Bathsheba was a victim of sexual assault from the king said to be ordained by God and a man after God’s own heart.

While I let that statement sit there for a moment, I want each of us to consider how recently we might have heard or taken this interpretation of the events of 2 Samuel 11-12? 

Most of us were raised to see the glory of David, the giant slayer, who must have had a lapse in judgment when he saw Bathsheba bathing in eyeshot of the palace. Perhaps we were even taught that it might have even been her fault, maybe her intention, to be revealing herself to the king. “But, after all,” I can just hear my many childhood preachers say, “David was just a man with uncontrollable desires.” 

For many, if not most of us that grew up in the Evangelical tradition, we were not trained to understand nor see the highly patriarchal lens of the Biblical writers, nevertheless the modern interpreters.  

Despite the severe toxic patriarchy in the Bible, there are some remarkable women in it. Some are heroines while others are villains, some are leaders, and others are victims. But one thing can be said about most of the teaching about women in the Bible: there is not enough of it, and it is often centered around a handful of key figures. 

We sat down with Ashley Wilcox, the creative mind behind “The Women’s Lectionary,” a new resource dedicated to preaching about the women in the Bible throughout the year. Wilcox is a Quaker minister, providing training on preaching. 

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Andy Hale is the creator and host of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Podcast. Hale is the senior pastor of University Baptist Church of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, following eight years as the founding pastor of Mosaic Church of Clayton and five years as CBF’s church start specialist. Follow on Twitter @haleandy