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Movie Review: David and Bathsheba (1951) [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-12-16

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SPOILER ALERT!

It was 1970, and my friend and I were desperately looking for a movie to watch. Pickings were slim. Finally, I suggested Cromwell. “All right,” my friend agreed with little enthusiasm, “I need a history lesson.”

He was partly serious and partly joking. As a general rule, an historical movie is not a good way to study history and not a good way to be entertained either. But if the movie is reasonably faithful to the facts and reasonably entertaining, it might be a reasonable way to spend the afternoon. So, we went to see Cromwell, and it met our low expectations. And so it was with that attitude that I finally decided to watch David and Bathsheba (1951).

The Story in the Bible

Pretty much the entire movie is based on 2 Samuel 11-12. It starts off by noting that being king, David really should have been leading the soldiers in the war against the Ammonites, but he tarried, remaining in Jerusalem. One evening he took a stroll on the roof of his house and saw Bathsheba bathing. He made inquiries and found out she was married to Uriah. Nevertheless, he had her brought to him and had sex with her. Sometime later she sent David a message informing him that she was pregnant.

Unfortunately, Uriah had been away fighting the war, so he would know the baby wasn’t his unless something was done. David had Uriah recalled from battle and encouraged him to go home to his wife. That way, after he had sex with her, he would think he was the father of her baby. But Uriah refused, saying that he just wouldn’t feel right about enjoying himself while his fellow soldiers were still in tents, besieging Rabbah. David even got Uriah drunk, but it was no good. He wouldn’t go home.

So, David sent Uriah back to Joab, the military commander, with a letter telling him to put Uriah at the forefront of the hottest battle. Then Joab was to retreat, leaving Uriah to be killed. This was what happened, and after a brief period of mourning on the part of Bathsheba, David married her.

God was displeased. He made the prophet Nathan aware of what had happened. Nathan went to David, telling him that God wouldn’t kill him. However, all of David’s other wives, of which there were seven, would be taken from him, given to his neighbor, who would have sex with them outside in the sun, where everyone could watch. Also, God killed Bathsheba’s baby as a way of punishing her and David. But that’s all right. David got her pregnant again, and she gave birth to Solomon.

The Story in the Movie

In the movie version of this story, David is played by Gregory Peck, and Bathsheba is played by Susan Hayward. But no, we don’t get to see the neighbor next door having sex with David’s seven wives with everyone watching. In fact, we don’t even hear Nathan (Raymond Massey) say that will be part of David’s punishment. In the Bible, the reason for that part of David’s punishment was that he would be humiliated, but it ignored the even greater humiliation for the women. And since Nathan was merely relaying the will of God, a modern audience would think God was being insensitive to the feelings of those women. Therefore, this part of the punishment was eliminated in the movie.

Speaking of which, you’d think a man with seven wives would never be tempted to look for any on the side, but I guess even under those conditions, some men will always feel the need for something strange.

Anyway, contrary to the story in the Bible, when the movie opens, David is in the thick of the battle, deliberately putting himself at risk, much to the chagrin of Joab. In this small way, the movie is trying to present a better picture of David, avoiding the impression that he was living the good life while his men fell by the sword.

On the other hand, while the story in the Bible indicated that it was a point honor on Uriah’s part that he refused to go home, the movie makes him out to be a jerk. He neglects his wife, Bathsheba, preferring to war to love. He is indifferent to her, not caring what she thinks or wants. When David suggests that a neglected woman might seek love elsewhere, Uriah says that if she breaks the Law, he will condemn her, and she will be put to death. And then, right after saying all that, he asks David for a favor. He wants David to say to Joab, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, that he may serve his king to the utmost of his ability.”

So, Uriah is an unpleasant character, and David just grants him his wish, which will result in his death, and which will be exactly what he deserves. Well, David does add the part about Joab’s withdrawing from the battle, leaving Uriah by himself, so that “he may be smitten and die.” The movie can only go so far in whitewashing David.

One of the things to watch for in a movie based on a story in the Old Testament is whether it tries to Christianize it. For example, in Exodus 1, the king of Egypt decides that the Hebrews are becoming too numerous and may become a problem, militarily speaking, if they align themselves with the enemies of Egypt. Therefore, he commands the Hebrew midwives to kill all the newly born males, as a way of reducing this threat. However, in The Ten Commandments (1956), the High Priest says the astrologers saw an evil star enter the House of Egypt, proclaiming the birth among the Hebrew slaves of a Deliverer who will lead them out of bondage. That is the reason given for killing all the newborn males. This is obviously intended to be similar to the story in Matthew 2, where Herod hears from some wise men that a King of the Jews has been born, and they know this because of a star they have been following. As a result, Herod orders that all the children under the age of two must be put to death. In this way, the story in the Old Testament is made to resonate with the later story in the New Testament.

As for the present movie, Christianization consists of the scene where David and Bathsheba watch a woman being stoned to death for committing adultery. This is not part of the story in 2 Samuel 11-12. Another woman is told it is up to her to her to cast the first stone, presumably because she is one of at least two witnesses to the sin of adultery (Deuteronomy 17:5-7). She does so, with a look of grim satisfaction on her face. Then everyone else in the mob begins throwing stones, as required by the Law, putting the adulteress to death. Exactly who the woman is that is given this privilege of casting the first stone is not said, but we have to imagine that she is the wife of the man who had sex with the adulteress. But that raises the question, where is the man that also committed adultery? Why is he not being stoned as well, as required by Leviticus 20:10?

