This tweet has been rocking my timeline all day... arguing that David's relationship with Bathsheba was not consensual.

Had any of you ever read such a thing?

Interesting book that I'm conflicted about adding to my reading list.

Rape or consensual.....didn't end well for him.

I can understand the rape claim. While we don't know if she truly consented, we can be confident that she really didn't have much choice. The power dynamic, and the way women were treated, in that day and age is what leads one to the claim that it was rape. Was it truly? I don't know. She may have been completely willing, but assuming she loved Uriah, I question how willing she was.

I think this whole exchange is good. Again, it's impossible to know whether or not there was consent. This (difference between how a minister and survivor may see the Joseph account) is something I hadn't considered.

I had never heard that before this.

This is more how I'd always heard things.

https://theorthodoxlife.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/bathsheba-is-the-virtuous-woman-of-proverbs-31/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

One thing to add here that I think is interesting.

The NRSV uses the term "to get" while others often use "to take" - "So David sent messengers to get/to take her". That word in Hebrew, "laqach", means: "to take, get, fetch, lay hold of, seize, receive, acquire, buy, bring, marry, snatch, take away." It's also used in 1 Samuel 8 when Samuel warns what Israel's king will do.

1 Samuel 8: "...he will take (laqach) your sons and appoint them to his chariots... He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards... He will take one-tenth of your grain and your vineyards... He will take your male and female slaves... He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves." (The NRSV uses "to take" here in 1 Samuel 8.)

In the context of Samuel, I think it's very difficult to read it as anything other than rape.

(I don't know Biblical Hebrew but "laqach" and the reference to 1 Samuel 8 was in my handwritten notes in my bible. If I made a mistake here, please correct me.)

2 Samuel 12 says that he comforted her... which to me implies a relationship

craigernaught said:

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Yeah, but that's after David has her husband killed and then marries her. It would make sense that they have a relationship after they are married.

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Why?

I'm not buying the rape theory.

David tries to cover up his sin by getting Uriah to sleep with her after coming home. It seems she would likely tell him what happened if she was raped thus David wouldn't try that for fear of being exposed by Bathsheba.

You could say it didn't matter because of his power and stature but if that was the case then why did he have Uriah killed? He clearly feared him knowing.

Bathsheba is punished when the baby dies.

Not rape. The problem is that modern feminazis think all sex is rape.

Yet this relationship gave the world Solomon down to Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus.

AGC said:

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craigernaught said:

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Yeah, but that's after David has her husband killed and then marries her. It would make sense that they have a relationship after they are married.

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Why?

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Why what?

Married people tend to, you know, have a relationship with each other.

craigernaught said:

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Sounds like rape.

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And you sound like a modern feminazi!

To me this is one of those situations where trying to gauge ancients by modern morals gets complicated. David clearly committed adultery and clearly had her husband killed. That's plenty to deserve the punishments he received.

The modern idea of rape is based in the ideas that women are equal and have by law the right to refuse sex. Neither if those things are true in this case. David was basically an absolute monarch. No one was his equal and no one in the Kingdom could refuse him anything. So in modern terms, he raped every single person with which he had sex after becoming king. Same for every other king of every other nation. I'm sure there are plenty who would claim these Kings are the worst serial rapists in history, and by one standard they would be right. However, I don't think David, his sexual partners, or their society at large would view it the same way

Are you saying that Bathsheba doesn't have the right to refuse sex to David?

Of course she does. She's married to Uriah.

That's exactly what I'm saying. She certainly had a opinion on the matter, and there was the Law. But David was an absolute monarch. The only thing that could hold back David was David, and the only one who could punish him was God.

My apologies for not being clearer. Yes, you could call it rape. I think it's also important to put it in context of that culture. Would Uriah, David, or Bathsheba consider the act rape? Maybe, just trying to be clear. Otherwise we're pretty much saying that every woman prior to the sexual revolution of the mid 20th century was a rape victim, and that seems a bit ridiculous.

craigernaught said:

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Why do you think it is likely she would tell Uriah?

I don't think it's necessary to add in a whole lot of extra stuff into the text. The Bible says David wasn't where he was supposed to be, was watching her bathe, sent men to find out her deal, upon learning her father and husband were away had those men "take her", and then had sex with her in the palace. There's no indication anywhere in the text that it was consensual or that there was some kind of romance, seduction, relationship, or really any decision making at all by Bathsheba.

Sounds like rape.

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On the one hand married people have a relationship (David and Bathsheba) but on the other hand why would she tell Uriah?

There are tons of OT examples of people who are married but don't really have a relationship. That sounds more like adding something than assuming she wouldn't tell her husband. He's going to find out eventually we know, so why is it unlikely she'd allow him to think her unfaithful, assuming she was raped?

ramblin_ag02 said:

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That's exactly what I'm saying. She certainly had a opinion on the matter, and there was the Law. But David was an absolute monarch. The only thing that could hold back David was David, and the only one who could punish him was God.

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I think this is completely wrong. David, does not have the right to Bathsheba's body and saying that he does or that Bathsheba can't refuse is engaging in your own anachronistic creation. The monarch could have just had her get a divorce to Uriah and then married her and everything would have been fine. Divorce is legal.

