Reconsidering Bathsheba’s Story from an Asian Perspective

The story of Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11 is one of the most tragic narratives in the Hebrew Bible. It describes how a king’s lust drove him to destroy cruelly the family of a loyal soldier. Its characters, including David, Uriah, Bathsheba and Joab, were involved in this tragic event—an event which distorted their lives. For example, David, the king of all Israel, had been blessed and the recipient of promises through the prophet Nathan (2 Samuel 7), but, for this incident, he angered God and as a consequence his house was involved in serious trouble (2 Sam 12.10). Though Uriah was very faithful to his king, his master killed him for this scandalous event. Bathsheba was the wife of a loyal soldier, but, because of this incident in which she became an object of the king’s lust, was deprived of her loving husband and lost the unexpected child conceived through David, and was later part of the power struggle in the Davidic palace.