Bathsheba Overpowering The Innocent

Overpowering the Innocent

What would happen if there were modern courts during biblical times? If there were modern courts then a jury would have been tasked with deciding who was guilty in the rape and murder case involving King David and Bathsheba. The jury would need to read the text that describes the events very deeply and in a detailed manner before they came to a conclusion. In the case of the Bathsheba incident they would need to read 2 Samuel 11 and 2 Samuel 12. The jury would find Bathsheba innocent of any wrong doing because she was under the control of the powerful king David, she had no choice but to act as she did, and she did not initiate any of the violence that occurred. David was guilty of rape and murder because he was in control the entire time.

Bathsheba is innocent because her actions were always dictated by the outstanding amount of power David had over her and Uriah. David always had power over

both Uriah and Bathsheba because he was king, thus he had social status, political power, and military power. David has always displayed a grab for power by fighting Goliath and by entering into political marriages in an attempt to gain more power. As the King David had power over Uriah who is one of his soldiers. He also displays power over Uriah when he made Uriah eat, drink, and lie right after Uriah explains how wrong it would be for him to do so in a time of war (Kim and Nyengele 97). This shows that David had dominance over Uriah. He had the power to send for her and tell her to come. Some say she was willing and cognizant because “she came to him” (2 Samuel 11:4) (Kim and Nyengele 102), but she had no choice to come. Uriah also came to David when he summoned him but no one thinks that Uriah choose to come to the city and leave the war because as we established above Uriah was a subordinate to David and was ordered to come. In this same way Bathsheba was ordered to come so she did not disobey an order. After all the king always has dominance over his subjects.
Bathsheba was psychologically weak, vulnerable, and powerless which made it very difficult for her to resist. David had power over her because of status, power, and gender and Bathsheba was aware of this. This created a traditional dominate-subordinate role (Kim and Nyengele 113) and this made resistance extremely difficult for her. She fulfilled the traditional role society wanted her to play as a women. The Patriarchal society of this time expected women to be “submissive, docile, and compliant in relation to men” (Kim and Nyengele 113). Men had so much more power over women based solely on their gender. She acted as any other woman of her time would have by not resisting. Adding to her psychological weakness she was sad and lonely because her husband was away at war for a long time. He had more power which allowed his passion and sexual desire to escalate to aggression and violence. Bathsheba was very aware of David’s power and her own vulnerability. She knew that if she resisted her life would end similar to how her husband’s life ended when he disobeyed David. She decided to comply not because she was a willing participant but because she wanted to survive.
David was devious planner who always had control of the situation. David made plans that left Uriah in a lose-lose situation. David sent Uriah to sleep with his wife not just in hope that he will believe that the child is his but also in the hope that Uriah would get caught sleeping with his wife during a time of war. He also set up Uriah in an ingenious trap when he sent him with a letter commanding Uriah’s death. If Uriah opened the letter then he would be committing treason, but if he didn’t open the letter then he would be killed as was instructed in the letter (Kim and Nyengele 107). David was very thoughtful when he made this plan which would destroy Uriah regardless of his actions. This shows that he was in control of the situation and displayed his power while making these plans to end Uriah, just like he was with Bathsheba.
Bathsheba loved her husband; she had no reason to instigate this situation.

Some scholars would argue that “Bathsheba yearned for the power and glory of becoming the wife of a king” (Kim and Nyengele 99). Bathsheba was not looking for power because her husband was already an elite solider as a part of an elite military unit. There is also no evidence that her and Uriah were struggling to have kids, so she did not need David to have children. We also see her grieve and mourn the death of her husband. “When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him” (2 Samuel 11:26). We can believe this to be genuine because the author choose to include it even though he left many other things out. According to Kim and Nyengele, “Her grieving could also be viewed as psychological proof of her innocence” (Kim and Nyengele 107). She would not grieve or it would not have been genuine had she been the mastermind behind the plot. She did not order to murder of her husband because she loved him and didn’t want him to

die.
It was not the case that Bathsheba was trying to seduce David and initiate the contact. Although she was taking a bath on the roof where he could see her, it was a normal thing to do and not a deliberate act of seduction. She was performing a ritual bath right after her period to cleanse herself as evidenced in the text: “She was purifying herself after her period” (2 Samuel 11:4). It was her duty as a woman to perform this bath, so it was not just a seduction method. It was an ideal time for her to take a bath because it was past the hottest time of the day, so she could avoid sunburn and visibility by doing it at that time (Kim and Nyengele 104). She also did not have any kind of seductive power over David. He was the king and could have chosen any unmarried woman from the city. Surely Bathsheba was not the most gorgeous woman in the city. Even though he desired her, he could have fulfilled that desire with an unmarried woman which diminishes any seductive power she had over him. At no time did Bathsheba willing and purposefully seduce David. It was not her seduction that drove him to rape her. His desire and power drove him to commit a violent act of rape. “His passionate desire, coupled with power, is turned into sexual violence- he abducts Bathsheba and sleeps with her” (Kim and Nyengele 112). His assertiveness and aggression were able to turn into violence because of the power he wields. His actions are filled with passion and sexual desire which escalated to aggression and violence through the rape of Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah. This was not a case of a woman seducing a man to advance her agenda, it was a case of a man aggressively abducting a woman in order to sleep with her.
The prophet Nathan who was sent by God only blamed David and placed no blame on Bathsheba. Nathan told David a parable that closely resembled David's situation and David replied by condemning the “rich man” and his equivalent in the story. Nathan was very quick and straight forward when he blamed David by saying “You’re the man!” (2 Samuel 12:7). Nathan gives David all of the blame and Bathsheba none. He was very straight forward in blaming him but did not blame Bathsheba at all. Another woman was condemned earlier in the bible in Gen 3 (Kim and Nyengele 108) because the Lord found fault with what those women did and the patriarchal society was quick to blame women. Nathan was sent by the Lord to condemn David, but not Bathsheba which means her actions did not displease the Lord and she must be innocent.
After seeing all of this evidence a jury would have no choice but to find Bathsheba completely innocent of all of the crimes committed. She did not purposefully seduce David or have consensual sex with him, so the jury must find David guilty of rape. David was the mastermind behind the murder of Uriah and Bathsheba had no hand in making the plans or carrying out the murder, thus the jury must always find David guilty of murder. This jury would have decided in keeping with the narrator, the prophet Nathan, and the Lord as displayed through Nathan.