| Bathsheba | |
|---|---|
| David and Bathsheba by Jan Matsys, 1562, Louvre | |
|
|
|
| Spouse | Uriah the Hittite King David |
| Issue | |
| Solomon | |
| Father | Eliam |
| Mother | unknown |
According to the Hebrew Bible, Bathsheba (Hebrew: בת שבע, Bath Shebha, "daughter of the oath") (Arabic: بثشبع, "ابنة القسم") was the wife of Uriah the Hittite and later of David, king of the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah. She is most known for the Bible story in which King David seduced her.
Bathsheba was a daughter of Eliam, one of David's "thirty" (2 Sam. 23:34; cf 1 Chr. 3:5); Eliam was also the son of Ahitophel, one of David's chief advisors. Ahitophel was from Giloh (Josh. 15:51;cf 2 Sam. 15:12), a city of Judah, and thus Bathsheba was from David's own tribe and the granddaughter of one of David's closest advisors (2 Sam.15:12)."[1] She was the mother of Solomon, who succeeded David as king, making her the Queen Mother.
Contents |
The meaning of the Hebrew form of the name "Bathsheba" is "daughter of the oath", "bath" meaning daughter. The second part of the name appears in 1 Chronicles 3:5 as "shua" (signifying "wealth") (compare Genesis 38:2).
Bathsheba was the daughter of Eliam (2 Samuel 11:3, who is called Ammiel in 1 Chronicles 3:5). Her father is identified by some scholars with Eliam mentioned in 2 Samuel 23:34 as the son of Ahithophel, who is described as the Gilonite. (See King David's Warriors.)
Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and afterward of David, by whom she gave birth to Solomon, who succeeded David as king. (United Kingdom of Israel and Judah).
The story of David's rape of Bathsheba, told in 2 Samuel 11, is omitted in Chronicles. The story is told that David, while walking on the roof of his palace, saw Bathsheba, who was then the wife of Uriah, bathing. He immediately desired her and later made her pregnant.
In an effort to conceal his sin, David summoned Uriah from the army (with whom he was on campaign) in the hope that Uriah would re-consummate his marriage and think that the child was his. Uriah was unwilling to violate the ancient kingdom rule applying to warriors in active service.[2] Rather than go home to his own bed, he preferred to remain with the palace troops.
After repeated efforts to convince Uriah to fertilize Bathsheba, the king gave the order to his general, Joab, that Uriah should be placed in the front lines of the battle, where it was the most dangerous, and left to the hands of the enemy. Ironically, David had Uriah himself carry the message that ordered his death. After Uriah was dead, David made the now widowed Bathsheba his wife.
David's action was displeasing to the Lord, who accordingly sent Nathan the prophet to reprove the king.
After relating the parable of the rich man who took away the one little ewe lamb of his poor neighbor (II Samuel 12:1-6), and exciting the king's anger against the unrighteous act, the prophet applied the case directly to David's action with regard to Bathsheba.
The king at once confessed his sin and expressed sincere repentance. Bathsheba's child by David was struck with a severe illness and died at a few days after birth, which the king accepted as his punishment.
Nathan also noted that David's house would be cursed with turmoil because of this murder. This came to pass years later when one of David's much-loved sons, Absalom, led an insurrection that plunged the kingdom into civil war. Moreover, to manifest his claim to be the new king, Absalom had sexual intercourse in public with ten of his father's concubines, which could be considered a direct, tenfold divine retribution for David's taking the woman of another man.
In David's old age, Bathsheba secured the succession to the throne of her son Solomon, instead of David's eldest surviving son Adonijah. (1 Kings 1:11-31).
Some commentators have written that Bathsheba may have written at least part of Proverbs 31 as suggested by the postulated connections between King Lemuel aka King Solomon.
The story of David's adultery sets up the context for the penitential Psalm 51 (50), also known as "Miserere" ("Have mercy on me, O God").
Bathsheba was the granddaughter of Ahithophel, David's famous counselor, whom David had good relations with.
The Midrash portrays the influence of Satan bringing about the sinful relation of David and Bathsheba as follows: Bathsheba was bathing, perhaps behind a screen of wickerwork. Satan is depicted as coming in the disguise of a bird. David, shooting at the bird, strikes the screen, splitting it; thus Bathsheba is revealed in her beauty to David (Sanhedrin 107a).
Bathsheba may have been providentially destined from the Creation to become in due time the legitimate wife of David; but this relation was prematurely precipitated by David's impetuous act.
In the Gospel of Matthew 1:6 she is indirectly mentioned as an ancestor of Jesus.
Her name, which perhaps means "daughter of the oath", is in I Chronicles 3:5 spelled "Bath-shua", the form becomes merely a variant reading of "Bath-sheba". The passages in which Bath-sheba is mentioned are II Samuel 11:2-12:24, and I Kings 1, 2.—both of which are parts of the oldest stratum of the books of Samuel and Kings. It is part of that court history of David, written by someone who stood very near the events and who did not idealize David. The material contained in it is of higher historical value than that in the later strata of these books. Budde would connect it with the J document of the Hexateuch.
The only interpolations in it which concern the story of Bathsheba are some verses in the early part of the twelfth chapter, that heighten the moral tone of Nathan's rebuke of David; according to Karl Budde ("S. B. O. T."), the interpolated portion is 12: 7, 8, and 10-12; according to Friedrich Schwally (Stade's "Zeitschrift," xii. 154 et seq.) and H. P. Smith ("Samuel," in "International Critical Commentary"), the whole of 12: 1-15a is an interpolation, and 12:. 15b should be joined directly to 11: 27. This does not directly affect the narrative concerning Bathsheba herself. Chronicles, which draws a veil over David's faults, omits all reference to the way in which Bathsheba became David's wife, and gives only the names of her children: Shimea, Shobab, Nathan, and Solomon.
The father of Bathsheba was Eliam (spelled "Ammiel" in I Chronicles 3:5). As this was also the name of a son of Ahithophel, one of David's heroes (II Samuel 23:34), it has been conjectured that Bathsheba was a granddaughter of Ahithophel and that the latter's desertion of David at the time of Absalom's rebellion was in revenge for David's conduct toward Bathsheba.
Some commentaries shift the blame of the affair away from David. In its masking David's faults, the biblical Book of Chronicles does not mention the affair with Bathsheba in its narrative, but only gives the name of Bathsheba's children. Modern commentaries have argued that considering that Bathsheba's house was hardly more than twenty feet away from David's palace and that people in ancient times were exceptionally modest about showing their bodies, culture experts have pointed out that Bathsheba seems to have displayed herself deliberately; that is, instead of being an innocent victim, she seduced David in order to rid herself of Uriah, a lowly paid foreigner, and move in with the king.[3] Nevertheless, the events are clearly faulted to David.
The faulting of David is not only made clear in the text from the very beginning. "It was springtime, the time when kings go forth to war... but David remained in Jerusalem" (2 Samuel 11:1). If David had been acting as a good king and been at war, the incident would not have taken place.[4] After the incident, of course, there is Nathan's rebuke in 2 Samuel 12 and the curse and events that follow. The Bathsheba incident, then, begins a shift in the book's perspective. David "is largely at the mercy of events rather than directing them."[5] He is no longer able to control his family and ends up being overthrown by Absalom. In 2 Samuel 13 there is another way the text blames David. In the story of David's son Amnon's rape of his sister Tamar. The placement of the rape so soon after the incident of Bathsheba seems to draw a parallel between sexual misconduct of father and son.[6]