In this scene, David's
association with active verbs, particularly his repeated exercise of שלח,
'send', marks his command of the situation. Bathsheba, though she is the object
of male actions-she 'is taken' (from לקח) by the servant and David lays with
her-is not utterly passive; she 'comes' (from בוא) to David. Noting that
Bathsheba's arrival and sexual involvement are fully covered without the
phrase, 'and she came to him', the reader is alerted to excess verbiage, bordering
on redundancy, which demands attention. The superfluous words do serve to
mitigate Bathsheba's passivity, to be sure; and the use of 'come', with its
connotations of sexuality, insinuates Bathsheba's complicity in the sexual
adventure. From Bathsheba's point-of-view, her complicity with the king's
wishes may be regarded as her attempt to bear a child rather than merely
participation in an adulterous (lustful) act. (Lillian Klein, “Bathsheba
Revealed,” in A Feminist Companion to Samuel and Kings, ed. Athalya Brenner-Iden
[The Feminist Companion to the Bible (Second Series) 7; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 2000], 49)
