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In this episode, we’re diving even deeper into Bathsheba’s story—because one episode just couldn’t handle all the drama. If you’ve ever pictured her seductively lounging on her rooftop, well, we’re here to tell you that your pastor probably got it wrong. We’re busting myths, calling out misconceptions, and asking the real question: Was Bathsheba even naked? Spoiler alert: Dove soap wasn’t involved.. So buckle up for Part 2, where we go all in on the real tea behind the Bible’s most misunderstood woman.
We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.
Welcome to the We Are More podcast.
My name is Alyssa.
And my name is Bri.
We are two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism.
We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach His
word.
And apparently that's controversial.
Get comfy.
Hello.
Hello.
We're coming to you live from not Disney.
And also we're not live.
So there you go.
I feel barely living.
Earlier today, I said something about to my daughter about like, where's Auntie or whatever.
And she was, I think she's dead.
Because that's my response to everything.
Probably dead.
Probably dead.
Passed away.
Deceased.
So that's what happened to you today, even though you didn't know it.
I felt it.
Well, there you go.
I felt it in my knees.
I felt it on my nose.
I saw a TikTok.
No, it wasn't a TikTok.
It was an Instagram post.
And it was like, in reality, I'm 19, but my knees are 74.
My soul is 99.
And I was like, wow, she really Frankensteined herself.
I feel the same way.
Okay.
But speaking of posts about your body, what was that Bri found this post about like, if
you were born in the 90s, you have a freckle right in this spot on your arm.
Oh my gosh.
Everybody who was born in the 90s, take a look at your left arm.
At least it's on our left arms.
It's on our left arms.
Kind of like go palm up and look maybe two inches from your elbow.
Is there a freckle there?
Because there's definitely freckle in mine and Alyssa's.
What is that?
I don't know.
Was it some kind of vaccine?
That's a weird spot to get a vaccine.
That would be a strange spot.
But like skin stretches, I guess.
Well, but you're not going to get a freckle though.
Was that our chicken pox vaccine?
I'm absolutely sure they didn't give it to us on our inner elbow.
Doctors.
Can you explain?
All the doctors out there listening.
And I'm not just talking medical doctors.
I'm talking, are you, do you have a doctorate in paleontology?
Please explain this to us.
Do you have any answers?
Because TikTok was not helpful in this particular instance.
No, it was just like, Hey, by the way, look at your arm.
It didn't give any other, like nothing else.
I feel like so many of those things, it's like astrology, you know, when you get your
fortune for the day.
I don't know what they call it.
What do they call it?
Your astrological prediction for the day that they put in the newspaper or whatever.
Don't ask me.
I am not the right one to ask.
I seem like I should be, but I'm not.
But they put things in such a general way.
They're like, you're going to meet a human today and they're going to say words to you
that obviously it's going to apply.
But that is wildly specific.
Yeah.
And for it to apply to both of us.
Freckles, left arms.
Off to the left side of your inner elbow.
Yeah.
It's wild.
We should repost that so that people can figure out if they also have that.
I should ask our other people that I know born in the 90s.
Also is it applicable to other people born in the 80s?
Check your elbows.
Yeah.
Are they there?
Do you have a freckle?
I need to know.
Mom?
Dad?
That's the only people.
These are the only people we know, guys.
We know mom and dad.
That's it.
End of the list.
And they can be your mom and dad too.
For the low, low price of $19.99.
I got a mother for sale.
25 cents.
We'll keep our dad though.
Oh, will we?
Well, he has the DVC points.
Yes.
And that's what matters.
Mom?
Sorry, mom.
You're going to buy us some more DVC points.
It depends on how much we sell her for.
25 cents is not going to get us very far.
No.
What do you think she's worth?
Our mom is like one of the first people that listens to these episodes every week.
So sorry, mom.
She's a big supporter.
She's a big supporter.
Of her very, too talented, beautiful, thriving other words.
Daughters.
Daughters.
You forgot the word daughters?
No, I was trying to think of other descriptors and I ran out of them.
Bree has a limited number of adjectives in her brain.
That was it.
That was all of them.
Beautiful, talented, and the list ends.
Oh wow.
Hurtful.
We could have been smart.
I said talented.
That encompasses many things.
Does it encompass smart?
Yeah, it does.
No, it doesn't.
Yeah, it does.
You're talented in smartness.
What?
That statement does not really back itself up.
But we're beautiful.
That we are.
And that encompasses a lot.
Speaking of beauty.
Oh.
What a great transition.
Bree and I have discovered that we are eerily the same person.
