Thread by @JamesBejon

THREAD: The Exploitation of Power in the Biblical Narrative.

SUB-TITLE: Sex, Lies, & Intertextuality,…

…subjects I’ve recently (and sadly) been reminded of.

Below is an anonymised version of a Bible story.

Please have a read of it. I suspect it’ll soon ring a bell.

It came to pass in the days of Israel’s kings, after an important battle between Israel and Syria, that a little-known Israelite came to acquire an important ‘possession’.

That possession was very dear to him. He valued and cherished it. In many respects, it was all he had.

By contrast, the king of Israel was a man of great wealth. (Oddly, however, at the outset of our story, we find him in bed in the middle of the day.)

He had a whole array of possessions like the possessions of the little-known Israelite.

None of them, however, satisfied him.

The king wanted more. To be precise, he wanted what his subject, the Israelite, had.

The king therefore made enquiries to see how he could acquire the relevant possession, but it turned out to be unlawful for him to do so.

And so there the matter was laid to rest.

Or at least it was for a while.

Sadly, however, the king refused to take ‘No’ for an answer.

Consumed by envy, he sent a letter to a man of influence in Israel and had his subject, the Israelite, killed in the course of duty—a nasty business to be sure, but then the Israelite shouldn’t have been so stubborn.

With the Israelite out of the way, the king promptly took ownership of the Israelite’s possession, which he could at last enjoy as his own.

Or so he thought.

God, however, had other ideas.

While the king’s helpers had turned a blind eye to his deeds, God had not.

God had seen.

God had taken notes.

And God would now bring the king to justice.

With that end in mind, God dispatched one of his prophets to announce the king’s fate.

The prophet confronted the king on his property and declared his sins to him—sins of unlawful acquisition and murder.

Despite the king’s backslidden state, however, the words of the prophet pierced his conscience.

The king confessed his sin and began to fast and pray before God.

And, remarkably, God chose to have mercy on him.

God said he would spare the king from disaster in the king’s own lifetime.

Nevertheless, the blood shed by the king would not go unpunished.

Violence would plague the king’s house for many years.

––– REFLECTIONS –––

So then, whose story is this?

David and Bathsheba’s, right?

In part, yes.

But it’s also the story of Naboth’s vineyard!

(Read back over it and see.)

The parallels between these two stories are no coincidence.

And they run deep.

Even some of the more peripheral and unusual aspects of the parable which Nathan tells David (cp. 2 Sam. 12.1–4) resonate with Naboth’s story.

For instance, the parable explicitly locates the rich man and the poor man ‘in the same city’ (2 Sam. 12.1)—a detail which is of limited relevance to David and Bathsheba’s situation yet is central to Ahab and Naboth’s.

The poor man in the parable is said to ‘acquire’ (קנה) a ewe which ‘grows up’ (גדל) alongside him and his children—a detail which doesn’t fit Uriah and Bathsheba’s situation very well...

...yet makes sense if the man is Naboth and the ewe is his vineyard, since Naboth ‘acquires’ (קנה) a vineyard which he ‘cultivates’ and ‘tends’ (גדל).

And the parable depicts the king’s victim as a lamb which is slain,

...which only relates to Bathsheba tangentially/metaphorically yet finds a clear correspondent in Naboth.

Certain lexical points of contact underline the connection between the two narratives.

For instance, both involve a victim whose place of origin is constantly repeated (cp. ‘Naboth the Jezreelite’ w. ‘Uriah the Hittite’),

and both involve a king who’s encouraged to ‘arise’ and ‘eat bread’ by those close to him (albeit to no avail: cp. 2 Sam. 12.17 w. 1 Kgs. 21.7).

Gluttons for punishment can go to the link below for a bit more detail on Naboth’s vineyard.

The more sane and generously-minded might like to skip on.

academia.edu/40650265/

––– THE JOYS OF INTERTEXTUALITY –––

Suppose I’m right in my identification of various intertextual connections between David and Ahab’s stories.

What difference does it make in exegetical terms?

What do we gain when we consider the two stories as a couplet rather than as isolated incidents?

My suggestions are set out below.

First, we’re able to see the *persistence* of David and Ahab’s sins more clearly

David wasn’t the first king in Israel to exploit his power (as the life of Saul demonstrates),

nor was he the last, as the life of Ahab demonstrates (as well as the testimony of the prophets).

Throughout the Biblical narrative, Israel’s kings exploit their power in horribly similar ways, since the tendency to exploit power is ingrained in man’s fallen history and nature.

Indeed, even after they’ve been forgiven, Ahab and David can’t entirely break free from their past sins.

Just as Ahab sought to acquire a vineyard from Naboth in 1 Kings 21, so he seeks to acquire Ramoth-Gilead from Syria in ch. 22 (and perishes in the process).

And, just as David took (לקח) what he shouldn’t from a poor man (ראש) in 2 Samuel 11, so he takes (לקח) what he shouldn’t from the head (!ראש) of Ammon’s king in ch. 12,

and so his son (Amnon) takes what he shouldn’t in ch. 13.

