You’ve probably heard more than a few sermons that went something like this:
David wasn’t where he was supposed to be. Instead he was lusting, and spotted Bathsheba, then committed adultery. Afterward he betrayed Uriah, and essentially had the man murdered to cover his tracks. David’s punishment was the loss of his newborn son, and immediately after that, David accepted the hard lesson and turned back to the Lord.
Sin to repentance to redemption. And yes, that’s David’s story. It’s a tale we tell frequently because it shows how someone (even a man after God’s own heart, 1 Samuel 13:14) can commit atrocious sins and still find redemption.
Bathsheba’s story is quite different.
Whenever we tell this story of David and Bathsheba, something usually gets completely ignored: David didn’t just commit adultery with Bathsheba, he sexually assaulted her. If saying that out loud makes us uncomfortable, we need to consider why. Here’s why we should call it what it is:
David was her king, and not only that, he was the anointed king of God Almighty. Bathsheba was David’s subject. Just like Esther, Bathsheba had no choice in the matter of having sex with her king. Or for that matter, doing whatever else her king desired of her.
“Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home.”
— 2 Samuel 11: 4 (NIV)
There is no scenario where Bathsheba could have freely given consent to whatever happened in that palace. There is no consent in a harem, it just didn’t work that way. In every other similar situation, we would call what happened here sexual assault or rape.
The reason for that—and I believe this is why teachers leave this element out of the story—is because whenever there is a power dynamic (whenever a leader makes a sexual proposition to his subordinate) there is always an element of coercion. It’s either expressed, implied, or threatened.
This is a problem for those who hold that Biblical marriage means women must submit to men in all areas. If women aren’t free to offer or reject sexual consent, where does that leave complimentarian pastors? In a tight trap.
Better to just avoid the conversation, and focus on David instead.
To put it another way, there is no equality in a relationships where one person holds all the cards, be they a boss, a commander, a prison guard, a parent, a spouse, a king, or what have you. The subordinate can either obey or resist, but those are really their only options.
Let’s take this scenario outside of the Bible for a moment and apply it to everyday life.
Scenario 1: The teacher sees one of his students’ Instagram pictures. He texts someone to bring her to his office. The teacher has sex with her there and then she goes home.
Scenario 2: The Governor sees one of his staffers looking beautiful in a meeting. Later he sends some state troopers to bring her to the Governor’s mansion that afternoon. She arrives, the Governor has sex with her, and then she goes home.
Scenario 3: At a summer beach picnic, a pastor sees one of the women in his congregation in a swimsuit. When it’s over, he instructs his deacons to bring her to his office. He has sex with her, and then she goes back home.
Hopefully we all see the evil inherent in each of these scenarios: A man in power coercing a woman under his influence into sex.
“But what if they are willing participants?” one might ask. What if they’re like Monica Lewinski, or a Lolita?
The corporate and secular world understands that you don’t mess around with your employees, or students, or staff members. You certainly don’t proposition them, or have others “bring them” to you. That kind of reckless misconduct will get you fired in practically every field. And it should.
We have tens of thousands of real life testimonials about this—from women and men—and frequently the victim relates that they were paralyzed in fear of what might happen if they dared to refuse. Nobody shies away from calling it sexual assault when it comes to kids being seduced by teachers or babysitters.
The victims ask themselves:
Will there be retribution if I refuse? Would anyone ever believe me if I expose them? Will they smear me or my reputation? If I just go along, will it just be over faster and I can go back home and forget it ever happened? If I tell my spouse/parent/friend, will they lash out at me? Or will my husband kill him? Will they blame me for bringing it on myself? Will there be a scandal, loss of income, demotion? What will happen to my kids? What will my parents say? What will my youth group think?
All of these fears may flash in the victim’s mind in the blink of an eye, and often the shock is too much to overcome. Submission is the default for many people, so they obey, and the violation is often over almost as fast at it began.
Stunned disbelief follows. How did that even happen? Disassociation sometimes sets in to cope with it.
If human nature and the history of domestic violence studies are any indication, this is exactly what happened to Bathsheba.
There are all sorts of terrible fictional accounts of this that portray Bathsheba as some willing participant, which is in no way supported by the Biblical text. What is supported by the text and what we know of the culture and situation at the time, is something more like this:
She had just finished bathing after getting over her period. Her husband was off at war. Suddenly, armed men show up at her door.
“You must come with us,” one of them says, perhaps with a smirk. “King David wishes to see you at the palace.”
“But why? Who am I to appear before the King?”
“Never mind that, come along with us.”
“Now?”
“Yes, right now.”
Bathsheba is escorted through the streets and up to the palace, past the king’s guards, past whispering servants who glance as she walks by. Perhaps one or two of David’s wives or concubines see her and roll their eyes. Bathsheba’s heart begins to race.
She is taken to his bedroom where he looks her up and down. He approaches, touches her.
Soon it’s over. Bathsheba is free to leave.
She hurries home, wondering how her world has just been turned upside down. She longs for her husband to be there but just as quickly is relieved he’s not. He must never know.
A month passes, and suddenly she knows.
“The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.””
More time passes while David tries to cover the tracks of his abuse. Failing that, David arranges her husband’s death in battle.
“When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son.”
In modern churchianity, that’s usually where the story ends. Sometimes we discuss the prophet Nathan’s rebuke of David, but that’s side dressing to the main point that David committed this great sin of adultery and murder because he wasn’t where he should have been doing what he was supposed to do.
He was out of position. He lusted, because we’re told that’s “everyman’s battle.” The moral of the story: Position yourself so you don’t do what David did. But if you do, turn back to God after you’ve sinned.