There are times where I think we're very different because personality wise, Bree will open the
window of the car and sing at the top of her lungs at passersby.
And I'm melting into the seat next to her.
You're like, hide me.
So there's those moments.
But then a huge percentage of the time, she'll say the thing that's in my head and I'll say
the thing that's in her head or we just say it at the exact same moment.
And it's like weird things.
It's not common things.
Really obscure stuff.
We're always thinking the same.
It's really frightening.
I think maybe people should check on us, but maybe we're okay.
Maybe we just have morphed into the same person.
It's very possible.
You don't have curly hair yet though.
You've got to work on that.
Technically, I do.
I just avoid it.
Stop avoiding it.
I identify as not having curly hair.
It's not really working for you.
It's really actually damaging my hair.
I'll get you a whole routine.
It'll be great.
I don't want the routine.
The people out there with the curly hair, they want you to have the routine.
No.
They do.
They're like, I understand.
It's a lot.
Peace be with you.
All right.
We've got to get to a point at some point.
So Bathsheba.
So if you did not listen to last week's, we started a series on Bathsheba.
We're going to do three, possibly four episodes.
We've actually been talking a little bit about what we want to go into and it's kind of extensive.
So we may extend this out for, I don't know.
It's our podcast.
We'll do what we want.
It's our podcast and not yours.
But should we come up with a nickname for Bathsheba?
Because Bathsheba is a mouthful.
It is a long name to pronounce.
I'm thinking Babs.
Oh, okay.
Sure.
That feels respectful.
It's different than what I call the dog.
Babs.
So last week we talked, we kind of went through the actual biblical story.
So if you didn't listen to that, listen, you might want to actually go back to that one,
listen to that one first and then come to this one because it'll help inform what we're
talking about this week.
If you want to spend about two hours with us, then you can go back.
We're a super amazing time.
I think that that sounds like a great way to kill a Saturday morning.
We have looked at some of our statistics and some people are doing that.
Yeah.
There have been some people, like seven straight episodes in a row.
And I'm like, whoa, that's a lot of me.
That's a lot of Brie.
That's a lot of me.
But if you're having a good time, make sure you have a mimosa along with it because that
sounds even better.
Yeah.
I think we're way more interesting with a mimosa.
Well, I know we are because I've had a mimosa while being with you and it is more interesting.
I need to get back on topic.
Let's talk about Babs.
All right, Babs.
So this week we're going to talk a little bit more about the research behind the topic
and people who are smarter than we are, frankly.
Most people.
Uh-uh.
That's true.
One of the articles we're going to focus on, there's a few we're going to talk through,
but one of them is from our good friend, Marg.
Our good friend Marg.
Different than our best friend Beth.
Different than that, yes.
So our good friend Marg.
She is incredible.
We've talked about her before.
She is, the title of her blog includes her name and then exploring the biblical theology
of Christian egalitarianism.
And I'm assuming you pronounce her last name, Maskowitz.
That's not it.
She actually, I discovered that she has an about section and it does have the pronunciation
of her name, but I'm not going to try it because I don't want to.
Does she have a son named Fievel?
I don't think so.
To see a little mouse.
I don't think so.
Was Fievel a mouse?
Fievel was a mouse.
Okay, good.
Just checking.
So the article that we're going to talk about first is called A Sympathetic Look at Bathsheba.
And we talked a little bit last week about the perceptions around this story, around
who Bathsheba was and why she got this really horrible reputation.
Because it's really not written into the Bible in any version.
So, like I said last week, I read through four different versions of this story and
it's a hard story in and of itself.
So reading through four versions is tough.
But I really wanted to get an overview of the newer versions of the Bible, some of the
older versions of the Bible.
I read it in the ESV, the KJV, the NIV and the message.
And if those are very confusing acronyms for you, they're all just different versions of
the Bible.
Most of them are translations.
And if you want to learn more about those things, I recommend researching the purposes
behind why they were written.
We could do a whole episode on that.
We really should.
But anyway, we're going to look at this article right here.
I've got it pulled up.
And one of the things that stood out to me, I'm not going to read through her whole article
because it is intense.
It's extensive, but she's a scholar.
She's just so incredibly smart.
But one of the great things is that she references every Bible verse that she talks about, every
research piece that she's looking at.
So if you want to check her out, would highly recommend that reading this article yourself.
So one of the first things that she talks about is whether or not Bathsheba was naked.
Love that.
Because when you picture, if you know the story of Bathsheba, most people are picturing
her on her own rooftop, in a bath, naked, on purpose seducing David.
Like standing there posing, oh, I'm seductively washing my body.
