#90 Understanding King David in context + Dr. Mallory Chappell

Today I want to talk about King David. He was a man after God's heart. He also abused power. He committed adultery. He did these horrible things and yet God loved him. So what do we do with that? I have brought in an expert, Dr. Mallory Chappell.

When we read the Bible and we go, huh? Is a clue that we need to do some more digging. He saw a woman.

I want her and that's it.

This is a bad one.

He makes Soraya carry the death order for himself.

David's already ruled against himself. And he was set up that way because of this parable.

What?

Why? Like what's going on? Hello, hello.

Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding God easier.

These conversations have transformed my relationship with Christ and understanding of religion. Now I'm sharing these recorded conversations with you. On this podcast, we talk about the facts, the history, and the translations to make the Bible make sense so we can get to know God our creator better.

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I'm your host, Cassian Bolino. And today I wanna talk about King David. How are we supposed to understand him? I mean, when you read through all of the, all of the scriptures that talk about him, it feels like a movie.

And then he plays such a prominent role in the future generations that keep kind of alluding to him like they were protected because of King David. But when we zoom out, what was going on at the time when these crucial moments in his life were taking place?

Because he was a man after God's heart. He also abused power. He committed adultery. He did these horrible things and yet God loved him. So what do we do with that? Do we excuse what he did? Do we condemn him?

Or is there a part of his story that we're missing out on because we live in 2026? And if we lived at his time, we would have picked up on that. So in order to ensure that we get all the context around some of the prominent moments in King David's life, as in his adultery, the death of his son and the covenant with God, I have brought in an expert, Dr. Mallory Chappell.

Chappell like a church. You have a PhD in Bible exposition from Liberty University. You also have a Master of Divinity with a focus in biblical languages from Liberty. And your research areas focus on the translation of the Septuagint, the Hebrew source texts into Greek and how those words translate, those words used and they suggest how the translation was influenced by classical Greek literature.

So we can add a lot of color here as far as language, history and context. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.

Okay, cool. How did you get into King David?

So actually I'm a teacher. I love to teach. I have in my brain, one side is scholar brain and on the other side is I relate to teenagers and young adults. And I love to teach. I love to bring the Bible to people in a way that when you don't have 15 ,000 resources just on your computer, you don't have access to that.

And in teaching, I teach Old Testament survey and I have to teach about King David. And he's so central to the Bible leading up to the monarchy and then coming out of the monarchy. And I just like how hard it is.

Honestly, it's a hard topic and I like it because it's important.

And when you were learning about King David, because he is such a prominent figure, I think the word central there is such a good use. Was there something that kind of stood out that made you say, I need to dive a little bit deeper here?

Think I didn't get it.

Oh.

And for me, anytime I don't understand something, I tell my students this, when we read the Bible and we go, huh, that's not an us problem, like as far as something's wrong with us, and that's not a Bible problem, but it is a clue that we need to do some more digging.

So when I read and I have questions or the text doesn't give me the answers that I think it should, that's a clue that I need to look more and I need to study more.

There's so much in David's life. So where did you kind of pause and you were, was it just like right from the get-go of like him kind of being chased after Saul, or did you go into it and you're like, hold on, this adultery thing is like really not making sense.

Honestly, so if you read through the story of David, we get military, military, military, military, and that's great. And because I love that, not everybody does, but I do. And then when we get to the story of David, it like, if you listen to it, like on the Bible app, if you listen to it, you can really tell.

It's like the tone changes almost into this, we were talking about battle and now we're gonna tell a story. And that's a clue in and of itself from the narrator that it's time to change the way we look at it.

And it's time to look at it in a different way.

Got it, got it.

Okay, so where for you does the story begin?

I think let's start for this one with just the first chapter, first verse in 2 Samuel 11, because like I said, we have in chapter 10, we have this military campaign and then it's like it switches to a totally different setting.

So we don't really need to go back. A lot of times you do when you're reading through stuff, but in this one, interestingly, we don't. So we can just pick up right at the beginning of this awful story of David committing adultery with Bathsheba.

