David and Bathsheba – When it rains, it pours

"It's a sucky life and just when you think it can't suck any more it does." – Phoebe Buffay

My last post explained all about the early relationship between David and Bathsheba. If you haven’t read it, please do so now.

continuing on . . .

All King David’s ass-hattery didn’t go unnoticed by Jehovah who was displeased. Apparently He doesn’t like it when mortals try to edge in on his “nearly random acts of terrorism” bit, so He sent His prophet Nathan to have a little chat with David. Nathan told David this really sappy story about how some rich guy with tons of sheep killed and served for dinner the sheep of some poor guy who didn’t really have anything else in the world. This story made David mad. David immediately declared a sentence of death for the rich guy in the story.

I suppose David was supposed to understand that the story was a parable for his rape of Bathsheba and murder of her husband, but David wasn’t very bright so Nathan had to explain it to him very patiently. Rich man kills and eats beloved, single sheep; signifying how David rapes Bathsheba and has her husband killed. Then Nathan had a message from Jehovah for David. The message went something like this: “You are a jerk and because you secretly had sex with someone else’s wife, I’m going to make sure somebody has public sex with all your wives. Oh, and the kid you made with Uriah’s wife? Yeah. He’s going to die too now.”

So Jehovah struck the child and it became very ill. David was bummed that the kid was dying so he stopped eating and prayed a lot because he thought this would change God’s mind about the kid. It didn’t work though and after seven days the kid died. Once David figured out that acting all sad and whiny didn’t do any good after all, he washed up, got dressed, and sat down to a nice meal. His servants thought this was weird and asked, “What’s going on? You seemed really concerned when the child was dying, but now that he’s dead you’re acting fine.” David had a simple response, “Meh, can’t bring him back, so why bother with it?”

David didn’t like that the whole rape and murder thing didn’t get him a son, so he had more sex with Bathsheba (poor girl) until she had another son. David named this kid Solomon, which sounds an awful lot like Saruman.

Note: I’m bothered that nobody seems to care how badly David destroyed Bathsheba’s life. She was violently raped multiple times, her husband was murdered by the King (using the swords of the Ammonites), she was forced to marry her rapist and the murderer of her husband, and her son was murdered by Jehovah. There are no words.

I also don’t like how God’s solution to the problem is to have someone rape all of David’s wives. This is so unbelievably misogynistic, I can’t believe how any modern woman can read this and think God is OK.

Ref: 2 Samuel 12