Where's my dove soap?
Oops, I dropped it.
But what Mark talks about is super interesting to me.
So kind of just the backstory of just this little bit of the story is that King David,
who is the king of Israel at the time, goes onto his roof in the middle of the day at
one point when he's not supposed to be home.
He's supposed to be at war and looks out on the expanse and sees Bathsheba, who we don't
know that he knew prior to this moment, but he sees her and she's bathing and he finds
her very attractive.
So that's the beginning of the story.
He goes bow chicka wow wow.
I mean, really he does.
And so the assumption has been A, that she's on her roof, B, that she's fully naked.
Now the on her roof thing, I'm not exactly sure where that came from.
I think we're getting it confused just as a people because he was on his roof.
For sure.
For sure.
But it just says she was within her home.
As Mark says, at the time women didn't have the luxury of a private bathroom in their
home.
That was not a thing.
I wasn't a thing for a long time.
Think like, I'm thinking Pride and Prejudice.
They just hauled a bathtub into the bedroom.
So you've got to think everyone, men, women, children, are bathing semi publicly, not like
out in the open, but like potentially with an open window in some space or in their courtyard
or something along those lines with the expectation that like, oh hey, no peeping Toms are going
to be on their rooftops staring down at me.
Fair assumption.
I would hope that most people out there are showering thinking there's no peeping Toms.
Unfortunately for Bathsheba that was not true.
So we assume that she's on her roof.
That's not biblical.
That's not what the Bible says.
It is in all kinds of resources.
Like there are tons and tons of resources saying she was on her roof.
I've heard countless sermons saying she was on her roof.
And again, the implication is always she's doing this on purpose.
She's purposely on her roof.
Shame on her.
Now the reality is that, and we talked about this last week, David shouldn't have been
home.
So even if she was purposely on her roof, why would she have been purposely on her roof
when David wasn't supposed to be hung if she was trying to seduce the king, if that was
her goal?
So then let's talk about the nakedness aspect.
Oh, the nakedness of me.
I think in here in 2024 where we sit, we like to take our culture and push it all the way
back.
Yeah.
And to us, of course you bathe naked.
Unless, wasn't it Ross from Friends who's like never nude?
Or was that just something?
That was on, oh, what was that show that Netflix brought back?
I just remember quoting that with my friends in high school.
Arrested Development.
Was it that?
Never nude.
Yeah, it was like a club.
It was like the never nude club.
Yeah, so unless you're those people.
But like for the most part, we are showering and bathing naked because we have complete
privacy.
Again, for the most part.
I don't know your situation, but-
And also you can get in all your cracks and your crevices.
Thank you for that.
You're a nigger if you're nude.
And so we assume that that would have been the case all throughout history and time,
right?
But now this is not proven one way or the other, but as Mark points out, culturally
you would not have necessarily been naked when you were bathing because you didn't have
an expectation of complete and total privacy.
So there is a fully large possibility that she wasn't naked at all.
She wasn't on her roof and she wasn't naked.
And that culture was pretty concerned with- now this is just my thought.
I would think that they were pretty concerned with modesty specifically for women at that
point in time.
So it would be a little odd.
Yeah, for her to be fully naked.
Yeah, and so that could have meant, you know, as I'm washing this part of my body, I'm covering
up this part of my body as, you know, whatever.
So she probably would have been less covered than normal.
Like she wasn't in full robes.
Again, expectation of privacy.
Expectation of privacy, guys.
She had a reasonable reason to assume nobody was going to see her.
So then the next thing that's important to talk about in this article, and I'm going
to speed through this one a little bit so we can get through some more.
How fast?
Fast.
Like the wind, bullseye.
So the next important aspect of this that we didn't talk about last week is her age.
So at the time, and you know, culturally it's different now what is acceptable for an age
difference.
They didn't think like, okay, over 18.
Right.
Right.
There was definitely a- girls were getting married in their early to mid teens was the
expectation and the men were not necessarily that young.
They may have been younger, but they probably wouldn't have been that young.
At this point, David has many, many wives.
So we assume he's older.
Now she was able to conceive a child as we learn later in the story.
So she's at least old enough to have a period.
To have a period.
Right.
She's gone through puberty.
But, I mean, that can happen quite young.
Think about when you started your periods out there.
If you're-
Women.
Oh, women.
I don't know if it's-
I started when I was 10.
Thank you for that information.
People are getting really serious over here.
Listen, that could be a security question.
Now you know that about me.
Oh, is that a security question?
Feels invasive.
For the woke community.
Ah, yes.
Yeah.