We can just start right at the beginning if you'd like.

Absolutely, do you wanna read it? I have it right in front of me, if not.

I can read it. I have the new English translation up on my screen, which I love, because it's this nice blend of like technical stuff, but also making it make sense. So how many verses? You want me to just read through like the first four?

Sure.

Or first five?

Sure, yeah.

So in the spring of the year, at the time when Kings normally conduct wars, David sent out Joab with his officers and the entire Israelite army. They defeated the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, but David stayed behind at Jerusalem.

One evening, David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof in his palace. From the roof, he saw a woman bathing. Now, this woman was very attractive. So David sent someone to inquire about the woman.

The messenger said, "'Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, "'the wife of Uriah the Hittite?'. David sent some messengers to get her. She came to him and he had sexual relations with her. Now, at that time, she was in the process of purifying herself from her menstrual uncleanliness, and then she returned home.".

So when I read that, it's, I guess I'm kind of like colored by today's society where I'm like, this checks out. He's like a general. He's a man in charge, you know? He is in a palace and he sees a beautiful woman.

He says, her, I want her. And then she comes and he has sex with her and that's it. Like to me, I don't think I like balk at it because he's got the authority. And to me, that doesn't really stand out.

What are we kind of missing here in these details? Because there's a couple of things with David of like, why didn't he go with his people? Why is he staying back at the palace? So kind of put this into context with me with what I'm missing.

Sure, okay. Because you're right. This is one of those stories where to get all of the context and all the background pieces, you need like 500 footnotes, which nobody's realistically gonna read through.

So let me do that. Let me work through that for us. So we start off being told it's the spring of the year and this is when Kings normally do campaign. That's just informational because this is the time of year.

It's just, you can't do war in the winter because it's like rainy and cold and blah. And then you can't really do it later in the year because most of your soldiers are also farmers. And so they have to be back at home to harvest.

Oh, that's crazy. I thought it was like war. So you just go no matter what.

No.

And I will say some civilizations, yeah, they push through. There are examples of that. But in general, your normal cycles of war would pause for harvest. You have to have harvest. You have to have food.

And the people, most of them who are fighting also have to do work for their families and for the developing civilizations.

That's why they're like, hey, go to the front lines. Like, nah, I got a clock in. I've got the thrushing floor.

It is, it's very strange to us because we're so used to, especially here in America, we're so used to some people, that is their job in the military. That is what they do. That is their job. And they didn't have this double responsibility in the same way that the ancient world did.

And so just right off the bat, we have this almost like a window of opportunity for them to conduct war.

So at this point, David is kind of like in this moment of pause is what you're saying?

Yeah, kind of. So there's like a pause where they can effectively do war without, like they're waiting for their crops to grow.

Got it.

The kind of weird thing maybe is that David's not with the army. So up until this point, he'd been, I actually went back today and read through some of the preceding chapters and he's with the army. It doesn't say specifically where all the time, but he's with them.

And now he's not. So we have to kind of ask why, why do we have a change? Is there a reason? Is it a bad reason? Is it a good reason? This is one of those areas where what I do with Bible exposition, I like it and I don't like it at the same time because the text doesn't tell us truthfully.

In what I read, the text doesn't say why he was in Jerusalem. So we have a couple of reasons why. It could be, because there's been a lot of assumption that he was maybe not taking war seriously or he wasn't there and he was abandoning his men, but it doesn't say that.

There's also hints later in the text that his men had asked him to kind of pull back. You know, he's the king, there's only one of him. If he gets killed, that's a huge problem. So there's some of that going on too.

But I think it's best in this instance to kind of read it as this is just information to us as the reader. This is the time when war is going on so we can expect a battle. David's not there. He's in Jerusalem at home.

We have the setting. The narrator is setting kind of the stage for us so that we can dive into the story. So we know eventually the fact that he was there is a bad thing. Like we know that because of the decisions that he makes, but the people in the story don't know that yet.

So it's kind of like watching a movie where you know what happens in the end, but the people in it don't. So you gotta kind of wait until you get there in the story.

Right.

So.

