’s repentance.
Some illuminating (if appalling) analogies might be seen in Genesis 34, where Shechem seizes Dinah—rape or seduction, it is unclear—then professes love and seeks to regularize their relationship. Or in Amnon’s rape of Tamar where Amnon’s sin is compounded in Tamar’s eyes by his sending her away. It is hard to understand such situations without imaginatively inhabiting cultures with exceedingly weak visions and realizations of the goods of marriage. Women were extremely dependent and objectified and their will often weighed little one way or another. For a woman in such a culture, it might be preferable to remain with a powerful man who forced himself upon her—against whom no justice was likely to be forthcoming—if he was semi-penitent, prepared to take responsibility for her as his wife, and to seek to build some relationship between them on socially approved and less violent grounds. The alternative for such a woman might be social dishonour, perceived ‘defilement’, the loss of serious marital prospects, and even destitution. The man who inflicted such an evil upon her could at least be liable to become her husband, while losing most rights (Deuteronomy 22:28-29).
In a perceptive and thought-provoking article, Ezra Sivan observes the importance of levirate marriage themes in the story of David and Bathsheba. He suggests that David had to take radical action to repair some of the immense wrong he did to Uriah, Bathsheba, and their legacy. In effect, Sivan argues, David must promote the legacy of Uriah by placing Uriah’s widow’s son upon his throne, over any of his own older sons. 1 Kings 1:11ff, where Bathsheba and Nathan confront David, claiming that Solomon was promised the throne, should be considered in light of this.
We should also note Matthew 1:6: ‘And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.’ The fact that Uriah’s name is mentioned in such a manner in our Lord’s ancestry adds a little weight to the possibility that David’s line running through Solomon served in part as a levirate marriage-style restitution to Uriah and Bathsheba, whose legacy David had cut off. Likewise, Bathsheba’s part in this arrangement might suggest that she was also in some manner receiving restitution for a wrong committed against her.
We might also consider some of the parallels several scholars have observed between Genesis 38—the story of Judah and Tamar—and the story of David and his household. Bathsheba was also known by the name Bath-shua in 1 Chronicles 3:5, a name she shared with Judah’s wife. Onan’s rape of his sister-in-law, Tamar, is also similar to Amnon’s rape of his half-sister, the other Tamar.
Considering the character of David’s actions, it is essential that we consider them within the frame offered by the books of Samuel themselves. They must be read as a literary unity. We must pay attention to themes and motifs, to types, to symbols, and to narrative threads. There is some sophisticated commentary going on between the lines. As we read carefully, we see that David’s sin has far-reaching consequences and repercussions.
First, as I have already noted, the text closely parallels Amnon’s rape of Tamar with David’s sin a couple of chapters earlier, alerting the hearer to the similarities between the two. David’s heir was following in his father’s footsteps. Evil is presented as a sort of contagion, the son following the sins of his father.
Second, sin has a compounding effect. In attempting to cover up his sin with Bathsheba, David engages in a host of other sins: lies and intrigue, dark betrayal, murder, etc. Sin sets those who commit it careening down a path of destruction. It is essential to escape it.
Third, in response to Nathan’s parable, David casts judgment—‘the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold’ (2 Samuel 12:5-6). David is here applying the case law of Exodus 22:1. And he suffers the sentence he unwittingly declared upon himself.
The story of Absalom’s death, in which he is described as if he were an unblemished sacrificial lamb, connected with sheepshearing, has an annual haircut and hair-weighing, etc. underlines the association. David loses four of his own ‘lambs’: the baby born to Bathsheba, Amnon, Absalom, and later Adonijah.
Fourth, David’s wickedness brings horrors upon his own house and innocent victims pile up. His infant child dies, his own daughter Tamar suffers a horrific rape and Absalom goes into David’s own wives on the very place where David first looked at Bathsheba.
These events are especially awful: they involve helpless and innocent victims, who suffer horrific evils because of David’s sin. Sin and its consequences cannot be compartmentalized, privatized, contained, or controlled. Sin brings disaster to whatever—and whomever—it touches.
Fifth, the narrative highlights the ways that such evils flow from David’s own sin. Some by more direct divine punishment (the death of the infant). Some by others following the example of David’s sin (Amnon). Some by David being at the receiving end of sins he earlier committed against others (Amnon makes David complicit in his sin, as David had made others in his).
