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Friday 15 July 2022

David and Bathsheba - rape or adultery

 I had noticed twitter abuzz with blame for Bathsheba and David. It is one of the stories I stayed away from in my letters to my children. How do you explain adultery to anyone? (I did, but I didn't draw the conclusions. See these letters: Instruction and Brokenness.)

A striking phrase came up for me - why am I so slow - as Poirot might say at the end of the mystery - Adultery requires consent from both participating adults - anything else is rape or abuse of power. Somewhere in those 6 Hebrew consonants (la tnaf) is a pointer to mutual consent!

Andrew Perriman notes that Bathsheba gets rewarded with Solomon, but it was not in her head that sleeping with the king would be advantageous. I wonder how the music would play for this story - wow - there's an idea for an oratorio from the Biblical music for someone with the right selection of Scripture.

James McGrath summarizes the dialogue with insight here.

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