Women who begat Jesus: Bathsheba

Women who begat Jesus: Bathsheba

The genealogy of Jesus, according to the gospel of Matthew, continues: and that man the father of a man, and that man the father of a man, and that man was the father of a man by the wife of Uriah.

My story, remembered in 2 Samuel 11 and 12, is so shameful—I am not even mentioned by name, much less have a book named after me like Ruth.

My husband was Uriah the Hittite. He was away fighting in a war when the king David spied me taking a bath and decided he had to have me. So the king ordered my husband Uriah to be sent to the front of the battle where he was killed. The king then took me to be his wife.

From that point on the family of King David turned into a soap opera, with siblings conspiring against and killing each other, one tragedy after another. But there are good reasons why these terrible stories exist in the Bible:

1. They reveal the way people really lived and how folks were just as bad or helpless and in need of divine intervention back then as they are now.

2. These stories of abuse and its horrible consequences—they indict all persons in positions of power who have ever committed evil, including powerful individuals today.

3. And these remembrances—as tragic as they are—serve as memorials for every un-named person in them.

But God knows who I am.