Why It Matters Whether David Raped Bathsheba

My imperfect attempt at explaining some of our passion behind this

It seems we’ve once again encountered the season of the liturgical calendar where we resurrect the great debate over whether or not what King David did to Bathsheba constitutes rape. The discussion currently dominates much of my Twitter feed, with impassioned arguments cropping up left and (mostly) far right to vindicate David and remind the world that Bathsheba was partially to blame.

We know that what happened between David and Bathsheba was evil in God’s eyes. We know David ultimately committed murder in order to cover his adulterous affair, and we know he paid dearly for it. But what do we know about Bathsheba? Was she complicit? Was she a seductive political opportunist? Did she engage willingly?

Some think the debate is wasted energy. If the Bible doesn’t clearly call it rape, why bother reading into the text something that isn’t there? Isn’t it enough to know that the whole ordeal was wrong and incredibly consequential? Can’t we just call it adultery and murder and remind ourselves of the importance of righteous living and move on?

I personally don’t think it’s that simple. And I think we lose a lot of important truth if we refuse to roll up our sleeves and wrestle with the implications of the story (without sensationalizing or embellishing it) that’s actually on the page. There’s important subtext that could guide a lot of our understanding about the human heart if we’re willing to do the work. But the more I dive into the weeds of the story, the more fiercely I seem to encounter resistance to the research. The question is “why?”

It’s gotten so intense lately that I’ve actually begun to believe that an even more important question than “Did David rape Bathsheba?” is “Why are so many people allergic to the possibility that the encounter could have been rape? What does that reveal to us about our collective willingness to whitewash uncomfortable truths about the men we deeply wish to admire?” And I think it’s an infinitely relevant series of questions to wrestle.

The broader topic has been exhausted by countless biblical scholars much more knowledgeable than I am, but here’s what we do know from the text:

We know that Scripture NEVER blames Bathsheba, who was bathing (perhaps not even fully unclothed) in compliance with a purifying ritual after menstrual uncleanness. The goal was purity, not seduction. As Nancy Pearcey points out, understanding of Jewish architecture provides helpful context for those who insist Bathsheba should have been more discreet or private in her bathing location.

Throughout the Bible, God has pretty harsh words for the seductress. Look at the way women like Delilah and Jezebel and Potiphar’s wife are described. We see none of this language used to describe Bathsheba, who, importantly, in Nathan’s message, is depicted as an ewe lamb. Lambs almost always represent purity and innocence and even childlike vulnerability in the Old Testament. God is not sloppy in the details of the messages He sends. He did not depict her as a cunning serpent or a fox. He chose a beloved lamb. This absolutely matters.

When Adam and Eve sinned in Eden, God addressed their sin individually. They were both held accountable for their actions. In the context of David and Bathsheba, only David is blamed. Only David is rebuked. David took what he wanted. There is no indication that Bathsheba was a willing or eager participant. She had none of the power and bore none of the blame.

There’s a word to describe what happens when men coerce women into sexual relationships, but for some reason, so many just can’t bring themselves to use it to describe what happened to Bathsheba. Surprisingly enough, even John Piper, whose regressive views on women routinely vex me, has the stones to say what many others won’t as he explicates this passage:

“I think there are pointers that David exerted a kind of pressure on her to warrant the accusation of rape.” He continues, “I see two indications that David threw his weight around — threw his power, his influence, his position — in such a way as to force her, apart from and against her commitment to her husband, to have sex with him… He didn’t invite her. He didn’t woo her. He didn’t lure her. He didn’t trick her. He took her. That’s what the text says: he took her. In other words, the description is of a completely one-sided, powerful exertion of his desire, with no reckoning with hers.”

I agree with Piper here. This looks like rape to me.

So why the resistance and the passionate whitewashing and the exhausting mental gymnastics designed to frame Bathsheba as a willing participant or even a seductress? Can’t we blame Bathsheba even a teensy weensy bit? Why do we want to? Why are we willing to contend with David as a murderer but not with David as a rapist? Why are we unwilling to wrestle with the connection between the specificity of his own sexual aggression and his apparent apathy in the face of his son’s similar misconduct? Why are the lessons we could learn there off limits to us?

When I was discussing this with some acquaintances yesterday, someone said to me, “You know, Kaeley, there are a number of other stories of rape in the Bible, and in those situations, God spares no detail. They’re cut and dry. Why not just reference those for our understanding of rape dynamics?”

It was a thoughtful question, but the answer is this: In all those other stories about rape in the Bible, the perpetrator was an obviously evil person. A Harvey Weinstein or an obvious menace to society who Christians have no problem roundly condemning. But our track record in the church is not nearly so clean when it comes to definitively naming sexual abuse among men we actually really want to admire. History continues to show that we are completely inept in this department. There are still entire groups of people who refuse to acknowledge that Ravi Zacharias was a rapist, for example. It's a form of idolatry, and it's sinful. We shouldn't place people (past or present) on pedestals that inoculate them from necessary scrutiny.

I find that many of the people who really really want Bathsheba to be complicit are the same people who have no problem when Pastor Doug Wilson calls women “cunts” or marries unsuspecting women off to serial pedophiles or blames rape victims for participating in a “secret courtship” with their rapists.

They’re the same people who can look at the evil way John MacArthur treated Eileen Gray or the rape victim at Masters and still conclude that he’s a righteous man and find a way to blame the victims for their own suffering.

They’re the kind of people who ask questions like “But what was she wearing?” when they hear a woman was raped. And they’re the kind of people who seem to think that maybe he wouldn’t watch so much porn if she would just figure out how to make herself more sexually attractive and available to meet his needs. They’re also the type of people who think statements like “Just grab them by the pussy” are nothing more than harmless “locker room talk.”

But we sure aren’t ready to have that conversation yet.

I personally cannot make logical sense of how a sincere Christian who’s being guided by the Holy Spirit could do the deep dive into the story of David and Bathsheba and arrive at the conclusion that she was a willing participant in David’s sin. I don’t think the Bible creates a valid path to the connecting of those dots. I think it’s only possible to arrive there if you’re inserting your own spin into the biblical account, and again, the relevant question would be “why?”

I’m not saying faithful Christians can’t disagree with me about this. I’m just saying that, to date, I haven’t seen a compelling roadmap to arrive at the conclusions they’ve drawn.

If Nathan depicted Bathsheba as an innocent lamb being protected by a poor man, she was innocent. And to be innocent, she had to be unwilling. And if she was unwilling, she was... “r*ped.” There’s that violent word again. Are we willing to speak it? There’s just no pussyfooting around this.

It doesn’t matter because of some sort of diabolical feminist agenda that insists on slandering good men and making women perpetual victims. It matters because truth matters, even when it’s ugly. It matters because Christians have GOT to get out of the habit of believing that certain categories of heinous sins are only applicable to everyone else. It matters because it’s still wrong to scapegoat innocent women when men commit sexual sins, and victim blaming is actually its own form of evil that keeps the wounded far from God.

In the church, we should be more aggressive about rooting out our own sin than we are about naming everyone else’s, but too often, the opposite is true. This should not be. There’s still a lack of courage and honesty surrounding criminal behavior in high places in the church and in government. As a friend put it, “To deny the truth is to keep evil in the dark” where it is free to flourish. If we won’t even call a spade a spade when it comes to our review of history, what on earth does it say about our ability to contend honestly with present problems in our midst?

Justice begins in the house of the Lord. Truth sets us free. As a particularly freedom minded individual, I am eager to walk in its glow.