The effects of sin are deep-seated.

Second, our stories’ intertextual connections pinpoint the nature of their respective kings’ sins.

The counterpart of Bathsheba in Ahab’s story is not a person, but a possession,

which is instructive.

Ahab idolised a mere possession (Naboth’s vineyard), which was a failure on his behalf and spelt the end of his dynasty.

David, however, objectified a person (Bathsheba), which was worse.

From David’s point of view, Bathsheba was merely a part of his kingdom—a possession to be acquired/taken (cp. 2 Sam. 12.4, 9–10),

and one which became all the more attractive to him once he found out he couldn’t easily acquire it (as Naboth’s vineyard did in Ahab’s case).

Indeed, although we learn Bathsheba’s name in 11.3, it remains unused in ch. 11’s narrative.

Bathsheba is referred to merely as ‘she’, ‘her’, ‘the woman’, or ‘the wife of Uriah’.

That Bathsheba is treated like an object is underscored by her lack of agency in our narrative.

Bathsheba is not primarily an ‘actor’, but an individual who is acted upon.

And, although some commentators portray Bathsheba as a seductress, neither ch. 11’s narrative nor Nathan’s parable does so.

Bathsheba’s ‘bath’ is said to be part of a purification ritual, so it’s unlikely to have required her to undress (cp. 11.2 w. 5).

It’s not Bathsheba who seeks the attention of David, whom she wouldn’t have expected to be in the palace anyway (cp. 11.1);

it’s David who sees, seeks out, and sends for her.

And Nathan’s parable portrays Bathsheba as a woman of lamb-like innocence, while Nathan’s speech lays the blame for ch. 11’s events at David’s feet (12.9–10).

The intertextual connections between David and Ahab’s stories underscore the point.

Insofar as Bathsheba is the counterpart of Naboth, she should not be seen not as an adulterer, but as a woman caught in a self-indulgent king’s crosshairs.

Indeed, like Naboth, she attracts the king’s attention precisely because of her observance of the requirements of the law.

Third, our stories’ intertextual connections highlight 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.

In general, Nathan’s parable is well understood.

In 12.1, we’re introduced to a rich man with many flocks and a (comparatively) poor man with a single ewe.

The ewe is said to ‘eat’ and ‘drink’ with the poor man and to ‘lie’ in his arms (12.3),

which is exactly how Uriah describes his relationship with Bathsheba in 11.11.

The ewe, then, is Bathsheba, in which case the poor man must be Uriah and the rich man David.

So far so good.

In 12.4, however, a traveller arrives at the rich man’s door, and, in order to provide for him, the rich man decides to slaughter the poor man’s ewe (rather than an animal from his own flock),

which doesn’t have an obvious correspondent in David’s story.

In what sense is David’s sin precipitated by the arrival of a traveller?

And in what sense does David have to choose whether to provide for a traveller out of his own pocket or at the expense of the poor man and his ewe (i.e., Uriah and Bathsheba)?

My suggestion is as follows.

The traveller who arrives on David’s doorstep and, despite David’s best efforts, stays at David’s house is Uriah.

Uriah is thus represented by two different characters in the parable—the poor man and the traveller—,

which makes sense since he has two different roles in ch. 11’s events.

He is both the husband of Bathsheba and the servant of the king.

As a husband, he’s a poor man. Unlike the rich man with his many ‘flocks’, he only has a single ewe.

Meanwhile, as the king’s servant who arrives from a foreign land, Uriah is the traveller—a man without an abode, since he can’t stay at his own house while his fellow men are out on the battlefield (11.11).

Indeed, when Uriah arrives at David’s house, David specifically asks him about his journey (11.10), which clearly frames him as a traveller of some kind (cp. Gen. 24.21, Josh. 9.11–13, Judg. 17.8, etc.).

That Uriah is both the poor man and the traveller also explains the unusual ‘ABA’ structure of Nathan’s statement in 12.9b:

Why would Nathan first describe David’s sin against Uriah, then describe David’s sin against Bathsheba, and then rewind in order to describe David’s sin against Uriah again?

My suggestion is as follows:

because Nathan describes what David has done to each of the parable’s characters in their order of appearance,

i.e., first to Uriah the poor man,

then to his ewe (Bathsheba),

and finally to Uriah the soldier and traveller (hence his mention of the Ammonites).

In terms of Nathan’s parable, then, the arrival of Uriah at the palace depicts the arrival of the traveller.

Up until that point, little has happened in the parable.

(The scene has merely been set.)

But, with the arrival of the traveller, the rich man is forced to make a decision, namely how to respond to the traveller’s stay with him.

In the context of David’s story, the arrival of Uriah puts David in a similar position;

indeed, it marks the pivotal moment in ch. 11’s narrative.

David, the rich man, must either provide an animal from his own flock—that is to say, he must own up to what he has done and pay the necessary price—or he must make a third party foot the bill, namely the poor man and his ewe.