But do we ever talk about what Bathsheba lost?
- She was forced into another man’s bed and then sent back like dirty laundry.
- Her husband was killed by another man trying to cover his tracks.
- Widowed, scandalized, and pregnant she was taken from her home and brought into the king’s sizable harem.
- When she finally gave birth, she at least had a child of her own, someone to cherish in this lonely palace.
- But suddenly the Lord Himself declares her child—the only good thing to come from this surrealistic nightmare—will die for David’s sin.
“Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”
Nathan replied, “The Lord has taken away your [ḥaṭṭāṯəḵā, singular] sin. You are not going to die. Butbecause by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the Lord, the son born toyou will die.”
After Nathan had gone home, the Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and he became ill.”
Eventually Bathsheba is given another son by David—Solomon—and also their children Shammua, Shobab, and Nathan. In church we tend to end this story on a high note, but I circle back to my original question:
Why do we refuse to recognize that what David did to Bathsheba is not merely lust-driven “adultery” (a word not actually used in the biblical account), but sexual assault or rape? Or if we recognize it, why do we refuse to teach on it?
I believe the answer to that is because of another great lie underscoring modern church culture, something we also don’t like to discuss or teach on: Headship. The truth is that Biblical headship means “source,” as in, the source of a river, not ruler.
I made the case earlier that when a hierarchical structure exists, where one person is subordinate to another, true consent is never possible by the subordinate; they will either submit or resist.
And modern Christianity often teaches that women are subordinate to men, that they must submit to male leadership in all things and in every room of the house.
This was not the authority pyramid in the Garden of Eden. It was not taught by Jesus, and where one might argue it’s discussed in the Mosiac Law (Numbers 30 for instance), it’s enmeshed in cultural norms for specific circumstances. The notion of all-male authority was not a characteristic of the early church either, not until around 300 years later when some Christians began erecting non-Biblical hierarchies all over the place.
Another reason why this isn’t taught is because good, well-meaning teachers and pastors just haven’t thought much about it. Or if they have, they haven’t thought about it from a woman’s perspective. This is another reason why we need more women teaching and pastoring in church, and not merely in Sunday school classrooms or women’s events.
Imagine if it were to become common in Sunday sermons to hear pastors teaching that, “No, ladies, you don’t have to submit to your husband’s carnal, often selfish appetites in the sack. You have equal footing in every room of the house, and mutual consent is required for all decisions, especially for ones that involve your body.”
The idea that men are in authority over women is highly problematic in the context of marriage. Marriage implies sex, and sex between two individuals on different tiers of the authority structure isn’t tolerated anywhere else in civilized society.
No matter how you frame it—coach over player, principal over teacher, manager over supervisor, supervisor over employee, lieutenant over sergeant, director over starlet, executive over aide, President over intern—we always recognize sexual pressure from the powerful over those beneath them, as sin.
Comply or resist; those are your two options. But since the text doesn’t say Bathsheba resisted, why didn’t she?
It is a common assumption that any woman threatened with being raped would do everything in her power to physically resist…but that’s not what we find…In fact, most women who are sexually assaulted do not resist. The fear is overwhelming. They often feel helpless. Sometimes the make a conscious choice not to resist because they are afraid if they resist, they will be hurt even worse.
— Dr. David Lisak, clinical psychologist
Absolute male leadership over women is a perversion of Paul’s specific teachings to specific congregations in specific locations and cultures. But some in the Church have taken that perversion as license to subjugate women in many areas, including their own bedrooms, with catastrophic results for marriages and families.
I believe this is one reason why few people recognize—or if they recognize, refuse to say out loud—that David raped Bathsheba. Another is that doing so makes David’s sin that much more atrocious, and we don’t like to forgive rapists. We certainly don’t like to call rapists men after God’s own heart, even if they’ve repented and embraced the restoration He provides.
But God primary focus, for us and for David, is not what we’ve done but who we worship. And even in his sin, David never worshiped another.
The history of Israel’s kings illustrates the point. King David was guilty of the worst of crimes against humanity in the incident with Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite. He was clearly in violation of the law and deserving of death. Nevertheless, his belief in who Yahweh was among all gods never wavered…Yet other kings of Israel and Judah were tossed aside and both kingdoms sent into exile—because they worshiped other gods. Personal failure, even of the worst kind, did not send the nation into exile. Choosing other gods did.
—Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm
If we can come to terms with the fact that our identities are not our actions, that all persons are image bearers regardless of their worst sins, then we can begin to understand the story of David and Bathsheba as a much grander redemption story. We can dare to see other sinners—including rapists, abusers, murderers, pedophiles, drug traffickers, terrorists—the way God sees them: as lost sheep in need of rescue from the snatches of death.
That begins with us coming to terms with what David’s assault on Bathsheba actually was: a powerful man coercing a subordinate woman into satisfying his sexual desire. Fortunately for him and for us, that’s not where the story ends.
You can follow me on Telegram, Substack, Truth Social, GETTR, Gab, and X. You can subscribe to receive new posts to your inbox for free, as well as get information on our books and other endeavors.
P.S. If you have a bunch of arguments in your mind about Bathsheba “being on the roof” or the word “adultery” in scripture, here is an excellent article addressing many facets of traditional misteachings.
P.S.S. If you are wrestling with the idea of marriage and male headship, or have questions about consent and/or marital rape, here are some wonderful resources to consider.
My wife and I are a donor-supported ministry. If you enjoy our work, please consider a paid subscription in the amount of your choice. If you’d like to make a one time contribution, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee or visit our donations page at Copperlight Wood.
If you enjoyed this article, you may enjoy these as well: