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Were you ever told that Bathsheba and King David had an affair? In our series of studying bible characters who suffered abuse, we are going to dive into the truth about Bathsheba and how she was a victim in three ways. We’ll look at all the things that David was supposed to be doing but didn’t. And how sin hurts innocent people and has serious consequences.
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Bathsheba
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Wounds of the Faithful Podcast. Brought to you by DSW Ministries. Your host is singer songwriter, speaker and domestic violence advocate, Diana Winkler. She is passionate about helping survivors in the church heal from domestic violence and abuse and trauma. This podcast is not a substitute for professional counseling or qualified medical help. [00:00:26] Now here is Diana. [00:00:33] Hi everyone. Welcome back to the show. I hope that you are doing well. It has been a crazy week, hasn’t it? [00:00:42] I’ve decided to do this week’s lesson on people in the Bible who have suffered abuse, prominent people in the Bible. You may have heard their story. You may only know some of their story, but not all of it.[00:01:00] I’ve decided to do this week’s lesson on Bathsheba. It has been all over Twitter, and it drives me nuts because it is very plain in the text, very clear in the Bible if you’re reading the Bible, that Bathsheba was raped. [00:01:20] She was not having an affair with King David. And so we’re going to explore that today and you’ll see for yourself that Bathsheba was a victim. And I probably need to just get off of Twitter and quit reading those feeds. But it does make me angry when we’ve got, these preachers and leaders of churches that are being misogynistic, blaming women for everything, for every man’s choice. [00:01:51] Or, not letting David, [00:01:53] Take the consequences for his bad choices, for his own sin. [00:01:58] so get your [00:02:00] Bibles out if you wanna follow along. We are going to be in Second Samuel chapter 11, [00:02:08] I’m reading from the ESV version. You can read whichever version that you enjoy. You’ll still get the same conclusion. [00:02:18] And as always, if you disagree with what I’m saying, this is just the conclusions that I’ve come upon in studying God’s word over the years. You disagree with me, that’s okay. You just probably should have a good reason for disagreeing, and be able to back that up with scripture, with the context of the Bible. [00:02:42] The historical context, cultural context, the original languages. [00:02:47] Don’t just come up with a conclusion in the Bible because everybody else believes that way, or that’s what’s comfortable for you. That’s what you’ve been told all this time. That’s not a good [00:03:00] reason. [00:03:00] You know, ask the Lord to show you truths. That’s part of reading the Bible. Some of these passages we have been going through have been really difficult. They’re not easy to read. They’re not a subject matter that is enjoyable half the time. [00:03:16] Uh, and today is no exception. It is not an enjoyable story, and I’m not claiming I have all of the answers to , all of the difficult passages in the Bible. But hey, we’re gonna search and explore and try and find the answers together, right? With the Lord’s help. So I’m gonna start reading in, chapter 11 verse one. [00:03:40] In the spring of the year, the time when the kings go out to battle, David sent Joab and his servants with him in all Israel. and they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah but David remained at Jerusalem. Okay, so the chapter opens up here. [00:04:00] Normally in the spring, that’s when you would go to war because it’s not winter, it’s not summer. [00:04:07] There isn’t any, crops that you have to harvest. It’s not, the rainy season yet, apparently, this is when it was the best time to go out to battle, and the kings usually went to battle with their soldiers because they were the leaders. [00:04:24] They led the war, and in this particular case, it’s the Ammonites. And so we noticed right away that David remained at Jerusalem. He was not with them and that kind of raises a suspicion. Why didn’t he go with his troops to war? Why did he stay behind? Most scholars believe that he should have gone with them. [00:04:52] He is not doing what he is supposed to be doing in the beginning here. [00:04:56] Um, was he lazy? Was he scared? I don’t have a [00:05:00] distinctive answer for that, [00:05:01] so let’s continue. So he’s home in the palace. Verse two, it happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch. and he was walking on the roof of the King’s house. [00:05:16] Okay, so he must have been taking a nap, resting, and he was out on the roof. Now the roof is very high because the king’s palace is always going to be up on a hill, the highest point in the valley, because that was security. [00:05:35] Of course [00:05:35] it was higher up than anybody else in the area. Let’s continue. He saw from the roof a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful. and David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? [00:05:58] So instead of going [00:06:00] back into his palace, which is what he should have done if he saw a woman bathing, but instead he asked who she was, invited all of these other