15/04/2025
THROUGH BATHSHEBA'S LENS
An adaptation from 2 Samuel 11
She didn't ask for the moon to shine it's light on her. In fact, that night, she wanted the feel of the atmosphere on her bare skin. She took to her courtyard walls. There, she felt the moon light shining on her - quiet and uninvited.
She dipped her hands into the bucket of warm water perfumed with myrrh and hyssop. She felt her body ache from the day's job. She decided to use this avenue to relief memories of her childhood. She remembered when her mother would always perfume her bath water with frankincense oil. It was a ritual. A healing. A way to feel whole again.
In the distance, the city breathed and moved about its own. It was just her and her bucket in the courtyard, and the hope that no one was watching. The next morning, after she had just finished cooking her husband's favorite pot of soup,she heard urgent knocks on her door and when she opened, she was met with disbelief. These were messengers from the palace. They didn't give room for her to speak. No time to question. Instead, they just took her.
She trembled before the king. Not from fear, but from the strange coldness of the palace air. From the way the king looked at her with lust. His eyes held hers for too long.
Her name had been whispered in his halls before she ever stepped foot inside them. Bathsheba, wife of Uriah. A soldier’s woman. A daughter of loyalty. But tonight, she stood not as a wife, not as a daughter. She stood as the woman he summoned.
And before she could resist, it had already happened. The warmth of his hands lingered on her skin long after he let go. It was not love. It was not kindness. It was the will of a man who always got what he wanted. Had she tried resisting him? She failed. He was too powerful, too absolute. Too handsome for a man.
Her heart ached the next morning and even more in the months that followed when she realised it was truly happening. She was pregnant. She sent words to the King, she told him that she feared what her husband might do when he returned and found her with a child. A child that was not his.But Uriah hadn't come home. Not since that day she had prepared his favourite meal. She waited.
But no footsteps echoed through the courtyard. No voice called her name. Just silence. And now—this.
Word came back from the battlefield, but not from Uriah. It came wrapped in blood and dust and finality. Uriah the Hittite had fallen. Killed in battle. Or so they said.
Bathsheba stood by her window, staring into the nothingness beyond the courtyard wall. The place where moonlight once touched her skin now felt distant, unreachable. Her hands rested on her belly.
She did not weep. Not loudly. Not openly.
When the king called for her again, it was to make her his wife.
She went. Because what choice did she have now?
The child came, but not without consequence. He did not stay. And in the quiet of her mourning, Bathsheba learned that even palaces cannot protect a heart from breaking.
Still, life moved on. And so did she.
One day, another child came. A boy. Solomon. And though the memory of the rooftop, the king, and the silence never left her—this child brought something different.
A whisper of redemption. A promise of peace. A name that meant beloved.
And Bathsheba—once taken, once silenced—became a queen.
They called her queen. But she had long since become more than any crown could name. She was woman. She was mother. She was story. And stories like hers never die.