Okay, so we don't know why he was there, but it wasn't a good sign. But it's definitely during that time of pause during the war because of either it's winter or he said it's springtime, so they're probably farming.

It's spring, yeah. So it's in between time where they could be fighting. So yeah, so it's in that in between of like when other things are going on.

Okay, and then in terms of like authority, is it strange that a general kind of sends for a woman and fetches her? It doesn't make it right, but like, was it common?

I'm gonna say it's common in that it probably happened.

Yeah.

We don't, I mean, that's the assumption of king has power or general has power to do kind of what he wants. That's a true assumption. Obviously the king of Israel was supposed to have a higher standard because he's God's king.

So there's that piece to it that we should probably talk about at some point. But it isn't from a political, just straight, like he was the king. He could do what he wanted. The weird thing is who he chose.

You know, this isn't like he went to, I don't even know what the ancient equivalent of like a bar. He didn't just go down and get somebody who was a nobody. He saw someone that he thought was attractive.

The text tells us that. Was told who she is and then still had her brought to him because she's actually the wife of one of his, you remember David's mighty men, the guys who were like his special squadron who go and been in war with him forever.

Uriah is one of them. So this is one of his guy's wives. And then, yeah, we find out later that she's actually also related to one of his advisors. It's his granddaughter.

Yeah.

Okay, and so both of those things, despite the authority, despite being a king, should have given him pause, but he went against his better judgment just because even back then, like that, I mean, today, obviously, there's many complications there and betrayal, but even back then it was just as bad, if not worse.

Yeah, this is a bad one. The fact that we're given that she's the daughter of Elium and she's the wife, even the fact that we're given two identifications is weird. Usually someone will be identified, like if it was a guy, son of whomever, it's just how they identify, not a big deal, but we're given two.

She's somebody's wife and she's someone's daughter. So even that is significant because it's further showing us who she is and how this is going to be a problem.

Okay.

Yeah, so as the readers, or if we're gonna envision this like a show, like a TV show, because it's kind of dramatic. This is the part in the movie where everyone's like, oh no, this is bad. This is gonna be bad.

If you were an Israelite and you heard this, would this be like the biggest scandal ever?

Hesitate to say biggest, because humanity has lots of, we can do bad things, but yeah, this would be a scandal. This would be a scandal. And I think it depends too on how you look at kingship. I mentioned earlier that David is a king, but he's also put there by Yahweh.

And so there are things kings aren't supposed to do and their standards that they have to uphold. And so even though he was a king and had all of the power, just like all the other nations, there is this idea of a higher standard because he's God's king.

God put him there. And so there is a higher standard. And David is certainly not exempt from the Old Testament law, which outlaws adultery, very clearly. It's in the Ten Commandments. And so this would have been a big no-no, a big one.

Okay, so do we need to talk about her being unclaimed because of her menstruation, or is that just a side note that they threw in there?

I think that's just a side note personally, because we can kind of touch on it a little bit, but so the way that after menstruation, women had to be ceremonially clean. It was just part of the Old Testament law.

But as far as the fact that he saw her bathing, that's just how baths worked then. Like they were outside. They didn't have running water inside. So she wasn't doing anything wrong. I will say there has been some talk in certain like preaching circles about how maybe she was enticing him or she was outside hoping he would look because she was bathing where she was.

And there's just nothing in the text that even remotely supports that. She was doing her thing. She was bathing the way she was supposed to, upholding the Old Testament law, which is interesting because David's about to break it.

So we have that weird juxtaposition. And she gets called to be privy to him breaking the law when she was just minding her own business.

Is this something that like

Watching like she was supposed to.

Could have gotten her killed for cheating on her husband?

Yeah, so adultery, the penalty for adultery was death. For, yeah, that was the penalty, was death.

Could she have been like, no, I don't wanna sleep with you, David. Like, was that even like an option on the table?

I don't think so. I mean, the text, I will say this, and this is, I mentioned before we came on recording that there were gonna be some topics. So kind of a quick disclaimer to people listening, if little ears are around, maybe pause for a second.

