Bathsheba

Bathsheba attends her dying child, while David fasts and prays in repentance.

Bathsheba (בת שבע) was a wife of King David and the mother of King Solomon. She was also the former wife of Uriah the Hittite one of David's famous military captains. Her name, given as "Bathshua" in the Book of Chronicles, means either seventh daughter or daughter of the oath. Her story is found primarily in 2 Samuel 11 and 1 Kings 1-2.

Bathsheba conceived a son out of wedlock with David after the kign spied her bathing on her rooftop, summoned her to his palace, and slept with her. David then had her Uriah murdered after failing to create a credible cover for his sin. The son David and Bathsheba's union died soon after he was born, but Bathsheba soon conceived a second son, who would become the future King Solomon. In David's old age, she became an important figure in the royal politics of succession, helping Solomon to the throne, and later, perhaps unwittingly, providing evidence that Solomon's rivial, Adonojiah, planned treason.

In Christian tradition, Bathsheba is one of four Old Testament women listed as an ancestor of of Jesus.

Biblical data

Bathsheba was the daughter of Eliam (2 Samuel 11:3; the syllables are reverse Ammiel in 1 Chronicles 3:5), who became the wife of Uriah the Hittite. Her father is identified by some scholars with Eliam mentioned in 2 Samuel 23:34 as the son of Ahithophel, one of David's counselors. This would explain her being housed near the king's residence in Jerusalem.

File:Davids-temptation.jpg

Bathsheba bathes as David looks down at her.

According to 2 Samuel 11, despite it being "the time when kings go out to war," David has stayed in Jerusalem while his army under Joab battles the Ammonites at Rabbah. As David walks on the roof of his palace in the spring afternoon, he spies Bathsheba bathing on a rooftop below. He immediately desires her. Although she his the wife of one of his famous captains, Uriah the Hittite, David summons her commits adultery with her. She later informs him that she is pregnant. In an effort to cover his sin, David summons Uriah from the army in the hopes that Uriah will sleep with Bathsheba, thus making Bathsheba's pregnancy seem legitimate. However, Uriah declines David's offer to take his ease at home, prefering to remain with the palace troops. After repeated efforts to get Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba, David dispatches him back to the front with sealed orders for Joab. The faithful Uriah is to be abandoned during the heat of battle and left to the hands of the enemy. Joab performs this treacherous deed, and Uriah is killed as a result.

After completing her period of mourning for her husband, Bathsheba becomes David's wife. The prophet Nathan then comes to David and tells him a parable of a rich man who took away the one little ewe lamb of his poor neighbor (2 Samuel 12:1-6). The king is outraged by this unrighteous act and declares that the man should be put to death. The prophet, applying the case analogously to David's action with Bathsheba and Uriah, famously declares: "You are that man!" The king at once confesses his sin and expresses sincere repentance. However, Bathsheba's child is dies after only a few days of life, despite the kings desperate prayers and fasting.

This part of Bathsheba's story concludes with David comforting her over the death of he son and even the Nathan seeming to bless their union, now that the price of their sin has been paid:

Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba, and he went to her and lay with her. She gave birth to a son, and they named him Solomon. The Lord loved him; and because the Lord loved him, he sent word through Nathan the prophet to name him Jedidiah. (2 Sam. 11:24-25)

Bathsheba as kingmaker

Bathsheba does not appear again in the narrative until David's old age, when she figures prominently in the question of who will succeed the king on the throne of Israel. David's elder son, Adonijah, makes a bid to ururp the kingship while David still lives. Nathan, now Bathsheba's ally, informs her of the plot and conspires with her to ensure that Solomon will become king.

File:Bathsheba-and-adonijah.jpg

Bathsheba receives Adonijah's request to marry David's concubine, Abishag.

Bathsheba enters the king's presence, tells him of Adonijah's actions, and reminds him of a promise he apparently made that Solomon would reign after him. "My lord the king," she implores him, "the eyes of all Israel are on you, to learn from you who will sit on the throne of my lord the king after him. Otherwise, as soon as my lord the king is laid to rest with his fathers, I and my son Solomon will be treated as criminals." (1 Kings 1:20-21)

Nathan confirms Bathsheba's report, and David immediately determines to have Solomon anointed and enthroned that same day. Beneficiaries in this counter-coup, beside Bathsheba and Nathan, are the priest Zadok and the military captain Benaiah son of Jehoiada. On the wrong side of events are Adonijah, the priest Abiathar and David's long-time general Joab, the very man who had conspired with David in the murder of Bathsheba's first husband.

