Voice of Bathsheba

2 Samuel 11:1-15

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful. David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, ‘This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.’ So David sent messengers to fetch her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house. The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, ‘I am pregnant.’

So David sent word to Joab, ‘Send me Uriah the Hittite.’ And Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the people fared, and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, ‘Go down to your house, and wash your feet.’ Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. When they told David, ‘Uriah did not go down to his house’, David said to Uriah, ‘You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?’ Uriah said to David, ‘The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing.’ Then David said to Uriah, ‘Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.’ So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day, David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk; and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.

In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, ‘Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.’

During our 4th of July joint service with The UU church, Rev. Paul Sawyer made the comment that I made a brave choice in choosing to do a Summer sermon series on Samuel and the rise and reign of David. He alluded to the rough stuff that lay ahead, and, oof, this is what he was talking about. But church, Paul was wrong. I’m not brave—because I did very much consider abandoning this series, or at least cheating a little and just skip over this passage. But no, I promised myself long ago I wouldn’t shy away from the tough passages. I promised myself I wouldn’t cherry pick and ignore the rough stuff.

So up until this point, David has been pretty perfect—a valiant warrior, a loyal friend, a modest shepherd, keeping watch over his family’s sheep and then dutifully, with the guidance of God, moving onto guiding the people of the United Kingdom of Israel as their leader, their shepherd. But things take a turn here. David, has let some of this power go to his head. He’s becoming a little too comfortable, a little too at ease. David is no longer one of the people. War is still going on, but he’s no longer joining his comrades in battle. At the very beginning of this passage this is made clear: he sends his loyal general Joab into battle and doesn’t join his men. “But David remained in Jerusalem,” it is written. Now not only is David not joining his men in battle, it doesn’t seem that he’s even doing much strategizing or paying much attention. The author’s choice here to note that was lounging on his couch when he was spying on Bathsheba makes it clear. He was living a life of few cares, a life of luxury. This was also still pretty new to David. He went from living a humble life as a young shepherd to ruling over the entirety of Israel—and to get here he has a lot of help from God. And having favor and protection from God when you’re the chosen one can definitely breed a sense of entitlement, right? So when he was spying on Bathsheba, he figured, thanks to his favor with God and position as king, not to mention living in a fully patriarchal system that looked at women as property—notice that Bathsheba barely speaks but to say she’s pregnant, and that she’s always referred to as someone’s wife or daughter—David figures he can go ahead and order Bathsheba to sleep with him. And he can. But of course that doesn’t mean he should.

Now of course today women have a lot more agency than Bathsheba did. The fact that I’m speaking up here is a testament to that. But church, the system of patriarchy hasn’t really changed a whole lot. There are still powerful men assaulting women and getting away with it—whether it’s because of a legal technicality in our broken justice system, whether it’s because they have the power, money and resources to sweep things under the rug, or whether it’s simply because people don’t believe women as they should, it still happens constantly. It should be noted that there is a reading of this passage, accepted by many, that Bathsheba was in fact a manipulative temptress and that this whole Shakespearean tragedy of events is her fault. This despite the fact that everything in this passage points to a complete lack of power on the part of Bathsheba and just a torrent of abhorrent abuses of power on the part of David.

And that’s what’s so weird about preaching on this passage. There is literally nothing good in here. It’s all David acting like a completely entitled and violent monster. He assaults Bathsheba and then sends her husband, a loyal and dedicated solider, to his death when Bathsheba becomes pregnant. All the scolding, all the consequences that David deserves, all the repenting that he’ll ultimately do, that comes next week. So what do we do with this passage? Well church, for the rest of this sermon, I don’t want to focus on David. Sure, David will, in many ways go onto redeem himself. But we’re not there yet, oh boy are we not there yet.

In both this ancient biblical world we’re reading about today, and our current world, whenever a powerful man, or just, a man does something violent, does something immoral, there is so much focus on the man—what made him act this way, what makes him tick, what would drive someone to do something so horrible… rarely is there much voice given to the victims. Rarely are the less powerful given the time of day.

I remember years ago in Boston, I went to the Boston Book Festival, and I went to a panel where true crime writers were speaking. One of the panelists was the journalist Kevin Cullen, who had just written a well-received book on the Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger. I remember him passionately saying that for his book, the last thing he wanted to do was romanticize Bulger. He believed that too many people make a spectacle, make entertainment out the mob, and unwittingly make role models out of violent and amoral men. The last thing he wanted to do was add to this canon. So he made it clear that for this book, he wanted to focus on the victims. He wanted to focus on the fact that lives that were destroyed by this man; he didn’t want to focus on the man himself. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not comparing King David to Whitey Bulger. But this memory inspired me, for this sermon, to, instead of focusing on why David acted the way, to focus on the woman who had everything taken away from her—what little agency or independence she had; her husband; her voice was taken away. I want to give a voice to Bathsheba.

