Did King David rape Bath-sheba?

[Minimalist]

10th century "jerusalem" ( or whatever it may have been called ) was a miserable little shithole of huts. I'm sure all of them needed a bath.

[Bob Kelso]

Wtf really?

Yep. If a beautiful woman is trying to get my attention, she will get it by bathing where she knows I can see her. If she doesn't want my attention, she'll bathe behind closed doors like most of us do. That's not too hard to grasp.

Not that I believe any of this happened but;

Despite your bible not saying a single word about how Bathsheba felt about things -imagine that right? The bible overlooking a woman. - why is it your first thought that the woman had to be a consenting adulterer as well? Occam's razor tells me (in this hypothetical situation) that it's far more likely that she was pressured into doing the horizontal tango due to the king/peasant power paradigm, not that she was a Lil' Miss Slutty McSlutslut. You know; cos if the king of a violent, fucked up nation wants to fuck you, you probably don't tell him no unless you want to die.

[CapnAwesome]

No, because they are both fictional characters.

[CindysRain]

Not that I believe any of this happened but;

Despite your bible not saying a single word about how Bathsheba felt about things -imagine that right? The bible overlooking a woman. - why is it your first thought that the woman had to be a consenting adulterer as well? Occam's razor tells me (in this hypothetical situation) that it's far more likely that she was pressured into doing the horizontal tango due to the king/peasant power paradigm, not that she was a Lil' Miss Slutty McSlutslut. You know; cos if the king of a violent, fucked up nation wants to fuck you, you probably don't tell him no unless you want to die.

Yes! You said what I wanted to express, I was just too pissed.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

David may have been a decent kid but he was a lousy SOB as a man. I rank him on a par with that bastard Abraham as being the worse men in the Old Testament. And to think that some dummies base their religion on those scum. Jesus said that bad trees don't bear good fruit and those trees were rotten. So since Jesus is supposed to be from them he is rotten as well by his own rules.

[Tonus]

I guess Uriah and Bath-sheba don't mean anything to god, since he doesn't chastise David further for forgetting who it was he really mistreated. No, not at all! God immediately "puts away" David's sin and spares his life. Uriah stays dead. Bath-sheba remains the wife of the man who raped her, and will now bear a child that god himself has promised to kill. It's like JUSTICE ALL AROUND!!!

Actually, God IS pissed about what King David did to them!

I don't know about that. God seems more upset at how this reflects on him rather than on the fact that David raped a woman and tried to cover it up by arranging a hit on her husband and then forcing her into marriage with her rapist. After all, god goes to such lengths to visit punishments on David (which mostly consist of having other people die) when he could have simply intervened before David ever glanced at Bath-sheba. The story implies that David should have been at the battlefront, not at home. God could have simply reminded him to go join his troops, where he could have taken out his sexual frustration on the virgin daughters of his enemies, like a good Israelite was commanded.

---

No. I'm just saying that Bathsheba may have been a willing accomplice in the relationship, in which case she would share responsibility for the act of adultery.

In which case the story would have told us of god's anger with her and his punishment for her, since as an adulteress she would have been subject to death. But an interesting thing about the story is that David is not accused of adultery!!!

Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’

David's crimes are that he struck down Uriah and took his wife. Not that he entered into an adulterous affair with Bath-sheba. Bath-sheba is NEVER mentioned as being at fault for anything that happens. And again, the loss of her child is specifically because David brought reproach against the name of god, not for any of her actions.

[archangle]

if she was unclear with when she said "don't" and "stop"

don't stop...
don't stop...
Please baby please ...
DOOOOon't STOOOOOOOP!!!!

It may have mislead him.

[GrandizerII]

Hard to tell without more context. It may or may not have been rape.

[John V]

So... did David rape Bath-sheba? The case seems pretty strong. The story doesn't tell us how she reacts to being summoned to see the king, or what she said or did upon realizing what he wanted.

I don't see how you get a strong case from the fact that we're not told how she responded.

[Anomalocaris]

Wtf really?

Yep. If a beautiful woman is trying to get my attention, she will get it by bathing where she knows I can see her. If she doesn't want my attention, she'll bathe behind closed doors like most of us do. That's not too hard to grasp.

You do realize despite the favor of the creator, almost all Israelites of 10th century BC had to do without any form of water container besides small clay jars, to say nothing of indoor plumbing, and on the few occassions in their lives when they could bestir themselves to bathe, they would mostly all bathe in the open next to a pond or creak, right?

If you wish to have a high chance of having indoor plumbing and bathe in the privacy of your own home in 10th century BC, you would have to be someone not chosen by god, live not in "holy" land or anywhere near, but on the Indian subcontinent.