Bathsheba Was a Gold-digging Temptress

Interpreting the Bible by Its Own Context

Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, was a gold-digging temptress that tempted David and led him to the slaughter like a random farmer would lead an ox to the slaughter. How do you like that? You know, one of the worst ways to interpret the Bible is to allow your modern context and your current beliefs to shade or change the meaning of the original text.

That's one of the worst things you could possibly do. The Bible actually interprets the world today. The Bible gives you a window on how to interpret the world today. So the things that you see and you do today, to understand them completely, to understand the foundations and the morality and the ethics of our situations that we find ourselves in today, you need to understand the Bible.

You need to understand how to interpret what happened back then. This plays itself out in a variety of different ways in our social justice debates today. Here's a perfect example. So, over the weekend, man, I love it when social justice warriors eat each other.

Because at the end of the day, look, we can't be complacent. We can't let social justice advocates rule the day and go unchallenged and all that stuff. But even if we did, let's just say we did for a second, they would eat each other.

I mean, the seeds of its own destruction are within it. Obviously, if we don't do anything about it now, it'll take a lot longer. But the seeds of its own destruction are built into the ideology. That's just how it works.

They're going to continue to chop things up further and further and further until there's nothing left. And that's kind of the point. They want to destroy all the systems, all the power structures, basically Western civilization as a whole.

That's what they're after. Here's a tweet from social justice warrior Matt Smethurst. Here's what he says. He says, Adam fell, Noah got drunk, Jacob cheated, Moses murdered, Rahab prostituted, David fornicated, Jonah fled, Thomas doubted, Peter denied, Paul persecuted, we rebelled, and Jesus redeemed.

It's a little pithy sort of, you know, inspirational quote, you know, that that Gospel Coalition writers are famous for. This is the kind of stuff that they do. This is where they make their money, their bread and butter, so to speak, sounding pithy and wise with tweets.

You know, I'm not going to argue with any of this tweet. It's all it's very nice, very nice tweet, Matt Smethurst. Here we have Rachel Denhollander, you know, rising star in the SBC, Rachel Denhollander corrects him.

David raped. It's important we get that right. David raped. It's important we get that right. Now, this is something I've heard quite often. I've heard this ever since I came back to Christ as an adult, that David raped Bathsheba.

And you know, if you've read, I'm not going to read the text of 2 Samuel here today, but if you read the text of 2 Samuel, it does not say that David raped. It doesn't say that. But what you have to do in order to interpret 2 Samuel as David raping Bathsheba is you have to bring into it all these modern understandings of power dynamics and power differentials.

And you have to assume a lot about the text. So David was a king. Bathsheba was a subject. Therefore, David took advantage of his position as a king in order to force Bathsheba into sleeping with him.

That's what you have to assume. None of that is actually in the text. Yes, David was a king. That is true. Bathsheba was a subject. But you have to assume the force to say that David raped her. That's not in the text.

And there's lots of good reason why you would think that that actually wouldn't be the case based on the text itself. But here's Rachel Denhollander confidently saying that King David, man after God's own heart, you know, this amazing, powerful man of faith, just decided one day that he was going to rape Bathsheba.

We don't have biblical warrant for this. In fact, we have just as much biblical warrant that David raped Bathsheba than to believe what I said in the beginning of this, which I actually don't believe, by the way.

So I don't think that Bathsheba was necessarily a gold-digging temptress who seduced David. I actually don't believe that. But we have just as much warrant to believe that that we do as David raped. Actually, we probably have a little more warrant to believe that Bathsheba was a gold-digging temptress than we do to believe that David raped her.

It's just that simple. It's just that simple. Now, here's the reality. Here's the reality. Why would Rachel Denhollander want to say this, right? That's the question that we have. Why would Rachel Denhollander want to say this?

If you look at the text, there is no reason to believe that David raped Bathsheba. We have every reason to believe that it was consensual. We have every reason to believe that, you know, the reality is that David wanted to have sex with her.

She wanted to have sex with David for whatever those reasons were. And that's what happened. Why would Rachel want to assume that David raped Bathsheba? I don't really know. I mean, I'm not inside her mind.