But he didn't do that. Why not?

Instead he inquired about her situation, found out the men were gone, then took her, then had sex with her. Then he conspired to get her husband to sleep with her to cover up what he did - not what she did. When that failed, he had him killed and then married her. Why not just skip all those steps and marry her in the first place? He's the king after all, right? The only reason that makes sense is that Bathsheba and Uriah wouldn't want to get divorced and his only option then was to kill him. King's still have to answer to the people and Bathsheba's husband and father are important, powerful people.

Kings face the wrath of their people for bad decision making all the time. Your argument doesn't make sense.

ramblin_ag02 said:

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My apologies for not being clearer. Yes, you could call it rape. I think it's also important to put it in context of that culture. Would Uriah, David, or Bathsheba consider the act rape? Maybe, just trying to be clear. Otherwise we're pretty much saying that every woman prior to the sexual revolution of the mid 20th century was a rape victim, and that seems a bit ridiculous.

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Why would that make every woman prior to the mid 20th century a rape victim?

A king taking a vulnerable woman from her home by force, having sex with her in the palace, and then conspiring to kill her husband is in no way comparable to women getting married and then having sex with their husbands, regardless of the power differences in the ancient world.

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No way of knowing. But hey lets assume that Bathsheba was totally against getting it on with the king because there is no way that would have been a step up for her.

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This isn't evidence that she wanted to have sex with the king. Most people don't want that, and instead just want to live their lives in peace with their families. Starting with the assumption that she wanted to sleep her way to the top is completely unnecessary.

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at the end of it all, it was fairly common knowledge what david had done regarding setting up Uriah's death. For her to go back to David afterward and continue to have sex with him and conceive solomon would have been unthinkable unless there was consent to the initial act.

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Her husband was dead. She was pregnant. It was impossible that her husband was the father of the baby. Honestly, other than marrying the king, what option does she have? This is a serious question. What's the alternative?

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had the relationship been nonconsensual it would be expected that any child she bore to david she probably would have aborted shortly after conception as women had several methods of doing so back then amd men were generally mystified and kept in the dark regarding the process of conception and birth.

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Why would this be expected?

I don't understand the attempts by so many to jump through hoops to try to protect David here.

Who is defending David? At the very least he's an adulterous murderer in the situation, and by any modern context he's also a rapist. I just think that using our modern definition of rape is anachronistic. It's good to use a modern perspective, but it's also good to see how those people viewed this. I'm not so sure the rest of Israel in David's time would have seen this as rape.

In regards to the "all women in history were raped", that refers to a power imbalance and lack of body autonomy. Women throughout history have lacked the ability to chose their husbands and the ability to refuse sex in a marriage. That sounds like rape to us.

Everyone jumping through hoops to justify the belief that he didn't rape her.

Your argument is separate from the others, but it still doesn't make sense. While "rape" as we know it today doesn't exist in the same manner as the ancient world, it's still silly to say that he didn't rape her. He clearly did. That's like saying that there wasn't genocide in the past because that category doesn't exist. Genocide in the ancient world is still wrong and it's still genocide. Some things are culturally conditioned and context is necessary to properly pass moral judgment. Things like rape and genocide aren't. What he did was no less wrong then than it is now. Ancient people would have viewed it as just as monstrous, perhaps moreso, than we do today. The Bible describes this I'm detail after all.

The anachronism by lexicography argument here, in my view, isn't very good. He took her from her home with armed men and had sex with her.

Sex against the woman's will is something that the Bible talks about. In such a circumstance, only the man is punished, not the woman. In some circumstances she can marry him afterwards because her prospects for marriage would become extremely limited. The ancient world understands what this is even if the categories and implications aren't exactly the same. The Bible doesn't use the word rape, but it talks about non-consensual sex a number of times. "Rape" is the word we have for that.

Bathsheba is wronged here. So is Uriah. David is at fault.

Yeah, I'm probably just parsing hairs here. I think we agree on the modern definition of rape, and we agree on what the Bible and the Law says about rape. And by either of those definitions David is a rapist. The only thing that I'm trying to say is that those definitions are not the same.

By the modern definition, consent requires two equal parties, neither of which has undo power over the other, full working mental faculties, and enthusiastic participation. Under those definitions David was always a rapist. He always had undo power over every sexual partner he had. Just look at the scandals involving the sultanate of Brunei. There are plenty of women who were invited there and ended up being raped. Some agreed to sex while there, but they were basically prisoners in a kingdom where their food, water, clothes, and freedom were all provided or withheld at the whim of the Sultan. Someone in that situation cannot give consent. Refusal could cost them their lives or freedom, and there is a good chance their refusal would be ignored anyway.

We rightly call that rape today. However, that was the norm for thousands of years in any monarchy. It was also the case to a lesser extent in every marriage at that time. The same coercion and lack of self-determination was present on a smaller scale. So you could legitimately say all women prior to the sexual revolution were raped. I think that takes away the agency of women during that time. Surely there were women prior to that time that were happy with their situation, despite having less control over it than a modern woman would have.