people to look upon her and ask who she was. That’s the second thing he did wrong. He should have just gone back in if he was a man of honor instead of being a peeping tom. [00:06:31] And I mean, it’s one thing if it was an accident, oh, he accidentally saw her, which may have been that case in the beginning, but he should not have stood there and watched her and then got his servants involved. [00:06:51] Verse Four. So David sent Messengers. [00:06:53] And so the next part of this narrative is David sent [00:07:00] Messengers to bring her. David sent messengers to summon her to the palace. [00:07:07] And when you are summoned by the king, you don’t have a choice but to come. You can’t say, oh, well I’ve got you know, all these things to do. Gotta clean my house. [00:07:19] Whatever. No thank you. That’s not an option. So she had to come with the messengers. [00:07:24] Verse Four. And took her, and she came to him and he lay with her. [00:07:30] The king takes what he wants. And we’ve seen this, you remember when we did the study on Tamar, King David’s daughter? [00:07:42] His son raped Tamar, his sister and David didn’t do anything about it. So it seems to be, and there are other instances that David takes what he wants. [00:07:57] And it says very clearly here. [00:08:00] And he took her, he took her, it’s plain as the nose on your face. There was no affair here. It was, he took what he wanted. [00:08:11] And again, she does not have a choice in the matter. Just like when we studied Hagar, she was a slave. She was a concubine. Did not have any rights to say, no, I don’t want to have your child. This was this name, such situation. This is the king. He wanted her. He took her. [00:08:33] Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness. Then she returned to her house. [00:08:39] and this is where a lot of the preachers miss the mark. Okay, I want to go over what ritual bathing is. [00:08:51] So the phrase, “now, she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness”. That is a [00:09:00] huge sentence that people gloss over and don’t even research what that means or look into the cultural context, religious context, and miss the whole meaning of why it was even mentioned. So I’m gonna talk about what exactly is ritual purity, cuz [00:09:23] what she was doing was a ritual for worshiping in the temple, and there are several reasons to do this ritualistic cleansing, which has nothing to do with sin. It’s more of a preparation, a setting yourself aside where the seriousness of coming before God and taking the worship seriously. God requires purity, and that’s usually body, soul, and spirit. [00:09:58] So hang in [00:10:00] here with me because these details are important. [00:10:05] She was not taking a regular bath to clean off dirt with soap and water, and you wash your hair and put ointments on to make yourself smell good. That is not what is happening here. It says very clearly that she was doing her ritualistic cleansing, which is required for women after they’ve had a menstrual cycle and a few other things here. [00:10:34] And the interesting part about ritualistic cleansing is that it’s done in what’s called a mikva. M I K V A . and I’m going to show some pictures what they look like. [00:10:48] And what exactly is a mikvah? Because these preachers, they make it like she was doing some luxurious bath and she was out on her roof or her[00:11:00] courtyard and she was bathing and she did it on purpose to entice David, and make him lust after her. Well, that’s totally ridiculous [00:11:11] because the context here tells us that she was not doing that in any sense. [00:11:17] So definition of a mikva is a bath used for the purpose of ritual immersion in Judaism to achieve ritual purity. and ritual purity is through immersion in any natural collection of water, so that is spring water or groundwater, [00:11:37] you have rainwater. So the mikva is designed to simplify this requirement. So it needs to be in contact with a natural source of water. And when we were in Israel, we saw many springs underground, all over Jerusalem, all over Israel. In fact, um, [00:12:00] cisterns and springs would source the water to the mikva. So in Orthodox Judaism, these regulations are adhered to very consistent. It is central to the Orthodox Jewish community even today. [00:12:16] So even a mikva today is built before a synagogue was even built. [00:12:22] So it’s basically a pool. And so the requirements or. [00:12:28] How things are done is stated in the Mishna, which is the Jewish tradition, oral tradition, and handed down from generation to generation, centuries, [00:12:41] So ancient mikva can be found out through the land of Israel as well as in historic communities. A 2000 year old Mikva was found near Hanatan in Northern Israel. So here are the requirements. The traditional rules is according to [00:13:00] rabbinic literature, a mikva must be connected to a natural spring or well of naturally occurring water, and those can be applied by rivers, lakes, which have natural springs as their source. [00:13:13] So a cistern is filled by rainwater, and that’s permitted to act as a mikva water supply. As long as the water is never collected in a vessel, [00:13:24] ice and snow and hail are allowed to act as the supply of water to a mikva, [00:13:29] so here’s the practical stuff. A mikva must contain enough water