Thread by @scott_m_coley

I see we’re talking about David and Bathsheba again.

Some thoughts.

Either Bathsheba was raped or she committed adultery. There is no gray area. If you say that she wasn’t raped, you are saying that she committed adultery.

It makes no sense to say that she wasn’t raped on the grounds that the text doesn’t explicitly describe a violent rape: that would be tantamount to claiming that she committed adultery, and the text doesn’t say that either.

The text requires us to draw an inference. So which inference has more textual support: rape, or adultery?

Since Bathsheba was married to Uriah and not David, if she chose to lay with David then she’s not innocent. It follows (by modus tollens) that if she’s innocent then David lay with her against her will.

When a man lays with a woman against her will, it’s called ‘rape’. So (by hypothetical syllogism) if Bathsheba is innocent then David raped her.

So, should we infer from the text that Bathsheba innocent? As we’ve just established, it would follow that David raped her.

Whenever possible, we should use Scripture to interpret Scripture.

In Nathan’s account of the incident, Bathsheba is represented by a lamb. I don’t know of any place in Scripture where a lamb represents anything but purity and blamelessness. You might think I’m reading too much into the text there.

But I don’t think so: Nathan could’ve chosen anything to represent Bathsheba—a cow (OT prophets love that one, *especially* when addressing immoral women), or a horse, or even a vineyard or a house. He chose a lamb, specifically; and a young (ewe) lamb at that.

This doesn’t demonstrate Bathsheba’s innocence conclusively; but it’s highly suggestive, isn’t it? So I’ll be pretty surprised if it turns out that she’s to blame for something that transpired in the narrative.

Here’s how the episode is couched in the text: “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war... David remained in Jerusalem.”

Uh-oh: David’s not where he’s supposed to be. (With no excuse.) He might be about to get himself into some trouble.

And after David lays with Bathsheba, she sends word to David that she’s pregnant. *Thereupon* (i.e., immediately, without delay) David sends for Uriah, etc.

Thereupon? Really...? David is the one guy in all of human history who spends a single night with a strange woman and asks *not a single question* when she says she’s pregnant?

Perhaps David had special reason to *know* that if Bathsheba was pregnant, the baby was most likely his. How might that be? As it turns out, the text provides a clue:

Shortly before being summoned to the palace by David, Bathsheba had performed a ritual purification on the evening of the seventh day following the onset of menstruation (cf. Lev. 15).

Indeed, as the text makes clear (the Hebrew more so), this was the very bath during which David saw Bathsheba and sent his palace guards to “take” her (the Hebrew attributes the “taking” to David, singular—in any case, the text ascribes no agency to Bathsheba).

So David knew two things. First, when he lay with that Bathsheba, she wasn’t pregnant. And second, she was at a point in her fertility cycle that made her amenable to becoming pregnant. (Yet he did it anyway—which says something about his state of mind, doesn’t it?).

So, what did Bathsheba do? She obeyed the Torah. That’s the only agency attributed to her by the text. If Scripture is sufficient, you must concede that all Bathsheba did was obey the Torah. So she’s innocent. Which, as we noted above, means that David raped Bathsheba.

“But wait!” you might say: “What about the rules provided in Deuteronomy 22? Bathsheba was in the city and she didn’t cry out. So she’s guilty!”

A cursory reading of Deut. 22 might lead you to think that the law sets out two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive domains in which a man might lay with another’s wife: populated areas (or “in the city”); and unpopulated areas (or “in the field”).

On such a reading, you’d think that the law goes something like this. If a man lay with another’s wife in the city and she doesn’t cry out for help, then both the man and the woman are to be stoned. If she does cry out for help then only the man is to be stoned.

On the other hand, if a man lay with another’s wife in the field then only the man is to be stoned. (David lay with Bathsheba in a city—namely Jerusalem, etc.)

This is nothing short of hermeneutical barbarism. It disregards centuries of Jewish reflection on the text; and it renders the law frivolous and morally arbitrary.

What if a man lay with another’s wife in the city after rendering her unconscious? What if a man lay with another’s wife in the city and she cries out for help but no one hears her?

What if a man and another’s wife are engaged in an adulterous affair and they just arrange to meet in the field to mitigate the consequences for her if they’re caught?

What if a man lay with another’s wife in the field and she doesn’t cry out for help even though a caravan passes nearby?

What if a man lay with another’s wife in a small town—not quite in the city, not quite in a field?

A much better reading of the text, consistent with Jewish scholarship, is this.

If a man lay with another’s wife in a situation in which it would make sense for her to cry for help (e.g., in the middle of a city) and she doesn’t, there’s a rebuttable presumption in favor of her complicity (i.e., adultery). They’re both subject to stoning.

If she does cry for help, there’s a rebuttable presumption in favor of her innocence (i.e., rape). Only the man is subject to stoning.

On the other hand, if a man lay with another’s wife in a situation in which it wouldn’t make sense for her to cry for help (e.g., in the middle of an empty field on the outskirts of town), there’s a rebuttable presumption in favor of her innocence (i.e., rape).

So only the man is subject to stoning. (In either case, the man is to be stoned. So according to the law, David should be executed. And yet he wasn’t—which may turn out to be important to our understanding of the dynamics at play.)

The only remaining question, then, is whether it would have made sense for Bathsheba to cry for help when David’s guards took her to the palace.

The text doesn't say she didn't cry for help. Be that as it may, there’s no reason to think she had any idea what was going on when she was taken to the palace.

And once it became clear to her what was happening, for the very same reason that David wasn’t put to death following the incident, it probably wouldn't have made sense for her to cry for help. Who would she have told? Who would have intervened? David was the king.