But what I would assume is that to have a narrative like this where you could confidently say about someone in the Bible that David, King David, raped her due to this power differential thing, due to a modern definition of rape, this is something that she seeks to apply today.

We have to define these things biblically. Just because our culture would say that a power differential equals rape does not mean that that actually is rape. You see, we have a book, you know, Christians, again, we have a book that tells us about ethics that tells us about crime and criminal activity that tells us about about morality.

And believe it or not, there is a basic definition of what constitutes rape and what does not constitute rape. This is Deuteronomy 22. Now, you don't have to be a theonomist to see that there is a general principle at play in Deuteronomy 22, right?

We don't have to apply this to the letter, essentially. What we do instead is we find what the general principle that it's teaching, and we find ways to apply it today, okay? We find ways to apply it today.

Here's Deuteronomy 22, talking about the crime of rape. Verse 23, if a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto a husband and a man find her in the city and lie with her, then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city and ye shall stone them with stones until they die.

The damsel because she cried not, being in the city, and the man because he has humbled his neighbor's wife, so thou shalt put away the evil from among you. Here's the idea. If two, if a man and a woman are found in a city and they have had sex, both of them have committed adultery.

It says, specifically, the reason why you're stoning the woman, too, is because she wasn't raped. She didn't resist. She didn't cry out. She didn't ask for help. That kind of thing. Here's the reality, right?

You could think of reasons why someone might not cry out, right? A woman might not cry out. You could think of reasons. You see, in our modern context, we actually have a lot of ways that we could figure out if this was consensual or not.

A lot of ways. For example, back in the day, they didn't have DNA testing, right? You couldn't tell, this is an example, you couldn't tell that if a woman was trying to defend herself and scratches her attacker, right, a lot of times you could find DNA under her fingernails, right, from that scratch.

That's an indication that she was trying to get out of this situation, but she was forced to lie with this man. That's an indication of a rape has happened, right? Back in the day, they didn't have DNA testing where you can go under the fingernails.

They didn't. So they're standard in God's wisdom, in his holiness, in his goodness. He said, look, if you're in a city and you're a woman and you're being attacked, scream for your life and get out of that situation so people can help you in a populated area.

Scream for your life. Try to resist, in other words. And so if we have evidence that the woman resisted the man, again, we don't have to apply this to the letter. It's not like only if she screams and then we'd have no other recourse.

No. Back in the day, that was the primary way to know if someone was resisting or not. But today we have other ways. We can actually look at pieces of the anatomy and find out if there was aggression there, if there was attempts to hold this back, this evil man who if you rape someone, you deserve to die.

Let me hear that. Let me look at the camera and say this. For all you social justice warriors out there that think you're so hard on sexual abuse, do you believe that a sexual abuser deserves to die if they're caught on the evidence of two or more witnesses?

Do you? Because that's what I believe, right? That's what I believe. We got to take a serious stance on this stuff, but we have to take a biblical stance, not just a made up phony baloney modern stance, right?

So here's the biblical principle, right? If you're in the city, scream out, resist. And we can apply the general equity of that today and say, look, if the woman resists and we can have ways to figure out if the woman resists, that's a rape, that man should die for his crime.

Let's continue. Let's continue. I want you to see how amazing and good and holy Deuteronomy is. The law of God, God's holy, righteous, good, moral law, Deuteronomy 25. Listen to this. But if a man find a betrothed damsel on the field and the man forced her and lie with her, then the man only that lay with her shall die.

But unto the damsel thou shall do nothing. There is in the damsel no sin worthy of death. For as when a man rise against his neighbor and slayeth him, even so in this matter. For he found her in the field and the betrothed damsel cried and there was none to save her.

You see what's happening here? You see what's happening here? If you find a woman and a man have had sex and they're in a field where there's no one around for, to hear if she screams, nobody could hear her because they're in the middle of the wilderness, right?

That's what it's saying here. In that case, you can assume that the woman resisted and, and, and no one could hear her cries for help. And so the man is guilty of rape and the man is worthy of the death penalty.

Okay. And so here's the idea. And again, this is, we have, we have more technology now. We don't have to rely on whether it was in the city or the field, she screamed or didn't scream. We don't have to rely only on that.