The text doesn't say she was raped. It doesn't say that. There is a word for that and it does not say that. So we can't just say that's exactly what happened. We do though have to ask the question you just did.

Could she have really said no? And the answer is not really. He's the king, he's a man, and in that society, men had power and women didn't. And she was sent for by people of the king. That's not something that you would realistically say no to.

It's just not culturally. So while the language doesn't in any way say rape, the culture and the way that that idea of taking, there's nothing anywhere in the text that suggests that she wanted this. There's nothing that says it was rape, but there's nothing that says she wants it.

And so that's when we have to kind of go back to the culture of could she say no? And no, she probably could not have said no.

Got it, okay. Okay, so then if we go further into the text, she went back home, the woman conceived and sent word to David, I'm pregnant, so many weeks have passed now. Like this

Yes, they don't have pregnancy tests like we do. So yeah, it's been a bit, yeah.

Yeah, and then right from there, he kind of makes the decision, send me Yura, the Hittite, and Joab sent him to David. And so that's kind of where we go into that next decision that David makes, which is, I'm gonna take my boy and I'm gonna send him to the front lines and I'm gonna tell the other guys to step back so he can die at the front line.

And again, just like as a Sunday school reader, like when you go to church and you hear this, you're like, oh my gosh, like lethal, that's diabolical, David, oh my gosh, like I have a problem and I'm just gonna get rid of it.

So it kind of shows, but again, like I don't live back then. So is this just like how brutal you have to be as a king to kind of protect your crown and your dignity and kind of justify now making her your wife and kind of make the pregnancy look a little normal, you know, whatever it is.

I guess like I just put ancient times as kind of like, well, they had their own rules, but like today that would be just as diabolical. So do the same rules apply or like what is happening there that we're missing?

No, that was diabolical. I actually, if you don't mind, I pulled a quote that I wanna read. I pulled something because I read it and I went, whew, okay, let's see. And I do wanna talk to you about some of the things that happened with David's, his order to put him in the front lines and then to pull back because there's stuff there too that gets at the heart of what you're asking about.

Is this okay even back then? But the quote that I wanna read and it's from a commentary, the evangelical exegetical commentary, and I read it and I went, ooh, and it says, if at first you don't succeed, dot, dot, dot, David's first attempt to cover up his adultery was benign, right?

He tried to have Uriah come back and sleep with his wife to cover up the fact that she was pregnant.

Oh, yeah, we skipped that.

Yeah, we skipped that, but that's, I mean, that's just kind of a side note here, but now he will turn to more drastic measures. If Uriah will not cooperate in the deception, there are others who will.

And so I read that and went, ooh, because it's not just David at this point, it's his general who he's ordering to change their military organization to put Uriah here and then to order the men to step back so he can die.

So it's not just David anymore. He's now including other people in his sin and in his deception.

It's getting a little, like, sinister.

Yes, yes, it's getting a little sinister.

And that's crazy, because, like, David's so protected in the future. Like, his, like, future generations are, like, on behalf of David, like, I'm not gonna punish you. And, like, this is horrible what he's doing.

Yes, it is.

And so you just think, like, why is he getting all these free passes?

I know, and that's, it gets worse before it gets better. It does, I will say at the end, when we get to kind of where we're headed, there is one of those, again, I keep coming back to a movie, because this is so, from a narrative standpoint, it's so put together as a narrative that at the end we have some kind of absolution at the end.

And I don't know that it's an ending we like, but it's a good ending nonetheless.

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For an exclusive discount at checkout. Take a breath, slow down, and dwell in the good things. Now, back to the show. So why do you think Uriah did not comply? Because, so David said, send me Uriah, and then basically said, okay, well, go down to your house and wash your feet and sleep with your wife.

And he didn't. He slept at the entrance to the palace with all of his master's servants. He did not go into the house. And then somebody's like, he didn't sleep with his wife. He, didn't you just go home?

And then Uriah says, the ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents. He's basically like, why would I go home and make love to my wife if everyone else can't do that either? So again, being so much more honorable than David.

Yes.

