Happy new year! Will we question immoral notions of “purity” this year?
What can we learn from the Biblical “but” of 2 Samuel 11, in which David tries to make his own morality but fails?
As the holidays are drawing to a close, still dominated by the discourse contagion, American fiction may give us glimpses of times not long gone when illness was brushed aside in favor of getting together:
In Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, Enid, a grandmother, is eagerly anticipating the arrival of her family for Christmas when she gets a call from her son Gary:
“Looking forward to seeing the two of you in seventeen hours!” Enid sang into the telephone.
“Some bad news here,” Gary said. “Jonah’s been throwing up and has a fever. I don’t think I can take him on the plane.”
This camel of disappointment balked at the needle’s eye of Enid’s willingness to apprehend it.
“See how he feels in the morning,” she said. “Kids get twenty-four-hour bugs, I bet he’ll be fine. He can rest on the plane if he needs to. He can go to bed early and sleep late on Tuesday!”
“Mother.”
“If he’s really sick, Gary, I understand, he can’t come. But if he gets over his fever—”
“Believe me, we’re all disappointed. Especially Jonah.”
“No need to make a decision right this minute. Tomorrow is a completely new day.”
“I’m warning you it will probably just be me.”
“Well, but, Gary, things could look very, very different in the morning. Why don’t you wait and make your decision then, and surprise me. I bet everything’s going to work out fine!”
It was the season of joy and miracles, and Enid went to bed full of hope. (p. 505)
Enid does not know that Gary is lying about Jonah’s illness (for reasons of family dysfunction that are beyond the scope of this piece to explain). When Gary shows up by himself, the mother and son continue to talk in earnest about Jonah’s illness:
She stared at the tiny bag. “That’s all you brought?”
“Look, I know you’re disappointed about Jonah—”
“How high was his fever?”
“A hundred this morning.”
“A hundred is not a high fever!”
Gary sighed and looked away, tilting his head to align it with the axis of the listing Christmas tree. “Look,” he said. “Jonah’s disappointed. I’m disappointed. You’re disappointed. Can we leave it at that? We’re all disappointed.”
“It’s just that I’m all ready for him,” Enid said. “I made his favorite dinner—”
“I specifically warned you—”
“I got tickets for Waindell Park tonight!” (p. 510-511)
In Allegra Goodman’s “The Four Questions,” a Jewish family gets together each spring to celebrate the Passover seder at the house of Estelle and Sol, the grandparents, on Long Island:
Then, finally, they hear the car in the driveway.
You’re sick as a dog! Sarah says when Yehudit gets inside.
Yehudit blows her nose and looks at them with feverish, jet-lagged eyes. “Yeah, I think I have mono,” she says.
“Oh, my God, “ says Estelle. “She has to get into bed. That cot in the sun room isn’t very comfortable.”
“How about a hot drink?” suggests Sarah.
“I’ll get her some soup,” Estelle says.
“Does it have a vegetable base?” Yehudit asks.
“What she needs is a decongestant,” says Ed.
They bundle her up in the La-Z-Boy chair in the den and tuck her in with an afghan and a mug of hot chocolate. “That’s not kosher for Pesach,” says Miriam, worried (p. 402).
Miriam is a student at Harvard Medical School who is growing increasingly strict in her religious observance. Apparently, she is more worried about kosher rules than about her grandmother Estelle being exposed to germs. The world of the story is one in which the “thundering of history” (p. 413) can still be felt and grandmothers nurse their adult grandchildren to health.
How has the expectation to travel often great distances to visit family members despite poor health transformed into the imperative to avoid all contact outside the household with anyone who is not deemed medically “pure”?
Some might object to this question by arguing that it is comparing apples and oranges: Covid is deadly to Grandma, while the germs carried by Yehudit and Jonah (had he been telling the truth) are not.
But what if we are in fact comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges—but something in our cultural priorities has changed?
I have a vague memory of lying down in my grandparents’ living room as a child and listening to the preparations for the Passover seder around me through a haze of fever.
A couple of years before COVID, at Christmas, I stayed home due to a sore throat with my daughter while my husband and son drove to the family gathering some 650 km away. Within about 24 hours of their departure, I developed a raging fever and at some point even difficulty breathing—the worst contagious illness of my adult life—and my husband and son could not return home as quickly as they wanted to due to closed icy country toads. I had read in academic literature that the flu was not just a cold; it could be serious and even life threatening. Now I understood the risk on my flesh.
What I find interesting, in retrospect, is that our focus that Christmas and on other Christmases (someone getting sick around Christmas was almost a tradition) was not on health per se but on the guilt that health-based cancellations would cause. We were not yet culturally conditioned to revere germs above social obligation. I doubt that the flu that challenged my immune system (and that we had no way to know my husband and son were not carrying with them) was a fundamentally lower risk to Grandma and Grandpa than COVID, which is why I do not think that I am comparing apples and oranges. Also, Grandma or Grandpa were not tripled vaccinated specifically against the serious flu I had. And by the way, that illness I suffered through is not recorded anywhere, since I never sought medical help—a anecdotal reminder of the limitations of public-health data.
