Locking the rooftop door.

thanks for sharing. this is a great list.

Matt, appreciate your friendship and leadership - thanks for BEST Valentines gift for us men!

Tim Sr. - TRBC

…but the weird thing is… didn’t David already have many wives and concubines?

Through Nathan the prophet, David’s sin is shown to be not a sin against his wife or wives, but a sin against Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, because he took his wife, and then had him put to death.

Moreover, God makes it perfectly clear, through the prophet, that it would have been fine if David had sought out and taken for himself another woman who was NOT someone else’s wife, and in fact that God himself had given David multiple wives, and would have happily given him MORE!

2 Sam. 12:11: “Nathan said to David, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘…I gave you… your master’s wives into your arms. …and if that had been to little, I would have given you even more…’”

So…. how does that figure into your message?

The phrase “I would have given you even more” refers, both grammatically and within the context of the passage, to all that’s gone before, including the wives. There is no reason to think otherwise, except that your 20th century, westernized mindset does not allow for such things even when they’re crystal clear.

The sin God confronts David with through Nathan, and the sin God punishes David for, is a sin against URIAH, not Bathsheba, and not any notion of unfaithfulness in marriage. The very concept of marital faithfulness is absent from the whole story. In fact, God very explicitly says that he had no problem whatsoever with David sleeping with as many women as he pleased. The problem was not that David had taken a woman that wasn’t his wife, but that he had taken a woman that was already someone else’s wife.

In fact, it strikes me that you could replace Bathsheba in this story with any kind of property which the king of Isreal might have in abundance, but which Uriah might treasure as a rarity. A lovely wife, a fine ox, or just a stash of money.

I’m sure you’ll disagree with all this, perhaps quite strongly. You are a Baptist minister in the heart of the Bible belt, and have been deeply saturated with that way of thinking since birth.

Sorry to interrupt the stream of unbridled praise and cheerleading going on here…. Actually, I do agree with the sentiment you expressed in your original post…. -Tim

Hmm.. my point (or I should say, the point I was trying to get at), was not really about polygamy vs. monogamy as much as the revisionist Disney-fication of people and events in the scriptures by modern Christian teachers. That’s something I really hate.

Do you remember Ed Dobson (I think it was) teaching about Ruth in O.T. Survey class, talking about the bit where Ruth’s mother tells her to sneak up on Boaz at night and “uncover his feet”? I remember him going on about how perfectly chaste and upright Ruth was… how dare we think there was anything improper going on?! Now when I read Ruth, I honestly can’t believe he really believed what he was telling us. It’s so obvious what’s going on, it’s virtually popping off the page.

Also, the treatment of women as property, which God seems to be complicit in here and on other occasions.

God’s going to “give” David’s wives to someone else, along with other possessions? And this is God speaking? And we’re supposed to think that God cares deeply about marital fidelity?

Thanks for your response. Sorry for the Jedi-muppet theology. It’s all the theology I’ve got.

-Tim

Yes, isn’t modern technology something… a few days ago I bought a bunch of old Dallas Holm, Mylon LeFevre, Imperials (they have “No Shortage”!) and B. J. Thomas tracks on Amazon.com… within minutes I was relaxing to Dallas Holm singing “Here We Are” and B. J. Thomas’ “Home Where I Belong”… Too cool!

It’s not me reading things into Ruth, Matt. It’s every other well-meaning preacher trying to keep me pure, trying to prevent me from seeing what was there all along. I’m not biased in this case — rather I’m fighting against many years of bias that was crammed down my throat.

The “feet” are a euphemism for the genitals in other parts of the Bible. Isa. 7:20, Deut. 28:57, Ezek 16:25, to name a few.

The Bible is an ‘R’ rated book. Not just in sexual content, but in ideas and subject matter as well. We might as well realize that and quit trying to candy-coat it.

I like your “clicks” approach to history though. I think that’s a good way to approach most of the O.T., and parts of the New. That makes sense. Would you agree than that parts of the O.T., where God is supposedly speaking things that seem — and indeed, really ARE — repulsive, like in 1 Sam. 15:2-3, where Samual quotes God as commanding the slaughter of men, women, infant children, and animals, this is not to be read as God speaking his true desire, but is some kind of small “click” forward — somehow being filtered through the mind of Samuel, who’s actually the one speaking in this case? In other words, might God have really not wanted the infants slaughtered, but Samuel was incapable of conceiving that due to his cultural mindset?

Thanks for having this conversation with me, by the way. I know you’re a very busy man.