And so David is like, why don't we go get dinner? And why don't we have some drinks? And, you know, trying to make him drunk. But then he also did not go home after that. So sorry for skipping over this, but that's when he then made that.

So do you have any insight as to like, why Uriah was like so honorable?

I think that's just the, when you're looking at this story from a narrative perspective, along the way, almost every time we move forward in the story, we're getting more and more picture of how David is the problem here.

And I think that's the point. And so we're able to compare Uriah to David and be like, oh, he looks even worse.

Yeah.

Looks even worse. Because if Uriah had come back and like gone and had sex with his wife, which they're not supposed to be doing, because they're supposed to be out fighting, then it'd be like, well, he's not that great either.

And then it's easier to give David a pass. But now we have an even higher standard to hold him to.

Yeah.

I do feel like God does that, like in a very realistic, like modern sense. Like I feel like you're like, I'm really struggling God, but it's okay. You try to like justify with him. And he's like, no, we're not playing about this one.

Actually, no.

Absolutely.

Yes, absolutely. This is a hundred percent, I think the way that God works in humbling us a little bit or a lot, like in this case.

Okay.

Wow. And then I think one of like the craziest parts, like sometimes I read the Bible and I'm just like, oh, this is like lethal, is the fact that he makes Uriah carry the death order for himself.

Insane.

That's bad.

That is.

I looked into that. He did. So I looked into that. And here's the crazy thing. There are no other instances of this in scripture. This is the only instance where someone has to carry their own death warrant like this.

Oh my gosh.

There's also not a lot in the other literature from the cultures who are around Israel to say that that was a normal practice.

Yeah.

Not a normal thing.

It's almost like David, like brand new. Like it's not even him. Like it almost feels like something very, very bad was happening specifically in this moment that only applied to this. This was a common practice.

And like, it makes me think like David was possessed with something to like do something so unordinary and evil.

I think that's a good way to put it. I think what we see here is the depths that we will go to to hide our sin.

Yeah.

When we don't want it found out.

Yeah.

And we turn into people who aren't us. And we do things that normally we wouldn't think we would ever do.

Yeah.

But it just highlights, I think, the grace of God in this.

Yes.

We know where this is going. You know, David doesn't know at this point. He's still in the depths of that pit of, I'm going to win this, kind of. I'm going to get away with this. This is going, I'm gonna, you know, whatever it is that he was thinking.

But we have this weird perspective because we know the end of the story, not just his, but we also know the end of with Christ coming and there's grace. So we get to look at it and at one time hold, wow, he's being awful in one hand.

And at the other time going, how is God going to give him grace for that? Because we know he's going to. So it makes it hard for a reader in the modern world, I think, to approach this text. I really do.

I mean, at this point, he's king. Why didn't he just like take your eye out back and like, you know, take him out? Like at this point, like why is he going through all the theatrics of like putting him at the front lines and involving all these people and like doing a death note thing?

Like he could have just like, you're out, you're out and I need you off the earth.

And interesting.

That's a great question. That's a great question, really, because he could have, you're right. He's the king. He had the power to do that. I read through some of the sources on this and not that this works, but it's possible that maybe he had this idea of, well, I'm not actually killing him.

So if Uriah is killed in battle, technically David didn't do it. So technically he didn't murder him. But he definitely did.

Yeah, yeah.

Like he definitely did and God definitely holds him accountable for that. But maybe there's this bit of like, I'm not gonna get my hands dirty. So I'm gonna have my general do it.

Yeah.

And then I'm gonna have the guys around him step back and not protect him. And then I'm gonna have the people I'm trying to fight actually kill him. So David's almost removed multiple steps in this particular scenario.

Right.

He's like, I didn't shoot him, but I did put him right in the line of fire. So, I mean, when this is happening, do people know about this in real time? Like we're reading about it as it's happening and we're watching that movie, but like, is there, like how much lore is this at that time?

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Probably not. Realistically, that letter would have been sealed. So the only person who would have known would have been the general. And the general doesn't even follow what David says to do. He doesn't even obey him, actually.