And I think based on what I know of science that we are starting, like women are starting
their periods younger, so it might have been a little bit older.
You could say maybe 13 or something like that.
But she was at least that old.
However, it seems like she was quite young.
The rest of the accounts, like not biblical, but other historical accounts of her make
her quite young.
So we can assume probably based on the time period, based on the fact that she didn't
have any children yet that we know of, that she was probably recently married, and that
David was staring at what was likely an underage child and lusting after her.
And again, the expectations at the time were different, but still I think that's an important
point to bring up because it humanizes her too.
It really helps you see her as the victim in this story.
Yeah, absolutely.
Which is what she was.
Right.
And not only was she a child, as we've talked about, she was requested by the king for no
reason other than sex.
Yep.
And in that scenario, as we learn in other places in the Bible, she didn't have the option
to say no.
No.
One of the things that Marg points out later in one of her comments is she talks about
Queen Vashti, who was in the story of Esther.
So Queen Vashti was the queen prior to Esther, and she basically had the guts to say no to
a summons from the king, so the king called for her to do the deed.
And she said, no thank you.
I'm tired of you.
Goodbye.
I think you smell.
You haven't been showering in the nude like you should have been.
And I'm gonna keep my knees closed, thank you.
And so what does the king do?
He kills her off and he replaces her.
And Queen Vashti-
As so many men do.
And Queen Vashti also would have had a lot more confidence and status to be able to say
no.
And she still got killed.
She was the queen.
Right.
So imagine Bathsheba, some of the comments on this article blow my mind, but some of
the comments say, well she could have said no, she could have said no.
And one of the respondents to that was like, only a man would say she could say no.
This girl, she was a child.
She was summoned by the king.
She had no influence.
She probably had the king's men come to her house and like literally not give her a choice.
Pick her up, take her to the king.
It wasn't, hey do you mind?
The king actually wanted to see you.
Do you mind coming with us?
No.
It's an order.
Right.
Well the verse says go get her.
He sent them to get her.
Not to ask.
Not to say, hey next week are you free?
And this was after he had asked who is she.
Right.
So he knows.
Because she was named, back then they were named by the men that they were related to.
So they said, oh that's the daughter of Eliam who is one of King David's top 30 closest
soldiers to him.
His top fighters.
And also she's the wife of Uriah who's also in your top 30 soldiers fighting for you,
King David.
So she's mentioned by two of the men that he probably knew.
Yeah that was actually an error that I want to correct from the last one.
We had kind of said that Uriah may not have known David, but as we were researching further
it became clear that Uriah would likely have known David, would likely have been in the
palace before because he was one of David's top guys.
Which makes the story even worse.
Yeah.
Like this was someone who had pledged his life to the king and said I will do anything.
I will not question anything that you ask of me.
I will lay down my life.
Which means if you think about it, now this is also horrific so don't come at me, but
based on the time period because Uriah had pledged his life and everything to David,
if David had said Uriah I want your wife, because David does this later, Uriah would
have said probably, okay.
You're my king.
Okay.
So still horrific, still forcing himself upon her, still awful, but David could have gotten
away with it, but instead he chose to exert his power over Bathsheba and over Uriah in
big ways.
Over many people, yeah.
So he knows who she is, he says I don't care, go get her.
Ridiculous.
Constant horrible, terrible, awful choices.
We talked about this last week, but you have to think of the timeline too and I think that's
something that we glaze over a lot with this story because it's only two chapters long.
So it seems like okay, all of this was done in a period of a week or two weeks.
It's easy to make that assumption.
The Veggie Tales certainly do.
The Ducky story is not very long.
It's only a half hour.
I think we talked about this in the last episode too.
Think about the entire length of her pregnancy because spoiler alert, I know that you probably
listened to the last episode, she gets pregnant.
That's like nine months of time.
So at the end of this story, Nathan the prophet comes to King David and says, hey, I know
what you did.
I know what you did last summer.
And we don't know that that happened right after the baby was born.
So it could have been nine months.
It could have been four years.
We really don't have a timeline here.
And so to think that David was just chilling, not really seemingly feeling all that bad
about this, not telling anybody and just going on with his life.
Because who was he answering to?
Well, he was supposed to be answering to God.
He was supposed to be, but clearly not.
Clearly not.
So Nathan shows up and says, hey, God's pissed.
He's pissed, pissed, pissed.
So then the last point I want to make from this article before we move on to a couple
of the other ones is how innocent the Bible portrays Bathsheba.
How did we get here?
How did we get here?
There's no verse that says, and she seductively tempted him and shame on her and shame on
Bathsheba.