Again, we're talking about the general equity here. The principle here is that you resist rape, obviously you don't resist. And then, you know, that's more like adultery. I mean, that's the general principle that God's laws is telling us here.

If a woman resists, that's rape. If a woman doesn't resist, that's not rape. That's consensual. I mean, this is pretty basic stuff, but at the end of the day, I mean, I want you to understand that the Bible has principles for this.

We have to go to that, that law and say, okay, what, how do we determine whether or not something is rape? Okay. And so if we have forensics now that we can tell if, if a woman resisted, you can get the DNA under the fingernails, things like that.

You can tell that a woman resisted. Well then fine. If a woman resisted, that's rape. If a woman didn't resist, well, it doesn't seem like you can prove rape in that case, does it? So let's look about Bathsheba for a second.

Let's apply Deuteronomy 22, which was in force. I mean, even if you're not a theonomist, even if you don't think that the general equity of the law applies today, which obviously it does. I mean, let's just be honest, especially if you're reformed.

I mean, if you're reformed, you have to believe in the general equity of those civil law of God. I mean, that's just part of being reformed, right? But even if you are any of those things, Deuteronomy 22 was in play when David, you know, did his deed, right?

When David did his deed. So let's look at the facts, right? Does the text anywhere in 2 Samuel say that Bathsheba cried out? Because David lived in the city. This wasn't in the field, right? This wasn't in the middle of nowhere where no one could hear Bathsheba's cries for help.

Does the text anywhere say that David raped her? No, not according to Deuteronomy 22. So if you take the Bible as a consistent unit, right? And you say, okay, David was under the law of God, okay? The principles that were in the law of God in even the letter of the law back in David's time were in play.

So according to Deuteronomy 22, did David rape Bathsheba? No, no, he didn't. Okay, so why would you interpret that retroactively, right? Maybe that's not the right word. I don't know. Why would you interpret David's act according to modern standards?

Because you think your modern standards are more holy and righteous than God's holy and righteous law. That's what you think. And so you're taking your situation where you sit today and standing in judgment over God's law because you're not even doing it for modern context.

Now you're doing it for people in the past that were under God's law, God's holy righteous law, the people of Israel. So it's not even like, well, I'm not a theonomist, so I have better law now. It's not even like that.

It's like you're taking your law and applying it back then when God's law was in force and saying it was better. David raped. It's pretty blasphemous. I mean, let's just be honest. It's pretty blasphemous.

I think it's even blasphemous to do that today, but it's especially blasphemous to do it back then when David was not under your law. He was under God's law. So why are you lying about him? Why are you lying about him?

I just don't get it. And I think that, I mean, I think I know why. I mean, I think I know why, because you think it helps your case today. This is something I saw somebody else do last week as well. This is Jonathan Akin.

I don't know who this is. It is related to Danny Akin. I don't know. I didn't, I don't care enough to do any research. Hold on. Oh yeah. That's good. That's good. Listen to this. Ready? There was a lot of debate about social justice in evangelical circles today.

Seemingly some are for it and others are against it. However, social justice is a biblical concept. So much like a Christian can't say, I don't believe in election because it's a Bible term, a Bible-believing Christian can't say, I don't believe in social justice.

Rather, one must figure out from the Bible what the terms actually mean. One of the preeminent Old Testament scholars in the world is Peter Dentry, who knows Hebrew better than I know English. And he argues when the word righteousness and justice are paired, it's best translated as social justice.

This is either a straight up lie or it's sophistry. I mean, it's just that simple. This is either sophistry, he doesn't understand, he's not that intelligent, or it's a lie. Because here's the thing. Is anyone in this debate saying that there's no justice in the Bible and there's no social justice in the Bible?

No, we're not saying that on the Bible's own terms. Yes, the Bible talks about justice on its own terms. It defines it and it defines social justice on its own terms. What we're saying, though, is that social justice, the way moderns use it, is not taught in the Bible.

That's what people are saying. Nobody is saying that the Bible doesn't use the words justice or righteousness or together as social justice. If you want to say that, fine, but let's not confuse the issues here.