to cover the entire body of an average size person. Based on a mikva with the dimensions of three cubits deep, one cubit wide, and one cubit long. The necessary volume of water was estimated as being approximately 575 liters. [00:13:54] So, Water that was at any time intentionally collected in any [00:14:00] vessel or transferred by human, that would render the mikva unfit for use. [00:14:04] Water cannot be pumped there by hand or carried. [00:14:07] Most contemporary mikva are indoor constructions involving rainwater collected from a cistern and passed through a duct by gravity into an ordinary bathing pool. So it’s often not unlike a spa. [00:14:21] mikva must be built into the ground or built as an essential part of a building. Portable receptacles such as bathtubs, whirlpools, or jacuzzi, can never therefore function as mikva. And so I mentioned all that because she was not taking a ritualistic bath on her roof or in her, courtyard. First of all, the Bible doesn’t say she was in a courtyard. [00:14:47] The Bible doesn’t say she was on a roof. It says that David was on the roof, so you could not be doing ritualistic bathing at your own home because look at all of these [00:15:00] rules that you had to follow. Nobody had a mikva in their backyard. Nobody had a mikva in their house. It was a community place. You had mikva s for the women, and you had the mikva for the men. [00:15:14] And you normally would have an attendant that would take your robe and you dip into the water and you come back out and you put your robe on. and the attendant would make sure that you followed the rules of the ritual purification. So why did they do the ritual purification if it had nothing to do with sin? [00:15:39] It was used by both men and women to retain ritual purity after various events, according to regulations laid down in the Torah and in classical rabbinic literature. So here’s some cases where you would need that if you were Jewish. [00:15:57] So it says, normal [00:16:00] emissions of semen, whether from sexual activity or from nocturnal emission. [00:16:05] In order for a man to recite the words of the Torah, which is the law, They would need to be ritually pure. So you were asked to do the cleansing before you went into the temple. And I have seen the mikvah near the temple. [00:16:23] After a menstrual cycle. A married woman, must immerse in order to resume marital relations with her husband. [00:16:32] Women were to achieve ritual purity after childbirth. This was a time when women had a rest. [00:16:41] They did not have sex with their husbands during menstral cycles or after childbirth until they went through this ritualistic cleansing. Then they can resume sex and they could worship at the [00:17:00] temple. [00:17:00] If you also had certain skin conditions, you had to do the ritualistic cleansing. [00:17:06] After contact with a corpse or a grave. And they actually would immerse a corpse as part of the preparation for burial. [00:17:14] Someone who is converting to Judaism regardless of gender needs to do the ritualistic cleansing. [00:17:21] Also, utensils that you ate with, you bought them from a gentile, you had to immerse them in the mikva before you could use them in your home. [00:17:32] Many Jews fully immerse themselves before Jewish holidays like Yom Kippur, Rashana, and other holidays in the Jewish calendar. [00:17:44] A bride groom who’s getting married would dip themselves in the mikva. Brides would use the mikvah before they got married. [00:17:54] Prior to circumcising your son, the father would, go into the mikva. [00:17:59] So, [00:18:00] of course, rules concerning modesty, men and women are required to immerse in separate mikva s in separate locations or to use the mikva at different designated times. Yeah, duh. Right? Uh, cuz you were naked. [00:18:17] And so how does this work? [00:18:21] So the thought is there’s supposed to be no barrier between the person immersing and the water. So the person should be wearing no clothes, jewelry, makeup, nail polish, fake nails, grooming products on the hair or skin. For more observant, Jewish women, an attendant will ensure these requirements are met. [00:18:41] So this type of ritual is not for luxuriating. It’s not a spa day. It is to make yourself pure so you can participate in the religious observance at the temple. [00:18:58] So when it [00:19:00] mentions that she was, doing the ritualistic purity, [00:19:03] she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness. [00:19:07] David was probably looking at her, using the Mikva somewhere where he could see. You just disrobed I think at the bottom of the stairs, is what our guide told us. You usually had somebody there again to assist you with robing and disrobing. [00:19:25] So, it was as quick as possible and you had to be completely submerged. So David was watching her do this. and most likely, she may not have been the only woman there. [00:19:38] So all of this is to stick up for Bathsheba as a godly woman who was doing what she was supposed to be doing, according to the Lord. Minding her own business, she was not some temptress. [00:19:52] She is innocent. [00:19:53] Let me show you a picture. [00:19:56] So here’s a picture of a mikva. [00:20:00] It’s square and uh, deep enough for you to walk in and be completely wet. You got stairs here. and they all look just about the same. There’s