Nathan didn't come and say, hey, Bathsheba, repent.
No, he said, David, repent.
And there is another instance later in the story of Bathsheba where Nathan does come
to her and talk to her.
Not about this, not to make her feel bad, but as a prophecy from God, he comes to her.
And that's a whole different story.
Maybe he has full ability and willingness to talk to her, but he doesn't.
He talks to David.
And the story that he tells David is about this shepherd who has one little lamb.
And the lamb, anytime a lamb is mentioned in the Bible, it's usually like this vision
of innocence, of representation of Christ.
So innocence, perfection, whatever you want, sinlessness, right?
And the shepherd has the little lamb and the rich man takes the lamb and kills it.
If you watched the last, or if you listened to the last episode.
Did you watch it too?
If you did, I'm frightened because where did you watch it from?
But in that story, some scholars have implied that if Bathsheba in this case is the lamb,
as it seems to be, then it is directly saying in this instance she is sinless.
She is innocent, yeah.
She has done nothing wrong.
She was the victim here.
But yet in so many circumstances when you hear this story preached, or like we were
talking about earlier, the depictions, the art of this story, it always makes her seem
like a villain.
She was purposely out to get him.
And I also want to say, even if she was standing on her roof, butt naked, trying to seduce
the king, the king should have said no.
The king should have looked at her, okay, and then he asked who is she related to.
Oh, she's the wife of this and the daughter of this.
He should have been like, see ya bye, even if she was trying to seduce him.
Well, I think the reason we forget that is because as Brie and I were talking about earlier,
it is in Christianity always on women to stop men from behaving poorly, to stop men from
going after them sexually, to stop men from whatever their urges might be.
It's always on the women.
You have to dress a certain way so they don't look at you that way.
You have to behave a certain way so they don't think like that.
If you get into a situation where he's forcing himself upon you, it's on you to say no, which
of course you want to say no anyway, but he has no responsibility in the matter.
And I think we put that on this story too.
Yeah, we were talking about this earlier too, if you had the experience of going to church
camps or we went to band camp too and they would yell at us for if our bra straps were
showing or our shorts were too short and say like, hey you can't wear that because the
boys are going to lust after you and you don't want to cause them to do that.
So you have to change yourself because you're worth less than what they are.
Their thoughts and just them being men, they are worth more so you have to put yourself
down.
Well, we say this all the time.
I couldn't tell you how many times I've heard this.
Boys mature slower than girls.
Boys just, they have such a sexual drive that girls just won't understand.
They just can't control that so it's up to you to help them to be their sister in Christ.
The amount of I rolled.
It's up to you to stop them from sinning.
And I just want to point out that even when the Bible calls us the body of Christ, it
is never on one person to stop another person from sinning.
Because God gave us free will.
That is never asked of us.
It's never asked of me to stop Brianna from sinning.
And when it talks, people are always like, well, you don't want to be a stumbling block.
Oh, sorry.
These are very churchy terms that I've heard.
Well, it's just frustrating because it's like, oh, we need to help them along their way.
But at the same time, we're also told that the men need to be the head of the household
and the head of this and the head of that and they need to lead their wives.
But they can't control themselves enough to not take advantage of someone.
Well, I think that's exactly what's happened in this story is we've taken that mindset,
that way of thinking and thrown it on David and said, well, he couldn't control himself.
He saw a naked woman, therefore automatically he must have her.
Like how absolutely stupid.
You're right.
If she was standing on her roof naked, shouting at him, come sleep with me.
I'm desperate.
My husband's been away for too long.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter because he's still in control of who he is and he's supposed to be following
God.
He is directly supposed to be following God and that's always, always going to be on him.
And side note, she wasn't doing any of those things.
Yeah, no.
None of that is true.
It's even worse because she was completely innocent.
But we've made her into this awful person, this villain, this, I don't know, temptress,
I guess is a great word.
I think she's just become like a sex object to people because you were talking about art
that you've seen, right?
Yeah.
So I looked up a couple of different depictions.
There's a Rembrandt and I'm looking at it now, unfortunately, but you can't, you could,
I suppose.
Everybody get on Google with me.
It's time for Art History 101.
Maybe don't.
But it's called Bathsheba at Her Bath and it's a very nude picture.
If you're not familiar with this period of art history, there's a lot of nudes, but this
one is quite nude.
And she's bathing and she's got her hand laid just so, like the suggestive, like, ah, and
her face is innocently off to the side as she tries to seduce him, whatever.
She better her eyes.
But there are many depictions of her and she's always naked.
She's just absolutely always fully nude.
