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Old March 30th, 2014 #1
Karl Radl
The Epitome of Evil
 
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: The Unseen University of New York
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Default Incest, Bestiality and the Prophet Nathan

Incest, Bestiality and the Prophet Nathan


I was recently rereading the books of Samuel as part of an ongoing project of mine and I was struck by some of the rather vile implications of the Prophet Nathan's parable to King David about his compelling of Bathsheeba; the wife of Uriah the Hittite, to sleep with him. Since I don't believe these have been highlighted elsewhere I am writing this to bring them to more general attention.

The text of the parable is thus:

'And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him: “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he bought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his morsel, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb, and he prepared it for the man who had come to him.' (1)

Now on a superficial level: it is easy to read this parables use of the rich man/poor man juxtaposition in relation to the slaughter and eating of the poor man's lamb (i.e. the seduction of Bathsheeba by David) by the rich man (i.e. David has many wives unlike Uriah who has one: thus has no need to seduce Bathsheeba). As the representation of contrast of the monogamous relationship of Uriah with David's polygynous relationship with his innumerable wives and concubines and the violation of Uriah's monogamy by the adultery of David (and thus David's misdeed in the eyes of Yahweh).

This is all well and good, but what is far more disturbing is when we look at some of the details of the parable: since we are told that the poor man treated his 'one little ewe lamb' as he would his daughter. We are told this female lamb was given food from his table ('eat of his morsel') and drank clean water/good wine ('drink from his cup'), but then we read the female lamb would 'lie in his bosom'.

This is a truly odd thing to write in large part because there is no need to emphasize further that the female lamb is precious to the poor man, because we already know that the poor man has little in the way of food and drink. So what he has is especially precious to him and therefore that would suffice to indicate the care he lavished upon the female lamb.

However Nathan goes further in that the female lamb would 'lie in his bosom' or put in other words, would sit on his lap and sleep in his bed with him. This is especially alarming in the light of the further description that the female lamb was 'like a daughter to him', which implies that the poor farmer in Nathan's parable had his daughters sit on his lap and slept in the same bed as them.

Both of which were rather taboo at the time in the Middle East (which practiced stringent gender separation) and would certainly serve to sexually-awaken the poor man's daughters at an early age. The suggestion there is that either the poor man likes lying in bed (and remember that many people [especially those who were poor] in an age before cheap clothing would lie naked in bed) with his daughters or with female lambs.

While it is true these words could be benign (and simply an unfortunate addition by the Deuteronomic compiler): the addition of 'like a daughter to him' suggests they are not for the simple reason that sleeping in the same bed as your daughters is not attested (to my knowledge) as a common jewish practice anywhere in the Tanakh. It also just happens to be the one exception (a father having sex with his daughter) in the rules from the book of Leviticus that deal with incest (2) and there are even suggestions that bestiality was common among the Israelites, (3) which would strengthen that likelihood of that possibility as well.

This means that while we cannot absolutely prove that the Prophet Nathan was interested in these things (given his use of the parable): it seems quite likely that was.


References


(1) 2 Sam. 12:1-4
(2) On this please see the following article: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...ish-bible.html
(3) On this please see the following article: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...ish-bible.html

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This was originally published at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...et-nathan.html
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