Bathsheba: Reluctant Beauty

This week, we're going to continue with Angela Hunt's A Dangerous Beauty series and talk about Bathsheba: Reluctant Beauty.

To be honest, I struggled with the beginning of this book. Since the events of the book aren't spoilers (they are in the Bible, haha), I'm not going to worry with hiding the events. I love Angela Hunt's books, especially her more contemporary settings like Unspoken, The Canopy, and The Justice. But because this is such a well-known story, Hunt took the risk of portraying the scene of David and Bathsheba in a very different way. At the end of the novel, she explains why—how traditional expositions of this story portray Bathsheba as a manipulative adulteress, and perhaps there was an unexplored angle here. I get that and respect it, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't difficult to read or that I agreed with the portrayal of what was essentially, rape. I also struggled with the early depiction of Nathan and how he dishonored his wife because of his lust for Bathsheba.

That being said, I believe she went farther into describing the culture and beliefs of this culture than many depictions of this story. It reminded me of Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes' exploration of the shame that David felt (and its reason), which I talked about here.

I still feel like the guilt portrayed here was more from Western eyes than Eastern, but it was closer to Eastern than I had read before. And perhaps my problems with the early scenes had more to do with my Western predisposition and cultural/personal bias. This book is well written, and Hunt expertly stayed true to the character development throughout.

In addition, I appreciated how she continued the story through those central scenes, so we could understand what is can be a confusing thread of scenes in the Old Testament. It was easier to see the connection between the consequences of this initial sin and how it impacted following generations.

Click here to purchase the book here on Amazon!