not really a whole lot of deviation. Let me see. Here’s another one that, it’s not as pretty as the other one. It’s more, uh, it looks smaller, but it has the steps here to get in, a little bit, down in the ground. [00:20:27] Let’s see here. [00:20:29] Okay. And here is a modern mikva. It looks like a swimming pool. It’s got the Jewish star on the bottom and it’s the steps and it’s a specific, depth to it. There’s holes in the side. That’s where the water comes in. [00:20:46] So hopefully you find that interesting. [00:20:50] And no, didn’t mean to rant on that for very long, but [00:20:55] it just appalls me how people totally [00:21:00] ignored that and state that. And she purposely tempted him. How would she know that the king was there on the roof? She could not have known. She probably thought that the king was with his men at war, where her husband was. Uriah was at war away, and so there shouldn’t have been anybody on the roof. [00:21:25] David should not been on the roof looking around [00:21:29] and watching people take ritual baths. [00:21:32] And the other thing that they talk about is that the Bible doesn’t say she cried out. [00:21:39] If they didn’t cry out, then they were, um, complacent in it and they were participating. And our modern sense is no, that not to be true. There’s many people that have been raped. and couldn’t cry out either because the abuser’s hand was on their mouth or their mouth was [00:22:00] gagged or duct taped shut or something stuffed into, the victim’s mouth, or there was nobody around. [00:22:08] Sometimes there is deer in the headlight syndrome. You are being assaulted and you’re so shocked and you’re trying to survive and just get through this horrible thing being violated that you’re frozen. You can’t move, you can’t speak. that’s very, very common. And just because it isn’t mentioned in the Bible doesn’t mean that didn’t happen in those days. [00:22:35] Whether a woman cries out or not for help, it’s still rape. It’s still wrong. And it’s still sin. So let’s, move on to, what else happens in this story? It just gets worse. [00:22:53] Let’s go back to the text here. She returned to her house after this was over [00:23:00] and verse five, and the woman conceived and she sent and told David, I am pregnant. Now, that that would drive terror into probably anybody here. I’m pregnant with the King’s child. [00:23:13] Verse six. So David sent word to Joab. Send me Uriah, the Hittite and Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing, how the war was going. And again, if he was doing what he was supposed to being with his men, he already would know how the war was going and how everybody was going. [00:23:39] Right? Verse eight, then David said to Uriah, go down to your house and wash your feet. And Uriah went out of the king’s house and there followed him, a present from the king, but Uriah slept at the door of the king’s house with all the servants of his Lord. And did not go down to his house. [00:23:58] When they told David [00:24:00] Uriah did not go down to his house, David said to Uriah, have you not come from a journey? why did you not go down to your house? Uriah said to David, the ark in Israel, and Judah dwell in booth, and my Lord, Joab, and the servants of my Lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? [00:24:26] As you live and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing. [00:24:31] Uriah is a man of principles, a man of honor. He loves his fellow soldiers. Hey, they’re out sleeping out in the fields and probably eating [00:24:44] rations and how can I go down to my own house, and have some good food. And it is assumed that when the men came home from war, that they would sleep with their wives. They’ve been [00:25:00] gone for a long time. And that was usually customary expected. Just like when your spouse probably goes off on a business trip, they come back, you miss each other. [00:25:10] You wanna be intimate with one another that’s natural. So he did not want to have these luxuries when the other guys were suffering, but you know, David is trying to get him to sleep with his wife because then you know, he can hide that he’s the father of the child, obviously. [00:25:33] Verse 12, then David said in Uriah, remain here today also, and I will send you back. So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next, and David invited him and he ate in his presence and drank so that he made him drunk. And in the evening he went out to lay on his couch with the servants of his Lord, but he did not go down to his house. [00:25:56] David’s getting him drunk because if he’s drunk [00:26:00] then you may be able to convince Uriah to go home. And sleep it off and be with his wife because he is drunk. [00:26:09] But he didn’t do that apparently. Even when he is drunk, the man is a man of honor here. So in the morning, king David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him that he may be struck down and die. [00:26:31] So this is pretty upsetting to read. He’s pretty much saying he is not gonna go home to his wife. He is going to stay here. So I can’t cover this up that way. We’re just going to have to kill him. [00:26:47] So of course, you know the front line is the most dangerous and then you’ve got people behind you to support you. But he’s pretty much telling Joab to stick him in the front. And then when [00:27:00] it’s like super crazy, [00:27:02] when the fighting is really intense, then you, just leave them there. Leave ’em high and dry. [00:27:07] So here we go. Verse 16. And as Joab was Besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew that there were valiant men. And the men of the city came out and fought with Joab and some of the servants of David among the people fell. Uriah, the Hitite also died. Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting and he instructed the messenger. [00:27:35] When you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king, then if the King’s anger rises, and if he says to you, why did you go so near the city to fight? Did you not know they would shoot from the wall? [00:27:52] Why did you go so near to the wall? And then you shall say your servant, Uriah the Hittite is dead [00:28:00] also. [00:28:00] So yes, there’s a a lot going on here. Joab does what David instructs him to do. And Uriah does get killed in the midst of the fighting. They are just trying to create this false narrative, this false anger, and disgust at all these people dying when they planned this. They, they planned all this and they’re, you know, coming up with this fake moral outrage. That’s what all this is in short. [00:28:37] So yeah, they’re covering up their plan in murdering an innocent man. So the messenger went and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell. [00:28:49] Let’s talk about Bathsheba. Verse 26. When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah, her husband was dead, she’s lamented over [00:29:00] her husband, and when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done, displeased the Lord. [00:29:12] So lament is you’re very sad. [00:29:15] You’re crying, you’re mourning. This sounds very sincere. And Bathsheba loved her husband and she lamented losing him. This whole situation was wrong. And there is a period of mourning in the law, you have a certain amount of days that you have. Correct me if I’m wrong. I think it’s about a month that you get for when somebody dies, you mourn them, whether it’s your parents or your child or your spouse. [00:29:46] And so of course, David scooped her right up to be one of his other wives. [00:29:53] And yeah, she eventually gave birth to a son, yeah, David had a [00:30:00] whole bunch of wives already and children. So, um, a lot of the outrage in this passage, it’s like, [00:30:09] you are gonna take another wife at this point. [00:30:12] It was also customary to marry, a woman that you took away her, her security, either her father or her husband, because otherwise she would’ve been destitute. She would not have had a way to support herself. And so it was very common practice to go ahead marry the woman. And, I believe it was, [00:30:36] I believe it was Abigail, that it was the same thing. Abigail, her husband was killed in different circumstances, and he married Abigail. He adds her to his collection. We may do a study on her down the road. [00:30:54] We’ll see. But here’s the ticket. But the thing that David had done, displeased the [00:31:00] Lord [00:31:00] We’re now in chapter 12. [00:31:03] He thinks he’s fooling everybody. Oh, well, Uriah’s dead and I took her as my wife. And so everything’s okay. Wrong. God always knows. So let’s read verse one in chapter 12, and the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said there were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. [00:31:32] The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe Lamb, which he had bought, and he brought it up and it grew up with him and his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms. , and it was like a daughter to him. Now, there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own [00:32:00] flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him. [00:32:04] But he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. [00:32:09] And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. And he said to Nathan, as the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserved to die. And he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity. [00:32:26] Okay, so in case you didn’t know who Nathan was, Nathan was a prophet of God, and God sent him to discipline David. Because he was in the wrong, he had sinned. He had sinned greatly. And so he’s telling this story and it’s a parallel story, a roundabout way, stating that the king took something from someone that didn’t have a multiple, didn’t have multiple husbands, didn’t have multiple wives, [00:33:00] only had one husband. [00:33:01] Uriah only had one wife, and probably poor. Uriah was probably poor. And King David is obviously very, very wealthy. He had concubines and wives. Why did he need to take Bathsheba? [00:33:18] David has no clue that Nathan is talking about him in a roundabout way. [00:33:24] So he’s, got this righteous anger boiling up inside him and saying, he deserves to die and he needs to restore the lamb fourfold. So in back in the day, the law stated that if, you hurt somebody else’s livestock, killed somebody else’s livestock stole, uh, you had to pay them back with four lambs instead of one. [00:33:50] So that’s kind of what they’re talking about here. [00:33:52] So verse seven, Nathan just hits some upside the head with this. Nathan said to David, you are the [00:34:00] man! Thus say it The Lord, the God of Israel. I anoint you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul, and I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. [00:34:18] And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah, the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. [00:34:47] So the gig is up, the cat’s out of the bag. So Nathan’s saying, you know, the Lord gave you all these blessings. He gave you victory over your [00:35:00] enemies, gave you this. You are ruling over Israel and Judah, you have a beautiful palace, you have wives. And again, why did you feel you had to take Bathsheba and why did you kill Uriah? [00:35:15] Verse 11, thus, says the Lord. Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives. In the sight of this sun where you did it secretly. But I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun. [00:35:39] And that is the sun and the sky, not s o n. Verse 13, David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David, the Lord also has put away your sin. You shall not die, nevertheless, because by this deed you [00:36:00] have utterly scorn the Lord. The child who is born to you shall die. The Nathan went to his house. [00:36:11] So if you read about David in the rest of the Bible, there’s a lot of problems in his family . And so in his own house, lots of fighting is going on, and betrayals and taking each other’s concubines and kingdoms. All sorts of stuff. There is not peace in King David’s family from this point on. All kinds of stuff is going to happen, which I won’t get into. [00:36:42] You guys can look that up. [00:36:44] And so Nathan is going to punish David. He’s gonna get punished in public. This will not be punishment in secret. Oh yeah. I’m sorry. I did this terrible thing. You know, just [00:37:00] forgive me and move on. No, this is going to be a public dealing with his sin he is not going to die because in most cases, God has the right to take out one of his kings who is doing something evil, something that shames the name the Lord. [00:37:20] And this is one of those. But Nathan says that the baby is going to die instead in your place. And this is not a very easy chapter to read because an innocent child dies as well. And I wanna try and be sensitive to, the people listening who have lost a child. I don’t mean to dig up uncomfortable or painful memories. [00:37:48] This situation, the Lord chose to take the child. [00:37:53] David needed to realize that when he sins, when we [00:38:00] all sin, innocent people are affected. Innocent people suffer the whole kingdom knew that he had this child. He can’t really hide a baby for very long. [00:38:14] So let’s read, verse 15 here, and the Lord afflicted the child that Uriah’s wife brought to David and he became sick. David therefore sought God on behalf of the child, and David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground, and the elders of his house stood beside him to raise him from the ground, but he would not, nor did he eat food with them. [00:38:44] On the seventh day, the child died and the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, where they said, behold, while the child was yet alive who spoke to him and he did not listen to us [00:39:00] well then can we say to him, the child is dead. He may do himself some harm, [00:39:07] so, [00:39:09] It said the Lord afflicted the child and it doesn’t say what the child had. He just became sick. And some of the commentaries that I’ve read, state that [00:39:23] a lot of the commentaries state that children did not usually live very long. There was a lot of infant mortality. Children got sick and there were not the medications that we have today, even today, you hang around kids long enough, they get sick. If you have kids, you know, they bring home a lot of germs from school or. [00:39:49] Going over to another kid’s house to play. They’re susceptible to illness because their little immune systems can’t handle all the [00:40:00] invading germs yet. So a lot of commentaries, a lot of scholars state that it says the Lord deflected the child, but that it was more of a natural sickness in that day. I don’t know if I agree with that, but you might not agree with that. [00:40:20] But again, I don’t have all the answers. You have to decide for yourself, [00:40:25] and we think, why would God take an innocent child? Why would God afflict an innocent child with a sickness? I don’t know, I’m just being honest, but I’m sure that Bathsheba, she was mourning the fact that she was going to lose her son. She just lost her husband Uriah, and now she’s going to lose her son. [00:40:53] And how horrible is that for her? She is suffering greatly at this [00:41:00] point [00:41:00] and it seems like that David is sorry for what he did. He is coming to terms with, he really messed up. What he did was wrong. His lust got the better of him. He’s a very powerful man. [00:41:17] I think I wrote it somewhere that he was very good looking and very strong [00:41:23] and [00:41:24] probably in the prime of his life. So I assume that, his lust got the better of him, didn’t make very good choices, but he is trying to fast. He’s trying to pray and beg the Lord for the child’s life. He’s mourning the fact that he’s going to lose his son, [00:41:40] and this is very surprising that the servants are terrified to tell him that the child has died and reasonably so. Right verse 