On Bathsheba, and Evangelicals Beating Dead Whores

Horses. I mean, horses. Sometimes it's just best to move on.

When Rachel Denhollander used the Southern Baptist Convention’s platform provided her by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) in 2019 to claim that David was a rapist and Bathsheba an innocent victim, I traced the origins of her theory to a New Mexico gender studies professor who first posited the idea in 2006. In the last few days, the theory has popped back up and I’m tempted to play a round of “bad idea whac-a-mole,” but will resist as best I can - and you should too.

Whac-a-mole is a game invented in 1975 consisting of five or eight holes, in which a faux-furry critter pops out like a rodent jack-in-the-box, and you use mallet to smack it on the head, providing your reflexes are quick enough. But the thing is, you never get the mole. You just dink it on the noggin, and it comes back in a different hole.

This is what it feels like for those of us who engage in polemics, which is essentially the discipline of taking what people say in the name of God and comparing it to the Word of God. It’s a terribly messy business, because the nature of polemics requires correcting Christians, or at least, those who purport to be.

The latest resurrection of the “Bathsheba was a victim” narrative came thanks to Sean McDowell, who with undue seriousness, let a lady scholar by the name of just kidding (I have no idea who she is), claiming that the “power differential” between King David and his Hittite paramour, combined with the Scripture’s silence about Bathsheba’s specific errors, means it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that she was innocent of any untoward advances.

She repeatedly complained that in the last few years, various sermons have impugned Bathsheba as a hussy, when the Scripture only condemns David (at least, through the prophet, Nathan). I watched with mild frustration that McDowell and the lady-thinker didn’t acknowledge why - all in a sudden - people seemed focused on Bathsheba’s culpability, as though it just came of out of nowhere. The reason for that, is that we were forced to look more deeply at Bathsheba because the feminists started only recently accusing David of rape.

WAS BATHSHEBA A HUSSY?

The narrative is pretty simple. David was atop his rooftop patio, when he saw his next-door neighbor bathing. David inquired around as to who the naked lady was, and was told it was the Hittite’s wife, Bathsheba. The Hittites were a people group belonging to Canaan, who typically had lose sexual ethics. I say this, cognizant of Hittite laws addressing sexuality, which is pretty loose compared to the Torah. For example, Hittite prohibitions against bestiality (187, 188, 199 and 200a of the Hittite Morality Code) forbid sleeping with pigs, cows, and sheep, but explicitly allows sex with a horse.

Bathsheba was probably Jewish, given her name and her father’s lineage, but marrying into a Hittite family would’ve been like a nice, fair-skinned suburban girl marrying into broken family of battle-rappers on the wrong side of the tracks.

Anyway, Uriah the Hittite was off in one of David’s wars, while David is relaxing back at Israel’s Mar a Lago. Everyone would have known when the King was in residence, the same way folks in Palm Beach know when Trump Force One just landed. David was in Bathsheba’s line of sight, because Bathsheba was in David’s line of sight (because that’s how lines of sight work). I suppose if all David could see through the bushes was a nipple or something, she wouldn’t be able to see him back. Somehow I doubt that’s the case.

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Nearly any woman present while I’ve taught on this passage has guffawed and nearly eye-rolled themselves into a concussion at the suggestion Bathsheba didn’t know somebody was watching her bathe. One time, about 4:00AM, another pastor and I were driving up an old logging road on a very remote mountain for the opening day of elk season, and caught a bare lady-chest from within a bathroom window in a cabin on the side of the road. Neither of us acted like we noticed. I suppose that on a remote mountain, a woman may not think about closing the curtains. But Bathsheba lived in the epicenter of Jerusalem, and her neighbor was the king. She knew.

David then sent messengers to tell her the king wanted to see her, and she went. There’s no indication that these were armed guards. She was menstruating, so neither she nor David cared that this was also a violation of Mosaic law (Leviticus 18:19). She got pregnant, and David then plotted with Bathsheba to cover this up, and David called Uriah home from battle, thinking he would have sex with his wife. Unfortunately for David and Bathsheba (and for Uriah), Uriah turned out to be a respectable Chad didn’t want to enjoy himself while his boys were fighting.

And so, David conspired to have Uriah killed in battle, and Bathsheba conspired to cover it up. When Nathan was given this information via God, he confronted David and asked him to judge a hypothetical issue in which a man stole another man’s sheep, who happened to love the sheep “like a child.” David wanted the guy killed, and Nathan dropped the hammer on him, letting him know that he knew what had transpired, and so did God.

Some imprecations were given to David, including that someone close to him was going to have sex with his wives on the same roof where he spotted Bathsheba (fulfilled by Absalom), and that violence would be ever-present in his household.

Nathan didn’t tell David what God would do to Bathsheba, but in the next paragraph we find out that God smote her child. Then, David slept with Bathsheba “to comfort her” and eventually they had another child, Solomon, who would become King.

Did you see “sexual assault” in any of that? Me, neither.

