I read the Psalms in color recently. A professor introduced me to the Visual Commentary on Scripture, a fascinating project which invites artists to take biblical passages and comment on them using works of visual art.
We have a lot of ways to study the Bible. We have translations and paraphrases, commentaries from any number of perspectives, sermons recorded from history, manuscripts in multiple languages, and websites galore. And the practice of using the arts—particularly story—to interpret scripture is not new. It follows a rich rabbinic tradition of crafting scriptural commentary by envisioning what lies behind or between the lines of text. This method of interpretation is called midrash, meaning “to study, inquire, seek with care.” Midrash muses alongside the canonical text, exercising sacred imagination in hermeneutics.
In cases of heavy biblical texts, artistic modes of interpretation like midrash become a particularly incisive tool. Instead of pressing through the mode towards meaning, artistic commentary embraces the mode as meaning. It carves room for our emotions and questions, inviting us to slow down and savor scripture’s potency.
From the first fireside epic, the earliest amphitheater proclamation, the fine arts have afforded us ways to worship, interrogate, confess, and contemplate. It follows that we would use performance to wrestle with God’s biblical witness. So today, I’d like to try employing theatrical texts as a tool for engaging with an unwieldy passage of scripture.
The Texts (click to read):
2 Samuel 11 “David and Bathsheba” | Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare, Act II Scene 4
This episode in Israel’s history arrives as a sequential narrative, fictive and enigmatic. By its very expression, it resists prescription. Like the other four women in Jesus’ Matthean lineage, Bathsheba’s story is fraught both by her own culture’s broken view of women and by our contemporary baggage in interpreting it. This makes it an excellent candidate for artistic midrash. I’ve taken one of the briefest moments in the story—David’s summons to Bathsheba—and imagined a conversation between them, using Shakespeare’s words.
A caveat—In the 2 Samuel 11 account, Bathsheba has no voice. I’ve heard many give her one. Into Bathsheba’s mouth they put lessons on modest behavior and dress, warnings against infidelity, instructions to value one’s chastity above one’s very life. In allowing a 17th century play to comment on 2 Samuel 11, I also envision giving Bathsheba a voice, one that complicates our understanding of her rather than reducing her to a trope. The intent is not to react by forcing a 21st century feminist paradigm into Bathsheba’s hands. We know that she was wronged; but we do not know if her and Uriah’s marriage was a happy one, what emotion coiled in her gut when she received David’s summons, or what community she encountered in the Davidic court. Through artistic rendering, I want to imagine one possibility among many—in this case, a bit of courageous indignation.
In Practice
In this scene from William Shakespeare’s aptly categorized “problem play”, Measure for Measure, we find the chaste Isabelle seeking to save the life of her brother, Claudio. His sentencer, Angelo, informs Isabelle that she must sleep with him or face Claudio’s death. His overtures to her become increasingly aggressive; his malevolent words are not just threats. Stricken and appalled, Isabelle refuses his advances, saying she’ll tell everyone of his assault.
Angelo simply smiles. “But who will believe thee, Isabelle?”
Bathsheba is a quiet character in this Davidic tragedy, silent except for her message to David that she has conceived. David, his messengers, Uriah, and Nathan all speak, but Bathsheba bathes, mourns, births, and grieves in silence. The narrator of 2 Samuel 11 seems to absolve Bathsheba of any transgression, or even of any agency. In the following chapter, Nathan retells her story, keeping every character a human except Bathsheba. She is a sheep. The scene where Bathsheba is summoned to David is reduced to half a sentence: “…and she came to him, and he lay with her.”
Through Shakespeare’s words, we can envision possibilities of their conversation. Was Bathsheba terrified into silent compliance? Did David threaten her or her husband’s life when she tried to refuse him? Did she argue, like Isabelle, protesting that she would bring his misdeeds before the nation? And did he, like Angelo, laugh? “Who would believe you; I am king? Your husband is gone, the armies are gone while you need protecting from me. Who would believe your word when it means so little it will not survive into the canon?”
The stories share parallel power dynamics, a raw horror, and the desperation to preserve life; motifs which ring true across millenia. However, the contrasting conclusion of Measure for Measure only intensifies the darkness of 2 Samuel 11, because while Bathsheba ends the story in David’s palace grieving, Isabelle escapes and her brother lives. She concludes the play happily married and the uncomfortable events of Act II, Scene 4 are buried in historical apathy. All is forgiven; no Nathan emerges to uncover the wounds of sin, but neither does death play an active role. Contemporary directors of the play have to reckon with how to frame a “happy ending” amidst the ringing echo of attempted rape and the words: “But who will believe thee, Isabelle?” Just as the similarities between the narratives invite deeper reflection on Bathsheba’s experience, so do the disparities carve room for us to ponder.
Even in the evil—buried or lade bare—a dramatic irony triumphs for both Isabelle and Bathsheba. We the silent chorus bear witness to her, for centuries afterwards. The solidarity comes too little and too late, but it is there all the same, a gift of theatre’s embodied storytelling. Who would believe thee, Bathsheba? We would.
Cover Image: The Toilet of Bathsheba by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1643.
I love this creative approach to Scripture. And the text you chose is so important to look at given the swirl of controversy, not to mention hurt, around it. Thank you so much!