19. But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, David Underst. That the child was dead and David said to his [00:42:00] servants, is the child dead? They said, yes, he is dead. [00:42:06] Verse 20. Then David arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his clothes, and he went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. He then went to his own house and when he asked, they sent food before him and he ate. Then a servant said to him, where is this thing that you have done? [00:42:28] You fasted and wept for the child while he was alive, but when the child died, you arose and ate food. He said, while, the child was alive. I fasted and wept where I said, who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me that the child may live, but now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, [00:43:00] but he will not return to me. [00:43:02] So he had hope that the child might live if he prayed and asked, and this is difficult to read also because we have probably fasted and prayed and begged the Lord for something really important to us. Maybe your child was sick and you begged and pleaded for the Lord to heal your child or anybody else in your family and the Lord did not heal your loved one. [00:43:34] That is really hard theology to and again, I don’t know all the answers to who God chooses to live and who, gets taken, [00:43:45] I don’t know. [00:43:47] But he accepted God’s decision that the Lord took the child and he went into worship in the house of the Lord. [00:43:55] And there’s something very important here in the end of [00:44:00] verse 23. I shall go to him, but he will not return to me. The child is in heaven with the Lord. God did take the child, but the child is with the Lord. It’s very clear here that David is going to see him in heaven when he dies. And it might not be a comfort to hear that. [00:44:21] It depends on where you are in your journey. But for most people to know that God takes children into his arms when they die early, that’s a comfort to a lot of people that we will see them again. We will see our loved ones again in the next life. And yes, it’s not really fun to wait that long. [00:44:44] We have to live this life without our loved one, without our child. And that’s painful. Even if you know he’s in heaven, it’s still painful that you have to wait to see your child again, or maybe it’s, [00:45:00] a parent or spouse, brother or sister. But I hope that you find comfort in that. [00:45:06] Children who are not at the age of accountability, that don’t know right from wrong and cannot choose to accept the Lord, or choose God, they are in the grace of God and they will go to heaven. That’s the Lord’s grace. [00:45:24] So verse 24, David comforted his wife, Beth Sheba, and she went into her and lay with her and she bore a son and called his name Solomon. [00:45:36] So David and Bathseba went and had another child, Solomon. . And as you know, Solomon is, one of the kings. And he was probably the the richest, wealthiest man that ever lived according to scholars. Another message here is that David, even though he messed up, he is still in the lineage of [00:46:00] Jesus. [00:46:00] He is still forgiven. He still has hope of salvation, God still uses him and his family to bring about Jesus the Savior. [00:46:12] And so I’m not gonna read the rest of the chapter because it’s not really relevant. . But I wanted to point out before we finish here, that one thing to notice with Nathan, the prophet, he never says anything about Bathsheba being in sin because he would have. If she was having an affair and this was consensual, he would’ve said, so, he would’ve pointed out her, evil temptress or she was playing the harlot. [00:46:48] That’s the kinda language that scripture uses. If a woman’s out there committing adultery or fornicating, they use, playing the harlot. [00:46:57] definitely she would’ve been called a sinner. [00:47:00] But that didn’t happen. That is why we come to the conclusion that Bathsheba, she was a victim in three different ways because she was a godly woman with a godly husband. [00:47:12] So Bathsheba was summoned by the king, raped by the king. Then the king killed her husband and she was, was pregnant [00:47:23] and lost her son. That was a threefold. Loss. She is a victim in three ways. [00:47:32] She was not a willing participant in adultery with King David. And so I hope that you’ve come to the same conclusion here, [00:47:43] and hopefully that you’ll speak out when you see these kind of posts on, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or even, at church, if you hear maybe a sermon about this that you would speak up and say [00:48:00] something. The truth in these passages that we’ve gone over. [00:48:05] And I know that this was not a, uh, a pleasant topic. Again, sorry, I’m picking, some not so fun topics, but I think these are important things to discuss because again, they’re all over social media and they’re wrong. It’s just plain old misogyny. It’s just plain old women are, evil temptresses and they’re responsible. No men are responsible for their own choices and women are responsible for theirs. [00:48:37] So I will leave you with those thoughts. Next week. We will have a guest and I will decide who will be the next person that we study in our Bible. So until next week, God bless you. Have a wonderful week.