What happened to all those phrases that used to come readily to people’s lips when they did not want to cancel playdates, holidays or other get-togethers: “germs are a part of life,” “we are not worried about catching germs,” “we are all in the community together, and germs are circulating; that’s just the way it is?”
Perhaps on some level, we have been longing for a sick leave from the holidays or other social obligations and their accompanying pressures?
A few years ago, I was frantically shopping in the mall a few days before Christmas. A well-put-together women with several shopping bags looped around her arms was standing next to the elevator and speaking to everyone and no one:
“I cannot breathe! I cannot believe how much money I’ve spent! I am sweating all over.”
Was she a well-dressed prophet, articulating what many of us would like to say about the materialism of the holidays—could we please have some peace and quiet instead?
On December 25, 2012, I was in the hospital due to severe nausea during pregnancy. I resorted to a cultural cliché to make polite small talk with a nurse:
“It must be hard to be away from your family and to be working on Christmas day.”
“No,” he tells me calmly, “I prefer to work on Christmas day.”
His authenticity was impactful.
But how can we find the honesty to assert our wellbeing without hiding behind pseudoscience and without undoing what is good in tradition? It seems that in years past being a “good person” meant going to see Grandma and Grandpa despite possibly being affected by germs. Today, being a “good person” means protecting Grandma and Grandpa at all costs. What is it that we actually want? What is it that should truly guide our behavior?
So much social discourse about who should and should not work or socialize has revolved around vaccination status. And yet, the similarity between the concept of being vaccinated and being “pure blooded” is alarming, given evidence that vaccination does not stop transmission.
When it comes to “purity” as a condition for getting together over the holidays, the Christmas story itself, the story of Christ’s birth, provides an ironic commentary on the concept of purity.
In the times of the Bible, a person’s genealogy, as modern commentators have observed, was like their CV. And this is Christ’s genealogy according to Matthew (bolding is mine):
2 Abraham was the father of Isaac,
Isaac the father of Jacob,
Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,
3 Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar,
Perez the father of Hezron,
Hezron the father of Ram,
4 Ram the father of Amminadab,
Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
Nahshon the father of Salmon,
5 Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,
Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,
Obed the father of Jesse,
6 and Jesse the father of King David.
David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife,
7 Solomon the father of Rehoboam,
Rehoboam the father of Abijah,
Abijah the father of Asa,
8 Asa the father of Jehoshaphat,
Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram,
Jehoram the father of Uzziah,
9 Uzziah the father of Jotham,
Jotham the father of Ahaz,
Ahaz the father of Hezekiah,
10 Hezekiah the father of Manasseh,
Manasseh the father of Amon,
Amon the father of Josiah,
11 and Josiah the father of Jeconiah[c] and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon.
12 After the exile to Babylon:
Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel,
Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel,
13 Zerubbabel the father of Abihud,
Abihud the father of Eliakim,
Eliakim the father of Azor,
14 Azor the father of Zadok,
Zadok the father of Akim,
Akim the father of Elihud,
15 Elihud the father of Eleazar,
Eleazar the father of Matthan,
Matthan the father of Jacob,
16 and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.
In verse 6, why does Matthew remind us that King Solomon’s mother had been Uriah’s wife, her previous husband before David? This seems like an oddly ironic way to introduce a son of David.
In Hidden Christmas, Timothy Keller observes that
“Perhaps the most interesting character and background story in the whole genealogy . . . is in verse 6. There it says that in Jesus’ line is King David. You think, Now there is somebody you want in your genealogy—royalty! However, Matthew adds, in one of the great, ironic understatements of the Bible, that David was the father of Solomon, ‘whose mother had been Uriah’s wife.’ If you knew nothing about the biblical history, you would find that strange. Why not just give her name? Her name was Bathsheba, but Matthew is summoning us to recall a tragic and terrible chapter of Israel’s history. When David was a fugitive, running for his life from King Saul, a group of men went out into the wilderness with him, came around him, and put their lives on the line to protect him. They were called his Mighty Men. They risked everything for him, and Uriah was one of them, a friend to whom he owed his life (2 Samuel 23:39). Yet years later, after David became king, he looked upon Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, and he wanted her.” (pp. 30-31)
The story of David’s betrayal of Uriah in 2 Samuel 11 is one that present-day leaders might profit from studying. It begins when Uriah was fighting for David in the field while David stayed in Jerusalem (which hints at David’s decadence as a king who is no longer truly leading his people). The Biblical narrator takes care to tell us that this happened “in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle”—a reminder that David, by staying in Jerusalem instead of leading his army in person, is falling short of what might otherwise be regarded as his kingly duty. The conjunction “but” speaks loudly of contrast between ideal and reality when the narrator says, “But David remained at Jerusalem.”
