Any examination of women in Scripture has to start with Proverbs 31. Most of the time, when the ‘Proverbs 31 woman’ is mentioned, the quoted passage starts at verse 10, but it’s important to remember that Scripture was originally written without chapter, verse, and topic breaks. Those breaks help us to find a specific passage or a specific topical reference, but they may not necessarily indicate a change in topic by the writer or scribe. So let’s look at verses 1-9:
The words of King Lemuel, the oracle which his mother taught him:
What, O my son?
And what, O son of my womb?
And what, O son of my vows?
Do not give your strength to women,
Or your ways to that which destroys kings.
It is not for kings, O Lemuel,
It is not for kings to drink wine,
Or for rulers to desire strong drink,
For they will drink and forget what is decreed,
And pervert the rights of all the afflicted.
Give strong drink to him who is perishing,
And wine to him whose life is bitter.
Let him drink and forget his poverty
And remember his trouble no more.
Open your mouth for the mute,
For the rights of all the unfortunate.
Open your mouth, judge righteously,
And defend the rights of the afflicted and needy.
(Proverbs 31:1-9)
I believe that leaving verses 1-9 out of a study of Proverbs 31 can cause us to miss some important things—like the fact that the King’s mother is teaching him, giving him crucial instruction (and ‘taught’ in verse 1 here carries the idea of chastisement—also evident in the context: “what” here is more an exclamation. Think along the lines of Toya Graham chastising her son when she caught him rioting and throwing rocks at police in Baltimore, MD in 2015) on how to lead his people as King and about the type of woman he should seek as a partner. Because of how strongly the chastisement/teaching begins, it doesn’t strike me as out of bounds to speculate that perhaps a young Solomon made the kind of bad decision we all make when we’re young and reports of his behavior made it home to his mother before he did.
Given what we know of God’s will as expressed by the prophets, the instruction to “judge righteously, and defend the rights of the afflicted and needy,” cannot and should not be left out of the overall study of Proverbs 31. My own personal margin notes for these early verses in Proverbs 31 say “the afflicted, the needy, and those otherwise without a voice matter to God—a wise and just leader will stand for them, defend them, and take care to preserve their rights.”
King Lemuel (which means “for God” or “devoted to God”) could refer to many people: a sage, the King of Massa (which, in the Hebrew, means “utterance, oracle, burden” like the one being preserved here in Proverbs) or another local leader, or to Solomon (“peaceful”), whom the prophet Nathan called Jedidiah (“beloved of God”) “for the LORD’s sake" in 2 Sam 12:24-25.
Lemuel is traditionally (and logically, given what we do know about Solomon) said to refer to Solomon and is often explained by scholars as a childhood nickname given by his mother. Since the Hebrew for ‘sake’ in 2 Sam 12:25, abur, means ‘on account of, because of,’ and we know that the bulk of Proverbs (though not all), is attributed to Solomon, it seems reasonable to me to stick with tradition this time: King Lemuel here is probably Solomon, and the mother being referred to here is Bathsheba.
In that case, it’s important to take a closer look at Bathsheba—the woman tradition tells us is chastising/teaching her son in Proverbs 31. What’s her story and why is she relevant to a discussion on what Scripture says about women? Anyone who’s heard the story knows that Bathsheba was a married woman who slept with David and became pregnant, but why is she really counted by name in the genealogy of Jesus? I wonder if the answer is that we don’t realize the full extent of David’s sin here, or, more cynically, that we do realize and we gloss over it because God promised that the Messiah (Savior) would come from David’s line because of David’s heart, his humility & acceptance of correction, his repentance, and his place in Paul’s ‘Hall of Heroes’ passage in Hebrews 11.
David's sin here was like a rolling avalanche of sin, and we tend to prefer to think of our heroes as infallible. David, however, was very much a flawed, fallible human being—and that doesn’t make David any less of a hero or an example of faith to us. It makes him more human and someone we can more easily identify with because of the very humanity that makes him flawed. David messed up, and he messed up in a big way. More than once, even. And still, he is called a man after God’s own heart.
Speaking of
David’s flaws, 2 Samuel 11 gives us a lot of detail of what happened that
night between David and Bathsheba, and David does not come off looking even a
little bit good. In fact, 2 Sam 11:27, discussing the entirety of David’s actions
towards Bathsheba, tells us that “…the thing that David had
done was evil in the sight of the Lord.”
To really get a grasp on the depth of the wrong done here, let's look at the lists of David's counselors and of his mighty men—the toughest warriors under David, who are credited with some pretty heroic feats. These were men whom David knew by name… and among those mighty warriors as listed in 2 Samuel 23 are Eliam the son of Ahitophel the Gilonite (v34) and Uriah the Hittite (v39).
