Q&A: David and Bathsheba as Proof of Separating Morality from Jewish Law
David and Bathsheba as Proof of Separating Morality from Jewish Law
Question
The case of David and Bathsheba, from the standpoint of David’s sin, is complex, and there are different ways of looking at it.
One could argue that the story illustrates the separation between morality and Jewish law, as reflected in the text.
David did not express remorse or acknowledge his sin until the prophet Nathan came to him. Nathan did not approach David with a direct halakhic claim, but instead chose to present him with a parable. David, who served as judge within the parable’s story, harshly condemned the act as immoral and imposed a severe punishment on himself.
This conduct teaches that even in the Bible, morality and Jewish law are not necessarily identical. David responded to a moral argument, not to a halakhic one, and on that basis accepted the punishment upon himself.
Do you agree with this line of argument?
Answer
I don’t see much of an argument here. It is true that the poor man’s ewe and the rebuke of the prophet Nathan indicate that he was speaking about a moral sin and not about a forbidden sexual relation. That is apparently the intent of the Sages’ statement: “Whoever says David sinned is simply mistaken.” It seems to me that this is the essence of Rabbi Medan’s argument in his book on this passage.
To be more precise, according to Rabbi Medan, the plain meaning is that he literally sinned with a married woman, while the homiletic reading is that he sinned “only” in a moral sense. And he adds that in his view, what really happened is as in the homiletic reading, while the plain meaning was written that way by the prophet in order to present his sin in the most severe way possible (unlike conservative circles that try to do exactly the opposite and cover for David).