Bathsheba’s revenge

Yesterday’s post pointed out that according to both the Bible and the Talmud, Bathsheba was considered to be innocent. In spite of that, both medieval and Victorian artists portrayed her as a willing participant, perhaps the main seductress, and, at a minimum, one who should have known better, given the way she publicly exposed herself. No, there was no good reason for that. Nevertheless, certainly in both Orthodox and Roman apologetic about the Theotokos (the Virgin Mary), she has had a measure of revenge on her most unfair critics since the 19th century. You see, she is now used to give an example of how the Theotokos can be in heaven as Queen when she is the mother of Christ, not the Bride of Christ–the Church is the Bride of Christ. It all comes from a couple of passages in Scripture.

1 Kings 2:19 — When Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him for Adonijah, the king stood up to meet her, bowed down to her and sat down on his throne. He had a throne brought for the king’s mother, and she sat down at his right hand.

Jeremiah 13:18 — Say to the king and to the queen mother, “Come down from your thrones, for your glorious crowns will fall from your heads.”

Luke 1:31-33 — You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.

The first two passages listed are part of a list of passages that show that, in Israel, unlike in many other countries, the Queen Mother had both an office and a crown, and a significant amount of delegated authority from her son. This passage from Kings is particularly good at showing the type of honor that a Queen Mother received. A particular contrast is made between the fact that when Bathsheba was pictured as King David’s wife and entered the throne room, she had to bow down to him, while when she was Queen Mother, Solomon stood and bowed to her, and placed her at his right hand.

The third passage is one of the ones used to point out that Our Lord Jesus inherited King David’s throne, the same throne upon which his great-great-great-etc-grandfather Solomon sat, although now in the heavenlies. It is also pointed out that if Our Lord Jesus is the King, which He is, then that makes the Theotokos the Queen Mother. The final step in the argument is to point to Revelation 12 and say that after the death of the Theotokos, St. John’s vision included a confirmation that upon her death, Our Lord Jesus Christ did for his mother as Solomon did for Bathsheba. That is, upon the death of the Theotokos, Our Lord Jesus stood from his throne, bowed to her, went to meet her, and escorted her to his right hand where she sits on a throne as Queen Mother, wears a crown, and has both authority and special access to Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, this post is not really about the Theotokos, though I have had to spend most of it on her. Rather, notice that Bathsheba becomes, in her Queen Mother role, a type of what will happen when the Theotokos goes to be with her Son in the heavenlies. And, so, the whole point of this post was not to argue about the Theotokos, but to point out how Bathsheba has now been fully rehabilitated from the medieval/Victorian seductress back to being a woman who was innocent, had her husband murdered, and, in spite of that, ends up living a life that points us to a future fulfillment. Quite a change!

And so, Bathsheba has had her revenge. She was a “bit player” in the Talmud, a seductress in the Middle Ages, but now an example in her own right.