I wonder what Bathsheba was thinking during all this. She was surely confused and nervous when she was called to David. She was surely paralyzed when David demanded she lay with him; to refuse would likely have meant exile or death. She was surely full of shame and guilt despite the fact that she did nothing wrong. She was surely terrified when she found out she was pregnant. And she was absolutely full of anger and grief and mourning when her husband, Uriah, died after he was set up by David, to be doomed in battle.

While the patriarchy of the time didn’t really allow the authors of 2 Samuel to take Bathsheba’s feelings into account in any kind of detail or depth, it’s telling that they did specify when she was bathing—not only does the detail of the timing of her cycle make for narrative sense due to her ability to get pregnant, it’s a way to make it clear that this bathing ritual was required of her at the time—to cleanse herself after her period ended; this was Mosaic law. So not only was she not doing anything wrong, she was doing what was required of her by law. So I imagine that this woman, the wife of a loyal solider, following all the Mosaic laws, being faithful to God, the law, and her husband from whom she was apart from for weeks and months at a time when he was in battle—I imagine she was utterly and completely confounded and angry as to how she could have ended up in this situation, wondering what she could possibly have done to deserve this.

This, I think, is unfortunately not too far off from how many wronged women feel in today’s world, even in the #metoo era. There is still an expectation that this is just how men are, and women simply need to protect themselves better. And while things have changed since these ancient Biblical times, we’ve seen time and time again that when a powerful man does something unconscionable, even when he outright admits to wrongdoing, rarely are there consequences. So I imagine that Bathsheba, like so many women, both in her time and our time, felt scared and depressed, but also helpless and resigned to the fact that she would never receive any kind of real justice for what happened to her. We can say that she perhaps in eventually giving birth to the future king of Israel, Solomon, that that was God sort of making it up to her. But the feelings of trauma, of grief, of fear, those don’t just go away. She was obviously a strong and persevering woman to make it through such dark times, but being strong and wise and giving birth to someone who would grow to be wise and powerful doesn’t make the trauma disappear.

A few months ago, right after Easter, I preached on Jesus showing his whole self, complete with his crucifixion wounds to his disciples, and compared it to the ancient Japanese art of kintsugi— the art of putting broken vases, tea sets, and other kinds of pottery and ceramics back together with a gold adhesive, making broken things beautiful, without trying to hide their brokenness.  And when it comes to Bathsheba we don’t get much, any really, insight into her brokenness, her feelings, I  find myself wondering how her brokenness and her trauma manifested after all these trials and tragedies. I wonder how her trauma, her grief, and her anger manifested itself in her and through her. I wonder if she ever felt able to make her feelings known to any friends or confidants. I wonder if she just hid it all and let it out privately. I wonder if she was able to turn these horrible feelings into something helpful, something that gave her solace. I wonder if she felt trapped in David’s house, I wonder how much or how little freedom she had. I wonder if she was able to find some joy in the palace, I hope and pray she was able to find some joy in her days raising the boy who would become the great King Solomon. I hope she was able to enjoy some aspects of this life she was unable to choose for herself. But more than anything, I hope she knew that she never did anything wrong. I hope she was confident in the fact that she did what she had to do given the circumstances and the society of the time. I hope she was able to forgive herself, and then realize that she had nothing for which to forgive herself. 

I won’t lie, I get deeply discouraged when I find that some things haven’t changed much for women in literally thousands of years. I get discouraged when I think of so many women these days who are made to feel guilty and ashamed about things that were completely out of their control. I get discouraged when I think of the thousands and millions of women who still don’t feel like people will believe them if they come out about being assaulted by someone in a position of authority or power.

When we read these ancient texts, and there is a woman who is mostly voiceless, I ask that we wonder what she may have been thinking, saying, feeling. When we read these texts, I ask that we look deeper than just the descriptions of despicable actions by powerful men. When we read these ancient texts, I ask that we take the disregarded and the voiceless into account.

And in the same way, when we read the news, when we hear a story through the grapevine, I hope we will make an effort, always, to listen to the voiceless. I pray we see beyond what those in power would have us to see. Church, Jesus came here to give voice to the voiceless. And so I hope, together, we can work on hearing and seeing things differently. It’s hard and it’s disorienting to deconstruct the dangerous and oppressive falsehoods and assumptions we’ve always believed or taken for granted. I hope together, despite how painful it may be at times, that we can look a little deeper and change our perspective and therefore change the world. With this in mind, I’m going to end my sermon with the poem Contact Lenses by the activist Audre Lorde:

Lacking what they want to see
makes my eyes hungry
and eyes can feel
only pain. 

Once I lived behind thick walls
of glass
and my eyes belonged
to a different ethic
timidly rubbing the edges
of whatever turned them on.
Seeing usually was a matter of what
was in front of my eyes
matching what was
behind my brain.
Now my eyes have become
a part of me exposed
quick risky and open
to all the same dangers.  

I see much
better now
and my eyes hurt.[i]

Amen.

[i] Lorde, Audre, The Black Unicorn: Poems. (New York: Norton, 1978), 94.