And, tragically, David opts for the latter course of action.

The next day, he has Uriah killed.

Despite his many flocks, David puts and end to the poor man and his ewe’s relationship, who will never see one another again.

And so, per the parable, the traveller’s stay at David’s house comes at the expense of the poor man.

Ahab’s sin is similar. Like David, he has designs on a possession he cannot have.

Yet, rather than accept he cannot have it—or, better still, accept it is preferable for him not to have it—, he takes it by force, at the expense of an innocent party.

And the reason he is able to do so is his status as a king.

Like David, he is beyond the law, and accountable to no-one,

and, consequently, his lust becomes full grown (Jas. 1.14–15).

Our stories’ intertextual connections thus bring out an important point.

Sin flourishes in a society not only because of the power of a few ungodly individuals, but because of the silence-cum-complicity of a much larger multitude.

Theoretically, both David’s and Ahab’s schemes could have been stopped on any number of occasions.

No shortage of people were aware of and/or involved in them (e.g., Jezreel’s elders, Jezebel’s false witnesses, Joab, David’s messengers),

and any or all of those people could have put a halt to their king’s scheme (or could at least have tried),

but, whether due to weakness or some warped sense of loyalty, they took the path of least resistance,

and innocent parties paid the price for their inaction.

To expose a man’s sin, however, is not to be disloyal to him;

it is to seek his good.

What ultimately destroys a man is not correction, but the lack of correction.

Fourth, our stories’ intertextual connections highlight the awfulness of David’s sin.

Ahab was one of Israel’s worst kings (1 Kgs. 21.25–26).

Yet, when we read his story alongside David’s, it only serves to emphasise the extent of David’s fall.

Left to his own devices, Ahab would have taken ‘No’ for an answer (cp. 21.4);

he required a Jezebel to take matters further.

David, however, orchestrated 2 Samuel 11’s affairs without any encouragement.

Moreover, while Ahab realised his fun was over as soon as Elijah appeared, David was (initially) untroubled by Nathan’s appearance, so calloused had his heart become.

But, if the sin committed by David was extraordinarily grievous, then the mercy outpoured on him was extraordinarily gracious.

Given David’s sin, God could have brought an end to David’s line, just as he brought an end to Ahab’s.

The Messianic line, however, lives a charmed existence on the pages of Scripture.

In its first few years, it almost dies out, yet is revived by the ‘resurrection’ of Isaac.

In the events of Gen. 38, it flounders in Canaan’s darkness, yet somehow emerges blessed and fruitful.

In the days of Boaz and Ruth, it becomes mingled with the line of Moab,

which, like David’s sin, might seem to exclude it from God’s people,

yet a principle of grace deep at work within Israel’s history overcomes the law’s demands (cp. Rom. 5.20).

And, at the time of the exile, it is apparently doomed by Jehoiachin’s curse,

yet, by means of Shealtiel’s intervention, it is enabled to continue (cp. Jer. 22.30 w. 1 Chr. 3.17).

Just as the Messianic line is a means of grace, so too it is covered by grace.

Fifth (and finally!), our stories’ intertextual connections allow us to form a fuller picture of the ministry of Christ than would otherwise be possible.

Jesus is not the Bible’s first victim;

on the contrary, he is the culmination of a long line of innocent sufferers, in which sense he combines (and fulfills) aspects of all three of our stories’ victims.

Like Uriah, he is sent to the battlefield with his own death warrant in his hand.

Loyal to his brethren, he heads straight into the heart of enemy territory, where the fight is at its thickest (2 Sam. 11.16–17), ultimately to die abandoned and alone.

Like Bathsheba, Jesus enters his enemy’s crosshairs due to his faithfulness to God’s law.

The object of man’s envy, he is led like a (ewe) lamb to the slaughter (Isa. 53.7), and yet, because of his mistreatment, his seed will inherit a royal throne (1 Kgs. 1–2, Rev. 3.21).

And, like Naboth, Jesus is the heir of a vineyard, for which he is slain.

He refuses to surrender to an unjust regime;

he is slandered by two false witnesses (amidst a religious assembly);

he is condemned by his enemies as a blasphemer and law-breaker;

and he is left to die an ignoble death outside a capital city.

But, of course, while Jesus’ life shares certain similarities with those of the victims mentioned above, his death has an efficacy far beyond theirs.

Whereas the blood of Naboth brings condemnation on all those who have been stained by it,...

...the blood of Jesus brings both condemnation to his enemies and redemption to his people.

The day will come when the earth will be ruled with a rod of iron by Israel’s Messiah,

who will combine a greater righteous than that of Uriah and Naboth with a greater authority than that of Ahab and David,

and power will never be exploited on the earth again.

The world’s tyrants may think blood is merely blood,

and they may think people’s voices are silenced when their owners are disposed of.

Yet the God of heaven can hear the voice of the blood which has been shed on the earth,

and the pages of Scripture preserve its memory,

and every drop of it will ultimately be recompensed.

God’s justice will be done.

––– THE END –––