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Bathsheba in the City of David
2 Samuel 11:1–12:24
King David violates sacred moral codes to satisfy his carnal desire
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Where Are We?
The small ridge known today as the City of David was the first hilltop settled in the primeval city of Jerusalem. Although not the highest hill in the area, it boasted two major advantages appealing to the ancients who arrived here at least five thousand years ago: the ridge is surrounded on three sides by valleys that provide an excellent natural defense system, and the Gihon spring, an abundant water source, sits at its foot. Two millennia later, in approximately 1000 BCE, King David chose this city, known then as Jebus and afterward as the City of David, to be the newly crowned capital of the united kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel. Situated smack on the border of the tribal lands of Judah and Benjamin and formerly an enclave of Jebusites probably of Hittite origin, this ridge was politically neutral ground. In the days of David the historical circle was closed, and the city was known by its original name, Jerusalem.
The City of David expanded north and west over the centuries, and this narrow ridge became distant from the city’s center. It was eventually left outside the walls when the Crusaders rebuilt the city 2,100 years after David’s time, at the turn of the twelfth century CE. The present city walls, constructed by the Ottoman Turks in the mid-16th century CE, cemented the isolation of the City of David by excluding it once again.
Fig. 11. Silwan village, the mirror image of the City of David
Setting the Scene
The steep Kidron Valley beneath us dramatically separates the City of David from the Mount of Olives ridge across the way to the east. The Arab village of Silwan, which sits directly opposite the City of David, is its mirror image and a superb visual aid. Silwan’s dense construction of houses built right into the cliff side is probably almost identical to the urban setting of David’s city. David’s palace would have been situated on the highest part of the ridge. As he strolled on the rooftop, David would have enjoyed a bird’s-eye view of all his subjects’ roofs and their activities in this outdoor space that often functioned as an additional room of the house. He may have observed them doing laundry, sun-drying fruits and legumes, weaving, grinding grains, and sometimes, bathing.
The Context
After many difficult years as an outlaw, David had successfully claimed the throne of the people of Israel. An outstanding warrior and superb politician, he had overcome his adversaries and had consolidated the different estranged tribes of Judah and northern Israel under his leadership. His coronation was celebrated in the presence of the elders of all the tribes, and he was now the undisputed king of Israel (2 Sam. 5:3).
Firmly ensconced in the seat of power, David turned his attention to other important objectives. After establishing Jerusalem as the political capital of his kingdom (2 Sam. 5:7), he built himself a fortified residence (2 Sam. 5:11), brought the ark of the covenant up to the city permanently (2 Sam. 6:2–5, 12–17), and gave Jerusalem the status of a king’s sanctuary and royal palace.
David also put most of his enemies out of business. In addition to defeating the Philistines, the Moabites, the Edomites, Amalek, the Aramaean-Ammonite coalition, and a few other choice foes (2 Sam. 8:1–14), David ensured that no one from the house of Saul, Israel’s first king, would come back to haunt him. In a bloody civil war that preceded his coronation, most of Saul’s living relatives were brutally executed (2 Sam. 3:27; 4:5–8). He declined intimacy with his wife Michal, Saul’s daughter, so she would not produce children (2 Sam. 6:23). Only Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s crippled son, was spared, as his handicap disqualified him for the monarchy. Since he posed no threat, he was invited to eat at the king’s table (2 Sam. 9).
All the while David was busy producing heirs, siring eleven sons (2 Sam. 5:14–15) and probably at least as many daughters by his numerous wives and concubines.
David could allow himself to feel confident in his accomplishments. They were virtually guaranteed by God, who promised him that his descendants would forever rule over Israel (2 Sam. 7). At this point David had comfortably completed the transition from warrior to statesman. After years of hiding out in caves and sleeping in battlefields, he could sit back and admire his accomplishments from the plush comfort of the throne room. Victorious over his adversaries, middle-aged, perhaps sporting a pair of love handles, he could now turn his energies inward to his own domain from the comfort of his regal abode.
The biblical narrator hangs the Chekhovian gun on the wall at the beginning of the story when he announces, “At the turn of the year, the season when kings go out [to battle], David sent Joab . . .” (2 Sam. 11:1). War was a seasonal occupation, waged only after the rainy months and their hazards were safely over. One of an ancient Middle Eastern king’s most important responsibilities was the command of his army, but David seemed to have retired himself from this nuisance. When it was time to head back out to the battlefield, the king remained in the comfort of the palace and sent his deputy in his place. Now he had some spare time on his hands. And that’s when the trouble began.
Who Knew?
Two pats on the lap
Two claps
Two alternating horizontal hand slices
Two alternating vertical fist knocks
Two alternating touch-your-elbow-and-wiggle-your-fingers
These are the hand movements many of us learned in religious school to accompany our raucous singing of “David, melech Yisrael, hai, hai v’kayam” (David, King of Israel, he’s alive and well). Would we have been gesturing so wildly had we known, in our preadolescent naïveté, that the hero we were celebrating was actually a philandering, conniving murderer? Why didn’t anyone tell us that David, king of Israel, broke at least three of the Ten Commandments?
David’s integrity is further thrown into question when he is compared to the chivalrous Uriah. In town on an errand for the king, Uriah refused to partake of the pleasures of his lovely wife out of solidarity with his comrades-in-arms, who remained in the field (2 Sam. 11:11). It seemed there could be no soldier purer in heart and more devoted to the king and his cause than Uriah. David’s devious attempts to force him into the arms of Bathsheba to cover for his reprehensible behavior do not reflect well on His Majesty. Any last remnants of sympathy for David dissipate when David sends Uriah back to the front bearing his own execution order.
