Bathsheba at Her Bath - Critical View

Critical View

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.

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, it was actually she who seduced David in order to rid herself of Uriah, a lowly paid foreigner, and move in with the king. Nevertheless, the actual events are faulted to David.

The faulting of David is 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 had been at war, the incident would not have taken place. 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." 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.