Sorry She was bathing in plain sight. close enough that he saw that he was attracted to her.
Where does it say David raped her? All it says is, he laid with her in her purification. We Should not add what is not there.
What do you think of this verse.
For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.
(Jas 2:10 KJV)
So if we stole or broke any other commandment we also murdered, committed adultery, made a idol and bow down to it, etc;etc...
"We should not add what is not there." You should take your own advice. Take away all your preconceptions, and the evidence couldn't be more clear that Bathsheba was raped. People who say otherwise despite clearly seeing the evidence just disgust me.
We need to challenge cultural narratives about sexual violence. The #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements have clarified that we still view rape as a stranger attack in a dark alley with a screaming, fighting victim. The Bathshebas of our society endure silently either because they are disempowered by the threats of their abuser, or because they don’t have a vocabulary for an abusive sexual encounter. Culture has driven this narrative and Christians have not countered it. So where do we start?
Weinstein had the power to act on his threats and victims knew it. This explains the ease with which he exploited and also generally shows why victims do not always fight back. Their resistance could make a bad situation much worse.
In her book, Scars Across Humanity, Elaine Storkey writes, “Power inequalities, in these cases in terms of age, strength and money, often go along with incidents of rape. These factors can be even more noticeable when the rapist is well known, and when the surrounding community allows a veil of silence to cover his behaviour” (126). We have done just this with King David. We often miss them, but the power dynamics present in this story give us every reason to believe that what happened to Bathsheba is rape, not a consensual act of adultery.
First, in the Old Testament world, to be summoned by a king was no small thing. Failing to appear was a matter of life and death. She could not simply refuse to appear.
Second, even according to Hebrew law, this likely would have been considered rape. The law made the distinction of rape or consent based on verbal resistance by the victim and whether or not that resistance could be heard by witnesses. If a man raped a woman in a rural area, where she could not be heard, he alone was guilty (Deuteronomy 22:23-27). As Sarah Bowler notes in Vindicating the Vixens, “If Bathsheba cried out, no one would dare enter the king’s chamber to stop him. In that sense there was little difference between a man raping a woman in the country and a king raping a woman in his palace chambers” (84). Bathsheba had no agency or say in what the king did to her.
Third, many assume that Bathsheba’s bathing on the roof was a form of sexual entrapment, but God apparently didn’t see it that way. When the prophet Nathan confronts David, he likens Bathsheba to a ewe lamb who is kidnapped and devoured (2 Sam. 12:1–6). This rendition leaves no question as to how she is viewed by God. She was a victim through and through. Yahweh sends his prophet to tell her and Uriah’s story because they share no blame in David’s actions.
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