And I hate that for her.
Now we know she's been gone for a long time, but just empathetically imagine if your history
and she has a great story from here.
This part of her story is horrific.
Don't get me wrong.
But from here, she has a lovely rest of her story.
And this is what she's known in history for.
Not the fact that she raised King Solomon, not the fact that she was the Queen Mother.
Yeah.
And would later have so much influence and be risen by God to such a position that, I
mean, you could argue that she was on equal footing as King David was at the time.
She was part of Jesus's bloodline.
Yeah, absolutely.
She has an incredible rest of her story and yet as a society, we remember her as the naked
girl.
How awful.
Because I feel like society just, it's easy.
And like we said in the last episode, we like to make a lot of excuses for people in power
in order for them to keep their power.
This is another excuse.
Right.
Well, and I think it makes us uncomfy to say the reality of who David was because he is
and it's actually prior to the story, called a man after God's own heart.
And that's an interesting phrase.
So Marga actually talks about that as well.
So I would recommend checking out her work on that.
But it makes us uncomfortable to call him out for what he was.
And I can't say again, the exact word here because algorithms, but the fact that he forced
himself on her, the fact that he murdered her husband.
Can I say murder?
Should I say unalive?
He unalived her husband.
That's a really tough set of things to try and put together.
Man after God's own heart, but also this horrific person.
Like how do you reconcile those?
And I think that's why we've done this to her.
I think that kind of leads us into some like current events happening in our life right
now.
There's a story going around where someone high up in a position of power in a very well
known church.
There's a church that we have been associated with and there's a huge scandal going on right
now.
And it's because someone in power decided that they were the most important person.
He decided that he was more important than all of the people that he was supposed to
be serving.
That his needs were more important.
And that the consent of other people was not worth his time.
And we are really struggling with that right now.
As the two of us, as my husband, it's something that has become very real to us as we look
at this story as well.
Yeah, I think it relates to the story because he was someone that people wanted to look
up to.
Right?
And I think that a lot of people are still in some ways defending because it makes them
uncomfortable to sit with that reality.
That someone in the faith is not perfect.
And that it's okay to say what they did was really wrong.
Well, I think what I've seen also in this story and I think relates to David and Bathsheba
as well is watching people say, like post on social media, like, well, whoever's without
sin cast the first stone and we have to forgive and forget and we have to whatever.
And I hear that to some degree.
We are certainly called to forgive.
However, we are also called to call out sin.
And we are also called to be there for the people who are hurting.
And what doesn't help in those situations is to say, hey, you got to forgive.
Hey, you got to forgive.
Hey, I forgave.
So you got to forgive.
Hey, hey, hey, forgive.
God said forgive.
Because you have to think about the people that were affected and validate that what
happened to them is not right.
And we are there for you.
And remember that forgiveness is not something that God said, force this upon others.
Forgiveness is something that happens for you to help you in a situation.
Whenever the other person should they choose to forgive, that's between them and God.
And when you say, when you post things, when you say things like forgive, forgive, forgive,
or when you say it about King David in this story, forgive, forgive, forgive, what you
do is invalidate all of what the victim went through when what you could say instead is,
I'm so sorry.
That was completely not okay.
I am so sorry.
And that's it.
That's the end of the sentence.
If from there they need you and they need help, then be there.
Step in, whatever.
Or they come to you and say, I want to forgive, but I'm struggling.
Help me.
Like, absolutely.
Yeah.
But it can just be, I'm so sorry.
And I think we've talked about this before, but we are always so quick as a Christian
community to defend the church at all costs, defend the church.
But the church is the people.
So are you defending the people?
Or are you defending the institution?
And if your immediate reaction to situations like what we're going through right now, to
if you know someone that's been in a situation like Bathsheba found herself in, if your immediate
reaction is defend the church, defend the church, defend the church, and I have been
on the receiving end of this, if your immediate reaction is that what you're doing is telling
that person you don't have a place here anymore.
We don't actually care about you.
We will say until the better end that we care about you, but our actions are not loving
or caring.
And I think that's a huge part of, and I've seen this again through this story on social
media as people comment and say, this is why I'm not in church.
I will never go back to church because of things like this.
We were thinking about going back to church and now we won't, et cetera, et cetera.
And then you see people comment back who are church people in full defense of the church
person.
That's never going to bring anybody to church.
How much more is it going to bring someone back if someone commented from that church
and they were like, I am so incredibly sorry that you feel that way.
I hear you.
And that's it, guys.
That's it.
Because I think we will always say like, as a church, we want to be known for fill in
the blank, for our love of people, for our forgiveness, for our whatever, supernatural
forgiveness.