After David's death, Solomon carries out his father's deathbed command and has Benaiah assassinate Joab. The handsome Adonijah, however, wins a temporary reprieve, "if he proves worthy." Bathsheba plays a role again at this point, as Adonijah requests that she asks Solomon to give him David's young concubine, Abishag, as his wife. Bathsheba approaches Solomon with the request, which he interprets as treasonous. He uses the occasion as a basis to justify the execution of Adonijah.

In rabbinical literature

In Talmudic tradition, Bathsheba may have been providentially destined from the time of creation to become in due course the legitimate wife of David, but this relation was prematurely precipitated by David's impetuous act of adultery with her. One midrash portrays the influence of Satan bringing about the sinful relation of David and Bathsheba as follows: Bathsheba was on the roof of her house behind a screen. Satan, disguised of a bird, flies out and David shoots at him, striking the screen; thus Bathsheba's naked beauty is revealed and David is unable to resist the lust that this engenders in him (Sanhedrin 107a).

Other rabbis excuse David's act as mere fornication and not adultery, on the grounds that soldiers customarily left their wives with a bill of divorce, in order to enable them to remarry if their husbands went missing in action. Another opinion holds that Uriah was guilty of treason for refusing to obey David's order to sleep in his own house, and that his alleged murder was actually a lawful execution.

In Christianity

In the Gospel of Matthew (1:6) Bathsheba is listed as an ancestor of Jesus, although she is refered to not by her own name, but as Solomon's mother, who had been "Uriah's wife." This gospel goes out of its way to mention four paricular Old Testament women in Jesus' lineage. The first is Tamar, who committed adultery with her father-in-law Judah in order to perpetuate his dying lineage. Another was Ruth, a Moabite who married her husband's kinsmen Boaz even though this was a violation of the strict interpetation of Jewish law (Ezra 9:1). The other was Rahab, the mother of Boaz. Thus, three of those named were women whose marriages were in some sense suspect. Some interpret this, as well as Bathsheba's becoming the mother of [Solomon]], Israel's greatest king, as being a sign of God's grace. Others believe there may be a special providence at work in Jesus' lineage, in which these woman played a special role.

In Islamic tradition

David is considered a prophet in the Islamic tradition, and Islam does not ascribe sin to the prophets of Allah. Thus, in the Qur'an, there is no story of sin with Bath-sheba, nor is there the episode of the return of Uriah and his sleeping in the king's house. The child that dies is not mentioned, nor is there any mention of Nathan or his part for Solomon's succession. While Christians and Jews may consider these ommissions suspect, it is well to remember that if one were to read the story of David Chronicles rather than 2 Samuel, the story of David's sin with Bathsheba would be very hard to discern.

Critical view

Bathsheba by Karl Brullov

The passages in which Bathsheba is mentioned are 2 Samuel 11:2-12:24, and 1 Kings 1, 2 both of which are believed to be from the oldest stratum of the books of Samuel and Kings. This is particularly noteworthy in that the story of David's sin with Bathsheba is completely omitted from the account of Chronicles, which likewise omits Nathan's condemnation of David, the death of David of Bathsheba's first child, and other episodes embarrassing to both Daivd 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 counselors, it has been conjectured that Bathsheba was a granddaughter of Ahithophel. Some suggest that Ahitophel's desertion of David at the time of Absalom's rebellion was related to David's conduct toward Bathsheba.

David's conduct toward one of his earlier wives, Abigail, may also be instructive in relation to Bathsheba. Abigail was the wife of Nabal the Calebite, who had offended David's men by refusing to offer them tribute (1 Sam. 25). David was about to take revenege of Nabal's entire clan when Abigail approached him with gifts and convinced him not to sin by bloodying his hands, assuring David that God would bless him richly in the future. David accepted Abigail's advice, and she soon became his wife when Nabal died at Yahweh's hand instead of David's. This story may suggest that an alternative course existed for David and Bathsheba by which Bathsheba could have become his wife without David's first committing adultery with her or murdering her husband.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain.

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Bathsheba  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Bathsheba"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.