The Other Side

Dear Bathsheba, Not often in my life have I resorted to this way of sharing my opinions with the world. I’ve written songs and psalms but rarely did I call upon my trusted scribe to take dictation of a document like this. But now that you’ve decided to come forward and tell your angle of the story to a gasping audience, I, too, must claim a spot to make my version heard. I do all this without resentment, disrespect, or anger toward you. My feelings, this is true, have shifted, over time, from you to willing courtesans on whose discretion I could count. However, I remember you with fondness and a sense of gratitude. It is for this emotional remnant that I feel the urgent need to set the record straight. I cannot let you get away with this pathetic, albeit popular, account of me, the lecherous king and his undue desires; your frightful inexperience and timid loyalty to home and hearth and husband. I even grant you my respect for jumping on the opportunity to salvage female innocence against the backdrop of a drooling potentate with no regard for human rights. You surely know how one must feed on people’s unreflected biases to get a hearing in these days of scandal overkill! I am not proud of what we did, and here the emphasis is squarely placed on the word “we”! You know as much as I do that this bath routine of yours was cleverly designed to draw the king’s attention. You knew your husband was away (he bored you anyway as you have told me many times thereafter). You knew about the close proximity between your house and mine, and the direct trajectory from my palatial roof straight to your atrium. When I responded in the way a man, a king at that, responds in all the world to such frank offers of delight, you were not in the slightest hurt, surprised to hear of my successful sightings of your natural being. I don’t recall a protest when you agreed to meet me and my desires not just halfway but with full cooperation. This was no rape, remember, no violation of your Hebrew woman’s sanctity (as you are fond of pointing out these days to willing and naïve supporters of your plight.) This was consensual, and I must say, in retrospect, so cleverly devised by you, a scheming, lustful, empty woman. That’s why we got along so well, initially, because I matched in every way your characteristics. You take the high ground now and give those silly interviews about alleged prophetic scolding (yes, Nathan dressed me down, read me the riot act, but our affair was but a footnote in his ecstatic discourse). You do not even stoop to publicly refer to my “repentance” expressed in that most famous psalm. But that is plain ridiculous! Uriah’s battle plan, assigning him to the most dangerous front line: that was your idea. It was you who wanted to be rid of him because you had your eyes on higher things. Amazing that you broke your story just a few weeks after I assured you, in the presence of the whole assembled court, that, yes, it would be Solomon who would succeed me on the throne. That’s all you ever wanted, wasn’t it? I stand alone now with my prophet nagging and my God accusing me. I watch in disbelief how craftily you knit yourself a mantle of quite undeserved innocence and purity: you are the victim, as are all you “sisters”, falling prey to wicked, scheming, overpowering men! Here and there I write a psalm, finding temporary outlets for my grief, abandonment, and wonder why what once was passion (foolish as it may have been) must end in cold and calculated confrontation. I, for one, do know about my guilt, my pride and lack of self-control. I pray that we, before we die and meet our fathers in the Pit, would leave posterity a record that reflects reality: that neither man nor woman can be wholly demon, wholly saint but that, together, we are called to offer our broken lives to HIM who lives and loves alone in perfect harmony. Without hard feelings, always, David.