Today’s post will begin a series of discussions on Bethsheba, a woman whose story cannot be hidden. Bethsheba lived in Jerusalem with her husband Uriah. The husband served as a soldier in king David’s army. So as at the time the Bible introduces Bethsheba, Uriah was fighting for the nation of Israel. We are not told how long Bethsheba and Uriah were married. Bethsheba and Uriah might have lived a simple life in their home. The person who caused the big changes in this story was David, king of Israel. Bethsheba was the only wife of Uriah. David on the other hand had a number of wives and concubines. As the king, he was entitled to marry as many women as he could as long as those women are not married to other men. On the geographical front, the topology of the buildings during those times were such that the king lived in a massive palace and the people lived in smaller houses. Thus, the king can see the other houses and sometimes inside the houses when he stands on his roof. You remember when the Abimelek, king of Gerar saw Isaac romancing Rebekah through his window? One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful (2 Samuel 11:2) When the story of Bethsheba begins in 2 Samuel, we are immediately introduced to the fact that David was supposed to be on the battlefield but he delegated Joab and he stayed back home: “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem” (2 Samuel 11:1). David did not just stay home, he went on his roof to look at his beautiful city and saw what he wouldn’t have seen if he was on the battlefield: “One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful” (2 Samuel 11:2). One beautiful woman bathing was probably no big deal because David had access to many beautiful women and if what his eyes saw tempted him, he could have easily satisfied his cravings without even contacting this particular woman. David was not satisfied with just seeing, he went the extra mile to know the identity of this woman. The very determined David, sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite” (2 Samuel 11:3). This description of the woman was enough information to alert the king with a burning desire that this woman is taken by another and as such, not a perfect match for the king. David wanted just more than he saw. He burnt with desires and emotions and the king who could slay giants was slayed by the beauty of this woman. The wife of Uriah did not even know that she had caused a king to be restless. David was idling at home. He stayed back instead of going to war. In his idling state, the devil found him a job. The job was the strange urge to have what does not belong to him. On the other hand, the woman David craved for, was the wife of a man who had sacrificed his life to fight for David. Uriah left his beautiful wife to go and fight but here is the king who cannot concentrate because he saw the nakedness of the wife of his loyal servant. What an irony of life. Bethsheba at this time had no idea that her general body routine of bathing had caused the king to desire her. We might be quick to ask where Bethsheba was standing to bathe. I lived in a rural community and I know for a fact that if your neighbours are rich and have built mansions and you cannot afford to build a good bathroom, then you would likely be visible to those on the higher floors when you enter your “open-top” bathroom. Bethsheba had finished bathing and gone to her house but David is still struggling from the sight he saw. In Psalm 1: 1, David wrote that, “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers.” He had first hand experience of the progress of sin. In the Bethsheba experience, David moved from his bedroom to the roof, he walked about the roof and he saw the woman who was bathing. David did not just see but stopped to even make enquiries about this woman. We will continue on the next post to see what other steps David made.
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