“Then it happened one evening that David arose from his bed,” the narrator continues, making us wonder if the napping king is more interested in comfort and pleasure than in governance. From the roof, David spots a beautiful woman bathing. He makes inquiries and finds out that the woman is Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife. The married status of the object of his desire does not deter David from summoning Bathsheba so that he may sleep with her. The Bible is typically ambiguous, not telling us if Bathsheba is coerced into submission or if perhaps she was trying to seduce the kind.
The narrator, who seems complacent with David’s actions, ironically reassures the readers that Bathsheba was “cleansed from her impurity” (meaning she did the ritual cleaning after her period so that she could have sex—presumably with her husband). So much for cultural notions of purity! After David got Bathsheba pregnant, he invited Uriah to Jerusalem from the battlefield, hoping that he would go over and spent the night with his wife, thus providing a convenient explanation for the pregnancy and covering up the transgression. Uriah refused, telling David in verse 11:
“The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents,[a] and my commander Joab and my lord’s men are camped in the open country. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and make love to my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!”
It is not clear if Uriah was a naïvely loyal soldier or if he was actively and consciously resisting David’s manipulation, perhaps even taking pleasure in reminding David of the king’s forgotten moral duty by embodying this duty himself.
Faced with Uriah’s stubborn refusal to sleep with his wife, David “resolved” the problem by orchestrating what amounted to a suicide mission in which Uriah and other soldiers were sent too close to the wall of the enemy city and killed.
David seems to get away with the diabolic plan, but God eventually punishes David for the adultery and murder when the first son who is born to him and Bathsheba (before Solomon is born) dies and when, later, David’s favourite son Absalom rebels against him.
The communication between David and his military commander Joab about the conspiracy to kill Uriah stands as timeless commentary on self-serving “leadership.” When Joab sends a messenger to report about the suicidal mission, he expects that David will “perform” anger (after all, the plan to condemn soldiers to death by sending them too close to the wall of a city should anger a king who cares about the lives of his soldiers):
18 Joab sent David a full account of the battle. 19 He instructed the messenger: “When you have finished giving the king this account of the battle, 20 the king’s anger may flare up, and he may ask you, ‘Why did you get so close to the city to fight? Didn’t you know they would shoot arrows from the wall? 21 Who killed Abimelek son of Jerub-Besheth[b]? Didn’t a woman drop an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebez? Why did you get so close to the wall?’ If he asks you this, then say to him, ‘Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.’”
Does Joab think that the messenger is naïve or is he openly sharing his cynicism with the messenger when he nonchalantly states that Uriah’s death would provide comfort to David?
As it turns out, the self-serving David does not even pretend to be mad. Instead, he “philosophically” and hypocritically reflects on the inevitability of mortality, somewhat like Claudius in Hamlet:
22 The messenger set out, and when he arrived he told David everything Joab had sent him to say. 23 The messenger said to David, “The men overpowered us and came out against us in the open, but we drove them back to the entrance of the city gate. 24 Then the archers shot arrows at your servants from the wall, and some of the king’s men died. Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.”
25 David told the messenger, “Say this to Joab: ‘Don’t let this upset you; the sword devours one as well as another. Press the attack against the city and destroy it.’ Say this to encourage Joab.”
Why does Matthew introduce David and Solomon in Jesus’s genealogy by reminding us of David’s sin? This would be like writing in your cover letter that you graduated from a prestigious university, and then going on to say that that university is a pit of corruption.
Could this be Matthew’s way of reminding us that impurity is a part of being human? It is also significant that the genealogy includes the foreigner Ruth the Moabite, negating any notion of ethnic “purity.”
The last verse in the story of David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11 should be of particular interest to leaders who seem to believe that they are not violating moral principles. Up Until the last verse, 2 Samuel 11 reads like a blend of soap opera and ironic tragedy. God is apparently absent, and it is David’s desires that propel the plot. The last verse, in contrast, provides a jarring transition, again with the conjunction “but:” “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.” This final sentence, almost parenthetical in its “by the way” quality, transforms the tone, mood and “take away” of the chapter in one decisive stroke—long in waiting but inevitable. David’s self-serving desires and schemes will no longer dominate the plot. The king does not get to make his own morality. We are reminded of the rule of law, which in the Bible is associated with God and to which the king is subjected.
Hopefully, we will see the emergence of such a moral “But” in 2022. A good place to start would be: and the king fired or put on unpaid leave people who are unvaccinated. But the data showed that vaccination does not stop transmission. But the law gives us bodily autonomy.
Quotations from 2 Samuel 11 are from https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Samuel%2011&version=NIV