The reason for this scene is that it is similar to that in John 8. First, it was only a woman about to be stoned in that story as well, with no reason given as to why the man who committed adultery with her was not to be stoned as well, even though it is said that she was caught in the act, so it must have been known who the man was. Second, this is where Jesus says that whoever is without sin should cast the first stone. In other words, the scene in the movie involving a woman by herself being put to death for adultery by stoning is meant to call to mind the story about Jesus, except that the privilege of casting the first stone no longer goes to the witnesses to the adultery, but rather to the one who is without sin, a requirement that no one can meet.

From a Christian point of view, Judaism was merely a crude, primitive religion, in need of being replaced. The movie is essentially saying that this was the way things were before Jesus came along and taught us about forgiveness. And since David expresses horror about the custom of stoning women for adultery, and later refers with disgust to the way Uriah will eagerly cast the first stone, should he find out about Bathsheba’s sin, we are encouraged to identify David with Jesus.

Needless to say, Jews have a different take on the matter. From their point of view, they had God first, and Christianity and Islam are johnny-come-latelies. Now, every religion implies that every other religion is false, but Judaism with respect to Christianity and Islam is a special case. Those two religions had to get their God from Judaism, and thus they are beholden to it, which is a constant source of irritation to them. And it wouldn’t be so bad if Judaism had been completely absorbed into those two religions, but as the Jews stubbornly continue to exist, insisting thereby that their original conception of God is the correct one, they offend Christianity and Islam in a way that, say, Hindus and Buddhists do not. It is this resentment that lies at the heart of antisemitism.

In any event, neither David nor Bathsheba end up being stoned to death for their adultery, their punishment being the death of her baby. David gets off easy because he is a big shot and is above the Law, and Bathsheba gets off easy because she is now David’s wife. In the movie, David tells Nathan that if God thinks he is guilty, let God punish him himself. To give God the chance to do so, David touches the Ark of the Covenant, which was previously seen to have lethal consequences. But touching the Ark doesn’t kill David. It only causes him to have a flashback to when he was anointed by Samuel (1 Samuel 16), and when he killed Goliath (1 Samuel 17).

Paradoxically, this movie also secularizes the story. Whereas the prophet Nathan presents himself as being in direct contact with God, knowing exactly the will of the Deity, David seems to take a dubious view of the matter. When Nathan tells David that God does not want a temple to be built for the Ark of the Covenant, David says that he will go along with whatever Nathan wants on the matter. Nathan has to correct him, saying that it will be what God wants. Later in the movie, when Nathan demands that Bathsheba be brought forward for punishment, he tells David, “You have heard the word of God.” David replies, “I have heard the word of Nathan.” David, like most people today, is suspicious of anyone who claims to know the will of God through divine revelation. Had the movie portrayed David as fully believing that God had told Nathan exactly what he wanted, we would have lost respect for David, thinking him to be gullible and naive. At the same time, we are encouraged to have contempt for Nathan, regarding him as either a liar or a fool.

In 2 Samuel 6, while the Ark was being transported, Uzzah put his hands on it when it started to fall, on account of the movement of the oxen. When he did so, God became so angry that he killed Uzzah. This happened before David hooked up with Bathsheba, so it was put into the movie anachronistically. While Nathan asserts that God killed Uzzah for touching the Ark, David dismisses the notion, saying it was a hot day, and the man had been drinking wine. David says the man probably just died of natural causes. (No wonder David wasn’t afraid to touch the Ark himself.) Nathan says, “All causes are of God.”

Now, it is one thing to assert that God has intervened in the natural course of things, making something happen miraculously that otherwise would not, and it is quite another to say that naturally occurring events are ultimately caused by God, who established the laws of nature. In other words, by having David interpret what happened to Uzzah in terms of natural causes, which is even conceded somewhat by Nathan, the movie makes the story more palatable to modern taste.

This secularization also exonerates God. According to the Bible, God killed Uzzah for touching the Ark, when all he was trying to do was keep the Ark from falling over, and God killed an innocent baby to punish his parents. Modern religious belief would be distressed by the idea of a God that would be so cruel and heartless. Instead, the movie allows us to think, as David does, that Uzzah just had a heat stroke, and it also allows us to think Bathsheba’s baby died of natural causes, as they so often did in those days.

Finally, the movie included something I thought it would avoid: Jonathan. The movie could very easily have done so, for Jonathan was killed in battle before David ever saw Bathsheba. And there was a good reason to avoid any reference to Jonathan in a movie that centers on David’s love for Bathsheba, because David and Jonathan had a homosexual relationship. And yet, the movie goes out of its way to juxtapose the two.

We see David leave the bed he shares with Bathsheba, walk outside, and start reminiscing about his love for Jonathan, as in 2 Samuel 1:26, saying, “Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” As he says this, we see Bathsheba in the background, watching and listening. She isn’t smiling.

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