Excursus: The David and Batsheva story

Episode 40: Excursus: The David and Batsheva story

Welcome to our excursus on the David and Batsheba story. As I tried to point out in the shiur, we are tackling a unique and uniquely challenging topic. David is perhaps from the most beloved figures in Tanakh, and I believe we are rightfully apprehensive about discussing his sins, especially when they appear to be so egregious.

However, to fail to do so in a mature and exhaustive way shirks the responsibility entrusted to us by Hashem when he dictated that this story be included in Tanakh.

Furthermore, though we will cite sources from Chazal which seek to minimize if not essentially eliminate David’s transgressions, we will choose to follow Rishonim who, I believe rightly, see this as doing violence to the text. Such readings have a valid place as derash, but our goal is to hew as close to the text as possible. If the pesukim, the Navi and David all say he sinned, then we must contend with the actual events, not watered down apologetics.

In the end perhaps part of the reason David is so eternally and broadly loved in spite of his failings is because of how he chose to respond when he was forced to take a long hard look in the mirror.

Substantively, besides reviewing the statements of Chazal we look at the whole incident as an inversion of the Yosef-Eshet Potiphar story, we then look for a framework in the Torah which can give us a better psychological understanding of David, and find it in the parsha of Yefat Torah.

We then seek to expand the theological underpinnings by tracing the root of this sin throughout Tanach and back to Gan Eden.

Finally, we contrast what took place with the correct alternative model, that of shepherding. While leaving in abeyance (for now) the question of how a king who is supposed to be the paradigm of alignment with the will of God can recover from such a failure, and why David is even given that chance while Shaul was not