2 Samuel Ch11
2
And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that
David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof
of the king's house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing
herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.
Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
- LC, Hallelujah
Bathsheba was definitely
not bathing in a river.
That would indeed have been "provocative in the extreme".
And it would have adulterated the adultery, so to speak,
making her half at fault. Whereas the whole point
of the adultery was that it was all David's sin,
- in order to account for God's displeasure with him,
and a lot of later grief.
So Bathsheba was bathing at home.
And the home had to be near the palace, in order
to be seen from the palace roof. Which means that her husband,
Uriah "the Hittite", had to be well-to-do. His house was probably
large, -probably at least two stories tall, and with an open court-yard
in the middle completely surrounded by the building.
Reading the next two stanzas in 2 Samuel Ch11 --
2 Samuel Ch11
3
And David sent and enquired after the woman.
And one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam,
the wife of Uriah the Hittite?
4
And David sent messengers, and took her;
and she came in unto him, and he lay with her;
for she was purified from her uncleanness:
and she returned unto her house.
"
for she was purified from her uncleanness"
This means that her bathing had been for ritual purity after menstruation.
Which means that her bathing was in a
mikvah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikvah
And a mikvah requires a "natural collection of water".
Rain water in this case. And it has to be close to its natural source.
Which means that there is to be no running of it through pipes.
Which means that Bathsheba may very well
have been bathing on the roof.
(There's a scene in
The Kingdom of Heaven that shows
what it was likely like. Here' s the best capture I could find --- -
http://www.evagreenweb.com/gallery/disp ... 291&pos=37
- but it's not real clear about my point. Note that there is an enclosure here.
But the cistern itself, of course, was out in the open, to collect rain.
I hope somebody finds a capture of what I'm talking about,
because it looks modern-decadent, but it was actually quite common.)
In any case, whether Bathsheba was bathing high up on Uriah's
high roof, or else completely enclosed in his court yard,
her mikvah was almost certainly
not visible from anywhere
other than the highest place of all -
the roof of the king's palace!
(Not to be bettered until the invention of the hellicopeter.)
So Bathsheba was completely innocent. Nobody else could have
seen her. And who in their right mind could have anticipated
the king spying on them from his roof?
(That there is no indication she demurred at the rape,
is also no indication of her complicity. David was a real thug,
much like Saddam Hussein, and you just don't refuse such people.
(This would became a problem later, when it morphed into the
King Arthur saga. Uther Pendragon would need Merlin to disguise
him as Igerna's husband before he "took her".))
)