Okay, I hear you.
But what people are going to see from the outside isn't they forcibly made everybody
forgive this person and put on a smiley face.
What they're going to see is in this space supported and loved and admitted to what was
going on.
That's what gets seen from the outside if you do it right, which we'll see.
But that's what the church should be known for, their care and love of their people.
And when forgiveness does come from that in the end, it's on each individual person and
they can handle that themselves.
Because who are you trying to protect?
Are you trying to protect Bathsheba or are you trying to protect David?
Right.
I think most of the time we're trying to protect David, unfortunately.
But I also wanted to talk a little bit about...
So I looked up this story just on Wikipedia, okay?
This is the most basic internet search.
I found lots of articles, but I thought the one on Wikipedia was really interesting because
it breaks it down into this story from the perspective of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
So in my mind, this story is only coming from one perspective, but the reality is that this
is a historical story that was in other historical accounts.
So Christians, I hate to tell you this, we don't have a monopoly on this story.
And I'm not going to go through the whole really deep part of it because in Judaism
there's a lot to it.
It goes into astrology, so we're full circling.
I'm a Leo.
Congratulations, Dana.
That's another security question for you.
Great.
But I wanted to talk about one important part.
So on Wikipedia it says that according to rabbinic tradition, and if I am saying that
incorrectly, I'm sorry.
Most likely you are.
Most likely I am.
Later on in the story Bathsheba's son Solomon, he's not going to be king because he's not
the oldest son, so logically he's not.
And his brother, I'm not going to try and say his name, is going to become king.
But the prophet, Nathan, comes to Bathsheba and says, hey, Solomon was supposed to be
king.
That was foretold to you a long time ago.
We talked about this.
I want you to go to David and remind him.
And so she does, and then Solomon becomes king.
Essentially it implies that she, and Christianity has done this too, through this story it implies
that she was politically motivated and that that then pushes all the way back to when
she was a child and she had Solomon in the first place.
So this says that according to rabbinic tradition, which I know I said it wrong, when Bathsheba
saw that this other son was about to be crowned king, that basically she went to the prophet
Nathan and said, hey, we're going to plot together and make it so that Solomon is going
to be king.
And so it kind of portrays her as super politically motivated.
And I guess then we also are going to push that narrative all the way back to when she
was a literal child.
That's quite the plan, I would say, to be like, I'm going to be naked bathing, hoping
that the king who's not supposed to be at his house is going to see me and then I'm
going to make him want to sleep with me, make myself get pregnant, make sure it's a boy,
even though he's not going to be the first boy.
And I'm going to make that boy a king.
It's the long game.
She's playing the long game.
Keep in mind, she's 13 and stupid.
There's all 13 year olds are.
I mean, it's a rough time when you're 13.
But yeah, I mean, the story, it falls apart real quick when you start trying to tell that
story according to Wikipedia.
Now if you grew up in the Jewish faith or you are in the Jewish faith and I'm incorrect,
please definitely let us know.
But that's what it says about the end of her story.
Bekkah Mark talks about that in her article too.
She says that there's just when you try to make that argument, it doesn't hold up because
the only reason that she went to the king to remind him that Solomon was supposed to
be the king was because Nathan came and reminded her.
It wasn't something that she was like, ha ha ha.
She was, I mean, she was good.
As far as the Bible says, she was fully going to accept that this was what was going on.
This was the new king, such is life, moving on.
So then we've already talked about the Christian viewpoint of her.
And then we'll talk just for a second about, because Wikipedia talks about it and I think
it's interesting, the Islamic view of her.
So it says, in Islam, David is considered to be a prophet.
And some tradition views this story as incompatible with that because if he's a prophet, he can't
sin.
Oh, that's nice for him.
Especially him.
I didn't know that was an option.
There's a lot of sin in David's story, like a bunch.
So that's going to be a hard one to argue.
But it has a quote here that says, whoever says that David has married Uriah's wife as
the legends are narrate, I will punish him twice.
One for a word I can't pronounce, falsely accusing someone of adultery, and the other
for desecrating the prophethood, defamation of the prophet David.
So basically they're saying that this story could not have ever happened in the way that
the Bible says it.
Now, obviously there's different sacred texts and things like that, but this argument is
saying that this could not have been the truth, whereas Christianity would say everything
in the Bible is true.
And everybody has sin except for God.
So different religious traditions, but I just found that really interesting.
If you want to see those, like I said, it's the Wikipedia page just on Bathsheba, so you
can go check that out.