I'm willing to grant that the Bible talks about justice and biblical social justice. What it does not talk about is modern social justice. So if you want to take the modern concepts and transport them into the Old Testament and the Bible, you're doing the same thing that Rachel did when she said David raped.

He didn't. And just the same way, social justice and this racial equity stuff and all this kind of that, you can't do this, you can't do it. So it's either a lie or it's total sophistry, total sophistry.

And you do it in the service of your modern agenda today. Let's not do that, guys. You wouldn't put up with that in any other context, or maybe you would. I don't know. Because imagine if someone argued like this, right?

Look, I know I'm pro-LGBT, you know, because love is love. And you can't argue that love is not a biblical concept. The word love, agape, all this stuff. In fact, we're supposed to love everyone, neighbors, women, men, all that stuff.

So you can't argue that love is not a biblical concept. Therefore, I can have sex with whoever I want. Like, imagine if somebody argued like that. You wouldn't take them seriously. You wouldn't take them seriously.

So why would you take Jonathan Akin's statements here seriously? Yes, we all agree that justice is in the Bible. Yes, but that has nothing to do with what we talk about when we're talking about social justice.

Forgiveness, Justice, and the Limits of Speaking Without Facts

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Anyway, so I hope that was helpful. I've got a lot of, in my opinion, interesting videos coming for you this week. I hope that you found this one helpful. God bless. Actually, before I wrap up today, I was actually talking to my wife, who had a really smart thought about this whole situation with the social justice warriors, Kyle Howard, Jamar Tisby, saying that this forgiveness thing was dangerous, that the guy forgave, his brothers kill her, and stuff like that.

And so my wife is thinking about this, and she was thinking about all the people that are saying, okay, you supported the brother forgiving the woman, but do you support their calls for justice in this situation?

And the reality is that people, everyone that I see that's supporting the brother's forgiveness also supports justice. But you see, that's actually not, it's not an equivalent kind of thing. Because it doesn't, so here's the thing.

I've said many times, I did not listen to the trial. I have no knowledge of the details of it, and all that kind of stuff. But I don't need to have any knowledge of the trial itself to know that it was praiseworthy for the brother to forgive his brother's killer.

That's praiseworthy no matter what the details of the actual case are, right? So whether or not Amber did murder this guy, whether or not she committed manslaughter, whether or not she didn't do anything, whether or not the punishment would fit the crime, it doesn't matter.

Any of the details, it don't matter. It's still praiseworthy for the brother to do what he did, okay? But when it comes to justice and justice being done, I need a lot more information. So here's the thing, to know whether justice was done in the Amber Guyger trial, I need all the facts, right?

I need to be on the jury. I don't need to be on the jury, but I need to have all the information that they did and stuff like that. And so I don't have that, so I don't have to say anything. I don't have to say anything.

In my last video, I said, if she actually murdered him, then the penalty was unjust. And I had a lot of people, excuse me, had a lot of people push back and say, well, it really should have been manslaughter.

It really should have been manslaughter. And so in the Bible, the penalty for manslaughter isn't death. It's, you know, you get to, you're basically on house arrest. Like, you run to a city of refuge, and you stay there, and you wait, and all that kind of stuff.

And the answer, that's actually true. Like, actually, J .D. Hall messaged me about this, and he said that, you know, if you're going to be a theonomist, this is what he said to me, he said, if you're going to be a theonomist, you got to get this right.

And I told him, I said, like I said, I don't have any of the facts, right? But you see, the justice side of this is more complicated. And so to know whether justice was done or not, I need a lot more information to make a decision than I do to praise the guy for forgiving his brother's killer.

So I don't need very much information there. I need a lot more information when it comes to justice. And you know, when it comes to something that I don't have all the facts on, it's best to keep your mouth shut.

And so if you're bemoaning people not saying anything about the justice side of this, I mean, there's a, what do you want them to do? Speak with no knowledge? That's foolish. That's foolish. You shouldn't do that.

If you don't have all the facts, or even enough facts, it's I didn't follow this trial at all, right? So I'm not going to say anything about it. If you don't have all the facts, keep your mouth shut. There's nothing wrong with keeping your mouth shut.

Don't let people shame you into speaking on something that you have no idea about. Anyway, I hope this is helpful. God bless.