2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a

Eph. 4:1-6

Using the Old Testament

By Pastor Marcia Sietstra

August 3, 2003

Today’s text from the Hebrew Scripture was a continuation of the R-rated story of David and Bathsheba, the woman David saw sunbathing and decided he had to have, even though he already had a harem full of wives. After he got her pregnant, David brought Bathsheba’s husband home from the war, so the guy would think the child was his, but the noble husband refused to go home to sleep with his wife when his troops had to camp in the field, so David arranged to have the husband killed by putting him on the front line of battle without support. Today’s story picks up where we left off last week, with the writer telling us that God’s prophet, Nathan, exposed King David’s sin to him and announced his punishment.

Nathan’s message was ‘you sin, you suffer the consequences’—a simple enough message, right? But the story carries other troubling messages if you look closely. While the story says that David’s abuse of Bathsheba is wrong and will be punished, the story leaves much to be desired as a moral tale. First, there is no hint of criticism of the royal prerogative to enjoy sexual relations with any woman David chooses, and as many of them as he wants. David has a whole harem of wives. In fact, if he had seen an unmarried woman and sent his servants to fetch her to his bed, presumably his behavior would have gone unchallenged by Nathan. His sin is taking the lamb that belongs to someone else. The tale is not about a crime against Bathsheba, but a crime against her husband. What about Bathsheba?

Even more troubling is the punishment, presumably from God. The punishment includes David’s wives being taken before his very eyes, and given to his neighbor. According to this story, the future rape of his wives by his adversary is part of God’s plan to punish David. Do you see the problem here? What about the women? There is no hint of the Christ-like love of neighbor here for women! In fact, there is no criticism at all here, for the way in which women are treated as property. Quite the contrary: the abuse of the wives is viewed as an acceptable way to punish their master.

In the patriarchal society in which David lived, this thinking reflected their legal system. Laws placed women in a category closer to slaves than to their husbands or sons. For example, if an unmarried woman was raped, the rapist would have to pay a fine or penalty not to the woman, but to her father whose property rights had been violated. Indeed, part of the penalty could include the rapist being forced to marry the daughter, as well as pay her father a specified number of animals or other goods. This is found in the laws in the book of Deuteronomy. What does this say about respect for the daughter?

In today’s story, women are simply pawns in a story about a man named David and the the penalty for his sin. His property rights will now be violated when the enemy has sexual relations with his wives, for all of Israel to see. The writer says that this is God’s plan, that this abuse will happen in order to punish David. It gets worse. If you read a little farther, the story says that Bathsheba’s baby son became ill and he died, and the writer clearly says that the Lord struck that baby.

Would our God do such a thing? Would God cause this woman’s baby to die to punish its father? I have a hard time thinking so. This does not sound like the God who Jesus revealed, and I believe that in Jesus we have a much fuller revelation of God. This story, in fact, highlights very well, some important things about interpreting the Old Testament!

First it says something about the Old Testament prophets who may have been wise, but they were far from perfect! Remember that the Old Testament was written down hundreds and hundreds of years, after the events in these stories happened. David lived in the period of kings, around 1000-960 BCE. The earliest parts of Samual may have been written in the 7th-6th century BCE, but it was not compiled until the exile ended, over 400 years after the time of David (there are several references that show awareness of the exile). So the writer has the advantage of looking back on everything that had happened to David, when he wrote about how the prophets challenged David. The writer could tell the story as though Nathan’s words were a prediction, but remember that the writer is writing this long after all the ‘predicted events’ have occurred.

The writer had most likely heard this story repeated to him as it had been told for many, many generations before. Imagine people talking around the campfires, recalling the tales of David’s sexual indiscretions and then considering the misfortunes he suffered later in life. I can imagine the wisest among the storytellers suggesting that those bad things that happened to King David were punishment for his misdeeds. Over time, this view made a lot of sense to folks. It rang true. They learned that unfortunate consequences usually follow immoral behavior. This is the nature of how God was revealed through people’s lives, throughout the history of Israel, as they assessed what happened and learned from it. This is the nature of how the Bible came to be written; it’s the record of people’s experiences of God and their understanding of those experiences.

You and I are so lucky to know that! Because knowing how the bible came to be, helps us understand that sometimes these ancient people came to some rudimentary conclusions that would later turn out to be corrected, or their ideas would mature as the centuries passed. Many beliefs are challenged and undergo change in the Bible, with the fullest revelation coming in the New Testament with Jesus. Knowing that, we look at the WHOLE Bible for the broader picture.

The writer of 2nd Samuel thought that bad things that happened were punishments from God. Look at Job, written a few hundred years later. Job says to his friends, ‘Hey, nothing I did was bad enough to deserve all the bad things that happened to me.’ The writer of Job will not accept a primitive answer to why bad things happen in life.

Look at Jesus. I think he really challenges this idea that all the bad things that happen are punishments. When some people brought a blind man to Jesus (John 9:1-3) and asked, ‘Master, who sinned that this man was born blind, his parents or him?’ Jesus replied, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.’

Today’s lesson is this: Using the Old Testament wisely takes a lot of thought and study. When someone uses the Old Testament to prove a point, be careful. Compare what it says to the WHOLE Bible, especially to what Jesus says. These stories are full of mixed messages and mangled morals.

So why keep the Old Testament in our Bible? Because it is part of our heritage and it contains much wisdom! The Old Testament books do show us how people’s religious ideas morphed and matured and changed over the centuries. And often hey have very valuable lessons to teach us, even if there is a slight risk whenever you interpret Old Testament texts. They are so easy to misuse. It’s a good reason to study well, so we learn to use them wisely. Which reminds me—there’s a Bible study on the book of Ruth starting in September, and Sunday School starts on Sept. 7. We all have a lot to learn, at any age. I hope you’ll commit to a Bible study this fall. Amen.