Bathsheba

“Mary and Eve” by Sr. Grace Remington, reprinted with permission.

2 Samuel 11; Psalm 51

“O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;
before you kings will shut their mouths,
to you the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.”

(O Radix Jesse, a magnificat antiphon)

For the first several months of a child’s life, when something leaves its line of sight the thing ceases to exist. Around month five a child develops “object permanence,” the ability to visualize things that aren’t physically present. The season of Advent presses us towards spiritual object permanence, or faith, which is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). 

This is why Bathsheba’s story is an Advent story. 

She likely grew up in King David’s court. Her grandfather was one of his councilors. Her father and husband were two of his most trusted warriors. Her proximity wasn’t just relational. She lived near the palace. So close that David, pacing around his roof one night out of boredom, saw her naked body while she was taking part in a ritual cleansing. Her husband was out to war (where David should have been), so David had his men bring her to his chambers. Then David, the “man after God’s own heart,” took advantage of Bathsheba. The cloud of David’s sin darkened her story. He found out that she was pregnant and had her husband assassinated so that he can marry her and avoid scandal. He was exposed by the prophet Nathan, who said that the child would die because David had “utterly scorned the Lord” (2 Samuel 12:14). 

A hint of light entered into the darkness of Bathsheba’s story. She gave birth to another child, Solomon, “and the LORD loved him” (2 Samuel 12:24). She convinced David to name him as successor to the throne rather than the heir apparent, Adonijah. Solomon was known as exceedingly wise (he wrote parts of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon). Under his rule, Israel’s economy boomed and with its newfound wealth and Solomon fulfilled David’s vision of building a grand temple to house the Ark of the Covenant. There’s no doubt Solomon delighted his mother. 

But the sins of the father became the sins of the son. Solomon was reported to have 700 wives and 300 concubines. Many of these were from surrounding nations, and they “turned away his heart after other gods” (1 Kings 11:4). He built places of worship for the foreign gods Chemosh and Molech. Unlike David, who was broken by his sin and repented before God, Solomon’s heart turned cold towards the LORD who loved him. In judgment, God raised up Israel’s enemies. They so weakened Israel that, after his death, the tribes would separate into two kingdoms, a sign of the inglorious trajectory of Solomon’s life. 

Solomon could have redeemed Bathsheba’s story, but he wrote more tragedy into it. 

It is here we see that her story is ours as well. We all have things or persons that we hope will redeem our story, something within our field of vision that will mean that all of the bruised and broken parts of this life aren’t meaningless. But they never hold. They always buckle under the weight of our longing, making it seem like the darkness has drawn in a bit closer. 

It is precisely because of this that John begins his Gospel, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” It is through Bathsheba that, centuries later, the Christ child would be born. Unlike David and Solomon, this King of Kings would not sin. Through Him, the light of His divine life would pierce back through the dark shadows of His genealogy and redeem the stories of those like Bathsheba. She didn’t see it coming, but it surely was. And so it is for us. We may not be able to see the redemption that is ours. We may not feel “redeemed.” But, nevertheless, we are. Like Bathsheba, we must wait, because our Redeemer, though he lay out of sight, is truly coming. 

And when He returns, and our hopes fulfilled, we will realize (as Romans 8:28 tells us) that He truly worked all things—especially the hard, dark things—together for our good.