We also looked her up on the Jewish Women's Archive, which one of our favorites.
It is.
There's so many good resources out there that I didn't know existed.
And that's why I like to name them as we use them so that you guys can then go and utilize
that as well.
Did you see the comment on our TikTok the other day?
Yeah, so there was a comment.
It made me really happy.
I think she said, I'm home or something.
She said, wait, faith and feminism?
I'm home or something like that.
I loved it.
It was, I think the first, I always check our TikTok when I get up in the morning and
it was like the first thing that I saw.
And it just made me feel happy and it was really nice.
So if you're out there listening to the actual podcast, we're so happy you're here.
Because there's not an abundance of resources out there with dealing with this topic, faith
and feminism.
And it is a thing.
Like we've said before, Jesus was a feminist.
Well, and for us too, we love to see your guys' comments.
It's not always easy to do a podcast because this is a lot of work.
We spend a lot of our time that we don't have a ton of anyway.
Podcasting and editing and getting the clips up and things like that.
Plus also we spend at least 12 hours a day sleeping.
It's a lot of work.
I need at least 13 hours.
So it was just really nice to know that we can be part of creating that community for
someone.
And hopefully we can also, I don't know, push you all forth into some really good resources
as well.
I don't know how to say that without sounding weird.
Go forth and breed.
Feed these research papers.
Have a great time.
Anyone want to feel like they're in school?
But you know, just because our best friend is Beth and our good friend is Marg, it doesn't
mean they can't be your best friends and good friends.
Very true, very true.
Although we haven't asked them, so we don't know them.
They don't need to know.
And in fact, if I were to meet them and they were to have listened to this, I think I would
be embarrassed.
That's fair.
But they might also love us.
No way to know.
No, unless, hey, Beth, Marg, Sarah Bessie, all of the people that we know.
If you'd like to question, comment, concern our podcast, reach out.
We'd be open to a brunch.
We do love a mimosa.
So anyway, next week.
Next week.
The future.
The future.
As we look ahead, we're going to be talking about this story again, because I just feel
like there's so much to it.
And her story continues on from here in the Bible.
And a lot of times women's stories in the Bible, they do seem very short.
They're one chapter or even like the book of Esther is very short.
So it feels like their stories are so short.
But with Bathsheba, we do follow her along for a while.
She's in the lineage of Jesus, like we talked about.
She has Solomon as one of her children.
Marg has another article that I read on kind of the continuation of Bathsheba's story that
I find really interesting.
So we're going to talk about that.
I would also like to talk about some of the, I'm going to find some really painful quotes.
So prepare yourselves from pastors that have preached on this.
Oh.
So we're going to talk about that.
This might be a three parter, it might be a four parter.
We'll see.
It depends on how we're feeling that day.
It just depends on how chatty we're feeling and how alive this makes us feel.
To the alive part that's always a concern.
So you guys can look forward to that fun next week.
It's going to be thrilling.
Shout out to where do we want to send people to listen to us?
Send them to listen to us?
All right.
We need you all to road trip too.
Honestly, we're willing to do that too.
All right.
Let's see.
Bri, are there any other states that you don't think exist?
I'm convinced that Utah is a state.
Well, that's good.
Would you like people to listen from Utah?
I don't know.
All right.
Those of you in Utah, convince Bri that you listen to podcasts.
She does believe you're real, so hooray.
What do you call people from Utah?
Utahians?
I don't know.
What do you call us?
Michiganders.
That's weird.
No, but that's really what we're calling.
I know, but it's weird.
Utahians?
Yeah, Utahians.
All right.
People from Utah.
I'm sorry.
But also if you could listen to the podcast, that'd be great.
Also you guys can like, comment, share all the things.
You can follow us on social media.
We are heavily on TikTok and Instagram.
You can find us on Facebook, but I'm kind of lazy about that.
Did I say before that I think it's a dead art?
You did.
You did.
I stand by that.
So people of Facebook.
People of Facebook, you need to find a new social media platform.
I'm on Facebook a lot actually.
I don't know why.
It's kind of useless.
Okay.
See?
No, I'm with you.
See?
I do scroll through Facebook like in the morning as I'm like, the wee early bits of the morning
I'm trying to crust my eyes and I just out of habit go to Facebook and start scrolling
and I realized it's nothing but ads and garbage.
It is.
It really is.
So there are a few people that I like to follow on there.
We follow Sheila on there.
I do.
I do also.
I like to see her stuff.
There's a few people that I like on there.
But anyway, so go check us out on socials.
We will see you next week.
Peace be with you and also with you and love you.
Good bye.
I love you too.