Today's Card: A Woman's Wisdom on Your Behalf

From the story of Bathsheba

Each week, as I draw a card and consider what to offer related to each woman’s story, I am reminded of just how many times I have worked with, reflected on, and written of them before. Some of them made it into my book; so many more did not. Bathsheba is an example of the latter. Still, I had this distant memory that I’d once created something about her. I was right . . .

From way back in 2018:

Her story (interspersed with my thoughts):

A long, long time ago there was a beautiful woman who was married to one of the king’s soldiers. While he was far, far away, fighting battles, she was home alone. One particular evening she decided to take a bath. The king—who was not alongside his men—was walking the roof of his palace and spotted her. Instead of turning away, he chose to look; even more, he decided to take. The king had her brought to him upon demand. In weeks she was pregnant. When she revealed this news to him, he undertook an elaborate plot to bring her husband home so the child’s paternity would not be questioned. But choosing chastity in honor of his comrades, the king eventually sent him back to the front and commanded he be placed in a fatally vulnerable position. Upon confirmation of his death, King David married the widow Bathsheba. She gave birth to their son who died just days later. And the king, lost in grief, saw this as just punishment from his god. But apparently not enough to change the tide of human history.

To say that Bathsheba set out to entice the king is to say that violated women ‘were asking for it’ . . . Bathsheba is enjoying a private moment—she thinks—and we violate it the moment we stop to contemplate her beauty. ~ Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible

It is in contemplating her beauty that she was violated. But only because what was seen and appreciated was assumed a commodity that was his to not only enjoy, but take. In this story, he is the literal Patriarch; in ours, it is the patriarchy itself. In both, beauty is taken. The tragic and cumulative result is that we come to believe that we have less—and maybe none at all.