and then there was Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah

David and Bathsheba.  We might not remember the story's details but the image of the King and a highly charged and beautiful woman has somehow managed to stick in most imaginations.  But please, pay attention to the story itself and not some man's interpretation of events.

David, from his perch on the highest roof in the kingdom, looked out over his kingdom and beheld the beautiful wife of his favorite general taking her bath on the roof of her house.  This was common and a decent man would have averted  his eyes.  Not David (who apparently had too much 'energy' for his own good).  He lusted after Bathsheba and ordered her to come to the palace.

She really didn't have a choice.  Really.  He was the King.  Furthermore, how was she to know that King David, honored by many in the nation, would behave so horribly.  But he did.  And she got pregnant.

Which left David in quite a quandary.  Uriah, his faithful general was off winning a war for him and David was home bedding his wife.  So clever David summoned Uriah home so he could spend some quality time with his beloved (and everyone could believe that Bathsheba's child was her husband's).  Uriah, however, was enormously loyal and he wouldn't satisfy himself while his King was in danger so he slept at David's door to protect him.

David had to go to plan B.  So he ordered that Uriah back to the front lines of the battle with the certainty that Uriah would be killed.  This would free up Bathsheba for David to marry and that is just what happened.  In a rather short pregnancy, Bathsheba gives birth to a son.*

I'll finish the story later.  Here's the point.  As much as Bathsheba was a pawn in a game between men, she is a pawn in Matthew's telling as well.  She isn't even named; she is only 'the wife of Uriah'.  It is that sin:  taking the wife of another man that is the greater blot on David's reputation and standing before God.  Greater than the rape of Bathsheba.  Israel's best king ever was an adulterer and there was no way to get around that piece of history.

So the beautiful Bathsheba shows up in Jesus' lineage if only by inference.  A pawn in men's games, and yet the source of life for another generation of God's people.  David, with amazing feats of faithfulness and stunningly nasty stories of greed, is a part of our great shared history with the people of Yahweh.  In this way, the dry and annoying list of who begat whom sets us up for a Savior who is more interested in loving the people into a new way of living than in picking apart their stories; more interested in their fidelity to God even as they trip up all the time.

Women are rarely named in the scriptures.  When they are, it is a good idea to pay attention.  Something important is being said under all the other words. In a time when women had no more status than the Buick in your driveway, God knew them and made them a critical sign of God's enormous love.

**The prophet Nathan confronts David over this episode, calling him out for his misuse of power and generally poor behavior. David's repentance is almost painful to watch. In the end, the child of this coupling dies.  The second son of Bathsheba and David is Solomon who would succeed his father to the throne.  2 Samuel 11.3