Ahitophel the Gilonite was one of David’s counselors. He was well-known
for his wisdom & sound judgment, and he eventually turned against David and
supported Absalom’s bid to steal the throne. Could Ahitophel’s betrayal of
David have been caused by David’s earlier betrayal of Ahitophel, his son
(Eliam), granddaughter (Bathsheba), and grandson-in-law (Uriah)? It's not outside the realm of possibility.
2 Samuel tells the story of how things began between David and Bathsheba, and it does so in a light that lays the responsibility for this sin directly at David’s feet:
Then it happened in the spring, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed at Jerusalem.
Now when evening came David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king’s house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful in appearance. So David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” David sent messengers and took her, and when she came to him, he lay with her; and when she had purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house. (2 Samuel 11:1-4)
In the spring, when kings typically went out to battle, David—the mighty warrior king whose place was on the field of battle with his men—stayed home. No reason is given, David appears to be of sound mind and able body; he just felt like hanging out at home, going for nighttime strolls on the palace roof.
Speaking of rooftops, David’s was the highest in the city, which makes it a simple thing for him to see someone bathing. Because I have heard it taught over the years by some that Bathsheba was bathing on the roof of her house, it’s worth parsing the language here—both the English and the Hebrew. In English, there is no mention of Bathsheba being on a roof. The ‘from the roof’ in these verses refers to David being on the roof and able to view much of the city from that vantage point.
The Hebrew, according to the commentary of Rabbi David Kimhi, is even clearer on this point:
"’He saw from upon the roof that she was bathing in her house’. This understanding is reasonable, both because the roof was already mentioned at the beginning of the verse, and because if the words "from the roof" relate to Bat-Sheva's bathing, it should have read ‘al ha-gag,’ and not “’mei-al ha-gag’." It stands to reason, then, that David saw Bat-Sheva bathing from atop his house, which in any case was higher than any other house in the city.”
Then, after seeing Bathsheba, he asks who she is—and we get a hint that he should already know by this response:
“Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?”
I tend towards the sarcastic, so I like to imagine that David’s servant had an is this guy even for real right now? expression when he answered with the equivalent of “the granddaughter of one of your closest, most respected advisors, the daughter of one of your three dozen ‘mighty warriors,’ and the wife of another of your three dozen ‘mighty warriors’.”
So David’s sin here was not just against God; it was against Bathsheba, her husband Uriah (his loyal servant who had been at his side for years by this point but whom he deliberately had killed in battle, then married Bathsheba—Uriah’s widow—all to cover his own sin), and her entire family—all of whom had been loyal to David since his days in the wilderness fleeing Saul. God was so displeased with David’s actions here that not only are we told that those actions were “evil in the sight of the LORD,” Nathan the prophet was sent to deliver a message to David:
Then the Lord sent Nathan to David. And he came to him and said,
“There were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor.
“The rich man had a great many flocks and herds.
“But the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb
Which he bought and nourished;
And it grew up together with him and his children.
It would eat of his bread and drink of his cup and lie in his bosom,
And was like a daughter to him.
“Now a traveler came to the rich man,
And he was unwilling to take from his own flock or his own herd,
To prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him;
Rather he took the poor man’s ewe lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”
Then David’s anger burned greatly against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, surely the man who has done this deserves to die. He must make restitution for the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing and had no compassion.”
Nathan then said to David, “You are the man!" (2 Sam 12:1-7)
The other half of the message was the consequences of David’s actions: not only would “the sword…never depart” from David’s house, but the same kind of evil that he’d committed in secret would be committed against him—publicly—by someone in his household (which 2 Sam 16:20-22 tells us did occur). And the child conceived by David’s own admitted ‘lack of compassion’ would not live.
What is also important to notice is who Nathan was not sent to and for whom God had no message of responsibility and correction. Bathsheba. She didn't engage in some torrid illicit romance with the King and then panic when a pregnancy threatened to expose the sin. She was the first person in all of this that David wronged, the person he'd wronged most egregiously... and she was the one whom God stood up for, going so far as to have Nathan help ensure that it was her son, Solomon, who was named David's heir.
Bathsheba is also one of only five women listed by name in the genealogy of
Jesus. She and another woman are listed there because when men who were
designated as leaders in Israel wronged them, God stood for them and
held the ones who had wronged them accountable.
All of this tells us that not only is Bathsheba
clearly a woman capable of raising her son and training him in the way he
should go (Proverbs 22:6), she’s also a fair authority regarding what qualities
an “excellent” woman should have. And her son—who became a king renowned for
his great wisdom—believed Bathsheba’s teaching on these topics carried enough
authority that it should be preserved to instruct future generations.
