Editor’s Note: This week we welcome guest blogger, Emily Marks. Emily is an adult and community educator. She and her husband Sean live in Lancaster, PA, with their dog Corvus. I learned so much from her sermon on 2 Samuel 11-12! I’m excited for you to read these blog posts.
In my opinion, we have done a terrible job as a society teaching women about their bodies. And if women haven’t been well-educated about their own bodies, it stands to reason that men have even less knowledge about the subject.
So I’m going to educate you a little bit about women’s health – not solely because I think it’s important – but so that we can better understand what is happening in this story. Remember what we read in the previous post, the end of 2 Samuel 11, verse 4, “She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.)”
We need to get into Jewish law a little bit to fully understand what is going on here. When the Old Testament writer takes time to mention “uncleanness”, they are letting us know that Bathsheba just had her period. Under Jewish law, women were considered “unclean” during this time, and after their period was over, they went through a cleansing or a purifying ritual, which lasted seven days, or as one Jewish scholar put it very clearly, “a woman needed to experience seven ‘clean’ days following menstruation before she was considered clean and was able to participate in sexual activity again.”
Seven to ten days after a woman’s period ends, she begins the process of ovulation, meaning that her body is fertile, and if Bathsheba is young and healthy and not experiencing any chronic illness or stress, her body will actively try to get pregnant. This is a biological drive inside of women when they’re ovulating and at childbearing age.
Bathsheba had gone through the purification process during that 7-10 days, so when she entered King David’s chambers that night, she was ovulating. If you followed my quick health lesson, you already know what is going to happen next.
To understand women’s health is to understand the ramifications of David’s actions. And these are not just actions. These are sins. To understand women’s health is to understand the potential consequences of David’s sin.
The author writes in verse 5: “The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, ‘I am pregnant.’”
David’s got himself in a little bit of a pickle, doesn’t he?
Now that we know the consequence of their sexual encounter, I want to point out two other reasons as to why the Old Testament writer mentions women’s health. Paternity and Natural “natural” consequences (we lose control of where the sin is going). It doesn’t get much more natural than our bodies.
Contrary to some cultural beliefs, God is not sitting up there in the sky pulling levers and playing our lives like an arcade game. God did not look down on David and say, “Oh, c’mon, man! You should know better than that! You’re the guy after my own heart. What are you doing? You know what, I’ll show you! I’ll mess up your life for making such a bad decision.” God didn’t use immaculate conception to impregnate Bathsheba to get back at David for sinning.
This pregnancy is not a punishment: this is a natural consequence of choices that were made. God created an intricate monthly cyclical system inside of women, and David decided to sleep with Bathsheba in the fertile part of this cycle. There should be no surprise that Bathsheba is pregnant and that they find themselves in a sticky situation: pregnancy is always a possibility of sexual activity.
Sometimes we do things, we make choices, and then we’re shocked by the consequences. For example, if I’m in a mood one day (which happens a lot), and I decide to pick a fight with my incredibly kind and patient husband, I shouldn’t be surprised when he responds in frustration to the ridiculous thing I did. And I certainly shouldn’t be going to God asking, “God, why am I in such a difficult season in my marriage?” Because God’s going to respond, “Emily, you’re not in a difficult season in your marriage; you’re being dramatic. And second, you started this.”
If we’re all really honest with ourselves, we will be able to think of times that we’ve done things like this: maybe you kept a small secret and you ruined a friendship. Maybe you told a white lie and it blew up in your face. Sometimes when we do that, our reaction is to cry out to God in anger or questions towards Him.
David doesn’t cry out to God in anger or blame God in this section, so I’m not trying to add anything to Scripture that is not there or imply anything about David
But we as Christians would do well to remember that not everything that happens to us is divine punishment that is unfair or out of the blue. Not everything that happens to us is persecution. Not everything that happens to us is spiritual warfare. Sometimes the things that happen to us are because of us. Our actions, our choices, natural consequences.
So going back to our story, the writers of the Old Testament bring up Bathsheba’s cycle and women’s health because they want us to see that this pregnancy is not a punishment inflicted on the two by God: this is a natural – literally the most natural – consequence of David’s actions.
So this is where we find ourselves: David has committed a sin, and they’re not going to get away with it: the sin can’t be hidden for long because Bathsheba is pregnant, which means there will be a visual cue in a few months, and it can’t be her husband’s child because the timeline doesn’t match up with her cycle. This would be a social scandal if it ever got out.
We’re going to come back to Bathsheba’s pregnancy, but how does David respond to the news? His choice and the sin of that choice is directly related to his relationship with Bathsheba. We’ll find out how David responds in the next post.
Engaging Scripture 