Sixth, as I noted earlier, the books of Samuel present David as a sort of bridegroom figure, a figure who rules through love. David’s sin with Bathsheba, seizing a woman who was not his, and betraying and killing one of his most loyal men, is a violation and perversion of his vocation at the fundamental level.
Seventh, besides being a symbolic perversion of his vocation, David’s sin has direct consequences for his power. The books of Samuel connect true power to love, trust, piety, and moral authority. When he lost these, Saul fell back on appeals to partisan or tribal self-interest, mercenary loyalty, threats, and violence in order to get his way.
After taking Bathsheba and betraying Uriah, David lost much of the love of his men. His court became a place of distrust and intrigue. Messages were distorted in transmission. David’s execution of justice lost its moral authority. And a situation was created in which Absalom could lead the hearts of Israel astray.
Eighth, to help him to cover up his sin, David turned to Joab, the cunning commander of the army. This gave Joab leverage over David. It empowered a wicked man within David’s court, who ended up being a thorn in his side, disobeying his commands, and being involved in two coups. Joab became too powerful for David to act against and David had to leave the task of removing him to his successor, Solomon. In pursuing wicked acts and intrigue, David had to throw his weight behind wicked and treacherous men, men who ended up betraying him.
Ninth, besides David’s loss of love, trust, and moral authority creating a situation ripe for rebellion, the crisis of Absalom’s coup followed from Amnon’s rape of Tamar—in which Amnon followed David’s example and involved David’s (unwitting) complicity—in other respects.
David’s failure to deal firmly with the crown prince, Amnon, led to Absalom taking matters into his own hands, and to the alienation of Absalom from David. The parallels between David’s failure and that of Jacob in Genesis 34 should be noted here; while David is positively paralleled to Jacob in many ways throughout the book of 1 Samuel, after his sin with Bathsheba lots of unpleasant parallels to Jacob’s trials with his wayward and wicked sons appear in David’s life.
David had also killed one of his mighty men (Uriah), seized the daughter of another (Eliam), and the granddaughter of his chief advisor (Ahithophel). That Ahithophel joined Absalom’s coup is entirely unsurprising when we consider that he was Bathsheba’s grandfather.
At the end of his reign, David is described in ways that emphasize his impotence. He doesn’t know what is going on in his court. He is paralyzed and unable to act when he needs to. He no longer has the unswerving love of his people. He can’t even keep his own body warm.
David is forgiven his sin by the Lord, but his sin has bitter consequences nonetheless. David becomes a shadow of the man he once was. He becomes a tragic and weak figure, where once he was powerful and heroic.
The books of Samuel are, among other things, a deep consideration of power and politics. One of its messages is that true power flourishes with virtue. Where virtue is lost, meaningful authority slips away with it. The events of the back half of the book of Samuel follow closely, in several ways (in direct cause and effect, in divine judgment, through others following David’s example, through the shift in the ethos of David’s court, etc.), from David’s seizing of Bathsheba.
The story of David and Bathsheba is not merely an isolated episode, but a precipitating event for the decline of David’s rule. I can think of few more powerful and sobering warnings of the destructive character and consequences of sin. It ruins lives and corrupts whole worlds.
While I do not strongly object to it, I do not think ‘rape’ is the most apt way to describe David’s actions in 2 Samuel 11. Perennial evangelical Bathsheba discourse is poorly framed by the term. It may not be inaccurate in certain respects, but it tends to obscure certain facets of the situation, to substitute for the text’s own far more searching revelation of David’s sin, and it might also have misleading connotations for some. Nevertheless, it is hard to read the story closely without finding considerably more to object to in a consensual adultery framing. As should be evident by this point, several theologically conservative commentators, independent of current disputes about the story, come down very strongly against the consensual adultery framing.
The story of David and Bathsheba offers a powerful exploration of the abuse of power, of sexual exploitation, of the corruption of institutions when leaders sin and those sins are covered up, of the contagion of wickedness and abuse that can follow, and of the victims that are the result. As a story of the bitter fruits and destructive consequences of the sin of leaders, much could be gained by reflecting soberly upon its message when navigating questions of sexual abuse in churches.