So the argument goes, because Nathan didn’t confront Bathsheba, she must have been innocent of any sin. And if she was innocent of any sin, David must have raped her, because adultery is a sin. Feminists tell the tale a different way:

Bathsheba was just minding her own business, naked in the privacy of her back yard in full view of the King’s favorite chill-spot. She had no idea the king was in town, was unaware that he liked hanging out within view of her backyard, and didn’t know he was watching. The next thing you know, armed guards beat down the door and make her come come with them, at which point David rapes her (either by force or by an implied “power differential”). She was then forced to conspire to kill her husband, and David comforted her by giving her another child, once their first child bit the dust.

Israel was under Mosaic Judicial Law during this time, however, and God explicitly stipulates that if a woman doesn’t cry “rape” in the middle of town, but only after the fact, you have to presume the man innocent. If it transpired out in the country side, that wasn’t the case, because there wouldn’t be anybody to hear the commotion anyway.

And if all it takes to be considered rape is a “power-differential,” then frankly, all of David’s wives and concubines would have been victims, and also Monica Lewinsky.

In all of this, it’s presumed that human nature has drastically changed since then and today. Women, back then, were different. Nobody was interested in cheating on their husband with a richer, more powerful, more handsome alpha male. You see, it must have been rape. That Bathsheba ended up with David’s fortune and her son ended up on the throne was just a happy coincidence.

Ultimately, the ex post facto victimization of Bathsheba is far from a feminist take. It actually removes the moral agency of women, paints them all as far outside the control of their own behavior, and not responsible for their own actions. And that, I’d surmise, is the point.

This is what I, and many others, explained in 2019, along with shaming those who attempt to besmirch the reputation of a dead man, who can’t defend himself. A man, by the way, who was after God’s own heart (despite his sin) and is at least in a spiritual sense, one of our fathers and forbears.

But thanks to Mike Cosper, the devil’s rodeo clown, speaking of this feminist reinterpretation of the Bible through Standpoint Epistemology (a feminist interpretive invention) as though it’s been the historic and orthodox interpretation all along, this defeated idea has been resurrected and is again making its rounds in social media.

BEATING DEAD WHORES

We’re at a crossroads again in the polemics community. We can spend our time and energy waging a war we’ve already fought - and won - or we can do something more valuable with our time (like evangelism or spending time with our kids).

Ultimately, notions as pervasively bad as Bathsheba-as-Victim aren’t altogether unhelpful. When we considered attending church far closer to our home than where we are now, hearing the pastor refer to David as a sexual abuser from the pulpit was enough for me to “nope” our way out of there. Despite quoting MacArthur in the bulletin, I knew where he got this dumb idea, and it wasn’t from reading the Bible; it was from whatever nefarious online source he was listening to. I recognized our need for a pastor who couldn’t be so easily “taken captive by vain philosophy (like Standpoint Epistemology) and vain deceit” (Colossians 2:8).

That turned out to be a good decision, because I’m pretty sure my pastor looks to the Bible for his understanding, and not a 2006 New Mexico gender studies professor.

It’s sufficient enough, for us to post our old work on the issue - which is why Protestia and Pulpit & Pen are archived - and maybe summarize that work (as I have done here), and move on with our lives.

This morning, I saw someone chime in on a post completely unrelated to me (this one was a debate on whether or not over-eating is the same as gluttony), wondering if “the disgraced JD Hall” was going to chime in with a “rehashed argument about why they’re not synonymous.” I chuckled at that, because I’ve already written those articles, and don’t need to rehash anything. And I’m glad he had remembered, because I had forgotten.

The Polemics Manifesto #1 says, “Polemics must cease to beat dead horses, and consider our volume of work on past issues to be complete. Wheels do not need reinvented just because heresies are.”

Whether beating dead horses or beating dead whores, either way, it’s up to us if that’s how we want to spend our lives. But let me remind you of Polemics Manifesto #2, “Polemics must cease to to focus on personalities, and instead focus on principalities.”

I’m really begging you all - and everyone - to understand that Satan is real, demons exist, and they are planners and schemers. What you see happening around us is largely orchestrated by honest-to-goodness evil spirits, who are knowledgable and real, and are adept at interfering in the lives of men.

Is it possible that the Devil’s Rodeo Clowns (people, afflicted by demons, who serve the purpose of distracting us while Satan rides our backs) consider when it is time to resurrection a bad idea, or give fresh wind to an ancient heresy?

Well, if Satan really is - in the present tense - roaming the earth trying to find things to devour (1 Peter 5:8), he’s busy doing something for sure. If false worship to false gods is actually done to and for demons (1 Corinthians 10:20), then wouldn’t it be wise to presume that false doctrines are the doctrines of demons (1 Timothy 4:1)?

We can play an endless game of Bad Idea Wac-a-Mole if we want, but there’s not a prize at the end. And there’s really no killing the mole. It just disappears, and comes back again somewhere else. Polemics has its purpose, but that purpose is not to be manipulated by devilish forces just because they jump up at get our attention.

Perhaps its best to just mark those who cause division by teaching contrary to sound doctrine (Romans 16:17) and move along on our happy way so as to make more memes to make Rich Pierce lose his mind.

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