2 Samuel 11:1-15 Commentary

Previously, in the Life of David…

Before we proceed and in order that we can proceed well, it’s important to review where we’ve been in the life of David.  When last we met our hero, he had wanted to build a temple for God’s dwelling place.  Although it wasn’t the right move, we can easily see and say, “well, his heart was in the right place.” And, being refused this honor, David returns to God in humble prayer. What follows are military victories and David’s tender desire to honor his friend Jonathan and even his erstwhile enemy Saul by being kind to a member of their household who evaded the violence of the regime change.

All of these actions and activities hint at what will become robustly obvious in this week’s lectionary text: David was a complex man. Being “a man after God’s own heart” did not give David immunity to the goodness, frailty and sinfulness of the human condition. Walter Brueggemann observes, “For David and for Israel, we are at a moment of no return. Innocence is never to be retrieved. From now on the life of David is marked, and all Israel must live with that mark.” Hebrew scholar, Robert Alter concurs in saying that “the story of David and Bathsheba and its immediate aftermath, are the great turning point of the whole David story…and it seems as though the wrier has pulled out all the stops in his remarkable narrative art into order to achieve a brilliant realization of this crucially pivotal masterpiece.

A Literary Masterpiece

So, what are some of these literary master strokes?  The first one comes in the very first verse as the author is setting the stage. It is spring, military maneuvers can begin again and so it is the time “when kings go off to war.”  Ah, so we all know where we will find David, right?  “But David remained in Jerusalem.”  Our hero is not where he should be…

And now he sees a woman bathing on her roof. Pertinent to the unfolding story, this monthly bath indicates that she could not have been already pregnant at the time she is taken to the palace. It was also a ritual act of purity attesting to the woman’s devotion. This was not, as we might imagine today, an act of exhibitionism. The palace would have been one of the only high places, looking down on all the rooftops of the Kingdom. What are the odds the King would look down on this roof instead of hundreds of others? How likely is it that the King would be paying attention? Especially a king who is supposed to be somewhere else?

In this scene, we are introduced to Bathsheba by name, an unusual honor afforded a woman in Hebrew Scripture. But not just her name. The author is particular in linking her both to her father, Eliam and her husband, Uriah.  Both were great warriors in service to their king. Although Uriah is identified with a foreign ethnicity — Hittite — both his Hebrew name and his service in the King’s army should lead us to an “obvious irony in the fact that the man of foreign origins is the perfect Good Soldier of Israel, whereas the Israelite king betrays and murders him.”

Every few months it feels like some kind of dust-up on social media about whether David’s actions toward Bathsheba could be considered rape or not. An important insight for all of us tasked with preaching this tender text to acknowledge is that in every sanctuary on every Sunday morning there are people who have experienced exploitation and even violence that they, like Bathsheba, did not have power to refuse.  How we talk about violence, consent and power is capable of healing or arresting the healing of those who have previously found themselves on the painful underside of power and it has the power to liberate those who currently experience the same.

Although in our modern sensibilities, we would understand any act against Bathsheba to be, in itself, a sinful violence, in the ancient near-eastern context, linking her to both father and husband demonstrates that she did not belong to David. Any sin against her was also a sin against the patriarchal heads of her family. For obvious and good reason, this note sounds off-key today but where the principle might resonate is in the recognition that  sin and violence against one person rarely if ever only affects one person.

To this point the rest of the story amply attests. King David recalls Uriah from the front, presumably having some affect on the war effort.  His attempts to appeal to Uriah give us a glimpse into the King’s inner workings more than those of Uriah.  Good food, good drink, proximity to his own bed, his own wife.  But Uriah was a soldier and, at the time, soldiers in the midst of battle didn’t want to risk any diminishment of their capacities and energy, therefore practicing celibacy.  When it didn’t work the first time, David tries again on night two of Uriah’s R&R leave. And when that doesn’t work, David sends Uriah back to the battlefront with a hand delivered letter to Joab.  If we had any doubt of Uriah’s integrity and David’s lack-there-of, the fact that this letter was delivered presumably unopened and that it contained a death sentence — put Uriah up front and, when the enemy approaches, everyone else retreat —  should prove our case.

In the most common reading of this story, Uriah’s solidarity with his men only furthers his virtue, especially as it draws a severe contrast to the King’s behavior.  “My commander Joab and my lord’s men are camped in the open country. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and make love to my wife?” But there is a newer alternate reading in which, with messengers going from the palace to Bathsheba, bringing her into the King’s chamber, later bringing word of her pregnancy this has not been the most covert of operations. By sleeping out in the camp with the palace guards on his first night, it is quite likely that Uriah would have heard the situation in which case his actions evidence that he is “not naive but shrewdly aware, playing a dangerous game of hints in which he deliberately pricks the conscience of the king, cognizant, and perhaps not caring, that his now life may soon be forfeit.”

Illustration

Have you ever made a mess then made an even bigger mess trying to clean up the original mess?  Although there are literary layers in this story, on one level it is the very simple narrative of someone who is doing exactly that.  Although the content is “adult-themed” and weighty, this is actually the stuff of slapstick. This is at the heart of many sit-com plot lines.  It is the stuff of children’s stories (think If You Give a Mouse a Cookie) The absurdity of the human condition is as ridiculous as it is tragic. In this article for Reformed Journal, a fellow pastor gives one such example.