The Messiah Connection
So it is puzzling that David has the undisputed role, according to the biblical tradition, as the progenitor of the Messiah—the savior of humanity and the redeemer at the end of days (see, e.g., Isa. 11:1–10). With the arrival of this savior who can trace his roots back to David, the world will finally be cured of its imperfections. Evil and disease will be eradicated, universal peace and social justice will prevail, the Jewish people will be ingathered in the land of Israel, and the world’s harmony will be restored. The Messiah represents the aspirations of generations for a perfect world. The hope for the Messiah’s arrival has been an integral element of Jewish belief for centuries; many Jewish prayer services include an expression of this longing, which has strengthened Jews over centuries of persecution.
So who air-brushed the felonious David into the father of the messianic line? Throughout the ages David has emerged again and again as one of the most beloved protagonists of the Bible, probably because so many readers identify with his heroic imperfection. The majority have preferred to remember David in the spirit of the old Johnny Mercer song “Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative” when they read and reread those stories. In their eyes, and ultimately in the Jewish national consciousness they nurtured, the golden epoch of David’s reign was the model for the messianic age. Through David, God brought the nation of Israel to the best of times: prosperity, tribal unity, and justice, and his military victories promised an era of peace. Most readers would not allow the Bathsheba affair, in their eyes simply a minor transgression on David’s part, to overshadow the hope that a new David would one day restore perfection to the world.
The Man Who Had Everything
Yet after reading the disturbing story of David, Bathsheba, and Uriah, we may still find it hard to accept David in such a pivotal role in the future of the Jewish people. Indeed, many prefer to remember David as he was before this shocking turn of events—the sweet singer of Israel, the underdog warrior aglow in the spirit of the Lord. Before the Bathsheba imbroglio, David was the golden boy. He had everything—empire, power, wealth, women, and, most important, a deeply intimate relationship with the Creator. But the story must be read to its conclusion, where we learn that David was ultimately corrupted by his unbridled power. He came to believe that as king he could blatantly defy any law to satisfy his own desires.
It might be helpful to view David as a symbol of the human capacity for egoism, the tendency to consider only oneself and one’s own interests. Somewhere along the way the divinely appointed king of Israel lost the understanding that he was a tool for the greater good of everyone, a process experienced by countless individuals who have reached positions of power. David’s hubris and his subsequent fall from grace may suggest that trust in political leadership is a disappointment waiting to happen—if King David couldn’t resist the urge, then no one is incorruptible. Sooner or later, even the most noble of spirits will succumb to the temptation that absolute power affords. The great question then becomes, now that you’ve screwed up royally, how do you fix it?
Repair What Is Broken
In the Jewish tradition the answer is teshuva, or repentance—acknowledging you have erred and resolving never to make the same mistake again. However, David was so drunk with power that he was incapable of judging his own behavior. He had to be manipulated by Nathan into looking in the mirror (2 Sam. 12:1–25), but once he glimpsed himself in all his ugliness, he understood the gravity of his actions. He searched inward and arrived at the inevitable conclusion that he had sinned, big time, and verbally confessed.
Some sages posit that the process David experienced represents the human aspiration to perfection. All mortals are flawed, and no one can be perfect—even David, who ostensibly had everything going for him. Therefore, the human ability to soul search, to recognize errors, and to attempt to remedy them is our only chance for redemption.
The hope for the Messiah’s arrival is based on the understanding that the world and all who inhabit it are imperfect. Therefore, the person who will fulfill the role of the savior of the world must be a paragon of the human aspiration to perfection. For many people David represents that ideal.
Postscript: The Legacy of Bathsheba
While Bathsheba plays a pivotal role in this story, little about her can be inferred from the text in which she speaks only one sentence: “I’m pregnant.” Was she a modest woman whose privacy was violated by the lustful, voyeuristic king, or a conniving temptress who deliberately exposed herself to David in the hope of gaining entrance to the corridors of power? Was she an obedient subject who respected the king’s authority or a lonely wife neglected by her absent husband (or both)? Did David simply have his way with her, or was she a party to their emotional entanglement? Her character as a pushy Jewish mother is fleshed out somewhat by the biblical authors later in the narrative when she convinces the elderly King David to choose her son Solomon to succeed him (1 Kings 1–2:40), but at this stage in her life her personality remains an enigma to the reader. Bathsheba brings to mind David’s actions, and not a three-dimensional character of her own.
Perhaps this is why her name was appropriated to describe a phenomenon known as the Bathsheba Syndrome. A term coined by two American business professors, Dean C. Ludwig and Clinton O. Longenecker, in 1993, the Bathsheba Syndrome is defined as the moral corruption of those who are powerful. It has nothing to do with Bathsheba and everything to do with King David, the paradigm for intelligent, ethical people of integrity who, once they reach the pinnacle of success, throw it all away by doing something grossly unethical that they believe they can conceal. It turns out that David, like many successful people today, was probably ill prepared to deal with the fruit of his accomplishments. After reaching the apex of power, he became complacent and lost his strategic focus (he should have been out there on the battlefield with his officers, instead of lounging around the palace, spying on other men’s wives). He abused the privileged access to people and information that came with his success (the view from the palace was for the good of the kingdom’s security, not a tool to indulge his personal fantasy). He used his organization’s resources for his own needs (he sent the servants to get Bathsheba and used Uriah to deliver his own execution warrant). He was confident that he could make the problem go away (his ultimate solution compounded his initial crime of adultery with murder).
So, what’s to be done to avoid the pitfalls of success? Business psychologists’ first recommendation is to inculcate the awareness that it can happen to anybody. They also recommend a healthy lifestyle of family, friends, and interests outside work that will balance the negative aspects of success and keep leaders down-to-earth and in touch with reality. Complacency is dangerous—evaluate strategic direction constantly, and surround yourself with a good team of ethical managers who will both support and challenge you.