Are Women As Powerless As They Appear?
- Part 1 -

Bienhome Muivah *

When Bill Clinton won the presidential elections, he was elated. He and his wife Hillary decided to sneak off to celebrate. On their way, they stopped to put gasoline in their car. Bill could not help noticing the way Hillary was talking with the gas pump attendant.

As they drove off, Bill said to Hillary, "I could not help noticing the way you were talking with the attendant, like you were old friends.

"Of course", Hillary replied, "we knew each other a long time ago. We were in high school together. In fact, we dated for a while, and he even asked me to marry him".

Bill swelled with pride. "Aren't you glad you turned him down, and married the president of the United States instead"?

"If I had married him, "Hillary replied," "he would have been the president and you, the gas pump attendant".

How men underestimate women! As of Hillary, could it be also of Bathsheba? A commentator, male, described her as "a good-natured, rather stupid woman who was a natural prey both to more passionate and to cleverer men". Is she as naive and dumb as she appears to be? A closer look at her may help us see something more than meets the eye. She features prominently in King David's life, at the height of his power, and the ebb of his life. At his prime, his generals fought his battles while he loafed at home. As he loitered on the roof of his palace, Bathsheba caught his attention. The account of David's fall into adultery with her and the subsequent murder of her husband seem to portray her as a helpless victim.

Was she really innocent? Even if we grant that her bathing nude in full view of the palace had no impure motives, questions could be raised about her actions later. Why did she confide with David about pregnancy but say not a word to her husband, Uriah? Was she trying to protect him from the king, or to leverage on a secret between her and the king? Surely, she knew David's scheme when Uriah was ordered home from the battle front. Did she make any attempt to sleep with Uriah so that he would think the child in her womb was his?

When Uriah returned drunk from David's drinking party, did Bathsheba make any attempt to get him into bed with her? She probably waited, and then assumed that he had slept at the servant's quarter as he did the night before when he was sober. The days passed with Bathsheba playing her part as accomplice-willing or unwilling-to the cover-up. When plan A (to get Uriah to sleep with his wife) failed, and also plan B (to get Uriah drunk so that he would sleep with his wife), she probably second-guessed the king's plan C (to send Uriah back to the frontlines and have him killed in battle).

Perhaps, she was truly helpless to do anything, but we cannot be sure if she was truly innocent. To be summoned by the king to his palace, to be invited by an admirer to his bed, and to be impregnated with the seed of the royal line-could Bathsheba see this as an opportunity to be part of the royal family? If so, she had her wish fulfilled. Uriah met his end, she discharged the days of mourning and became David's wife.

Some three decades passed, and we meet Bathsheba again, an older woman but still a force to be reckoned with in David's old age. The king, who once stood high on the palace roof with nothing to do, now lay low on his bed unable to do anything. Yet, Bathsheba, together with the prophet Nathan, roused the king from his lethargy to proclaim her son Solomon successor and king. No small fear for a woman, especially when her son was not the eldest in line to the throne. Did Bathsheba acquire the skill to manipulate her way into the king's heart, or did she possess that skill from the start? She joined David's harem as the seventh wife, and yet made her way past the others to be David's favorite.

King-Maker And Queen Mother

Even Nathan who knew the dark secret of her life allied with her. The prophet no doubt saw her as more than a pawn-she was a queen and more, a king-maker. She gave Israel a most illustrious king under whom the kingdom grew and flourish like it never did before, or thereafter. Surely, the good we see in Solomon must reflect the good in his mother according to Jewish tradition, Proverbs 31 was penned by Solomon in memory of his mother.

"Though there is a question about whether the Book of Proverbs was written by her son, it bears a striking relationship to her life, opening as it does with many dark pictures of a woman as man's seductress, but closing happily with the picture of the ideal woman who is a trusted companion and devoted mother".

After Bathsheba succeeded in making her son king, she featured in one more episode in the succession process. Adonijah approached her to speak to Solomon about a request: "please ask king Solomon-he will not refuse you-to give me Abishag the Shunammite as my wife". Abishag was David's concubine before he died, and to ask for her was tantamount to asking for David's throne. Knowing Adonijah, we are not surprised at such a foolish move-his attempt earlier on the crown himself king was foolhardy. But did Bathsheba see the implication of such a request? If she did, she made no attempt to dissuade Adonijah from it.

We wonder if she simply saw this as an opportunity to seal the fate of someone who was only recently her son's arch-rival. One commentator portrays her thus:
… who would understand harem politics more than the queen of the harem? … She cooperates with Nathan, exposes Adonijah, and generally makes prudent moves in the halls of power. Thus, it is evident that she understands the nature of Adonijah's request and prudently warns her son of his rival's inept power play".

On the other hand, it could be that she saw nothing in Adonijah's request other than a loser claiming a consolation prize. She passed on the request to Solomon who blew his top: "what kind of favor is this, asking that Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah? Why don't you ask me to hand over the whole kingdom to him on a platter since he is my older brother and has Abiathar the priest and Joab son of Zeruiah on his side"! Solomon directed his outrage, first at his mother, accusing her of collusion with his detractors; then he turned on Adonijah, ordering his execution.

Thereafter, Bathsheba slipped out of the narrative, never to appear again. Did she fall from grace with her son and fade into oblivion. The narrator does not tell us-evidently, Bathsheba's role in Solomon's succession is concluded, and nothing more need to be said.

But she did leave a mark on all future kings. They would always be mentioned with the names of their mothers. Even an individual like Jeroboam, not from the royal line but destined to become king, was introduced with his mother's name.

"So far two royal mothers have been named in I Kings, Solomon's and Adonijah's, both in the context of their son's potential for becoming king. Later, as we shall see, whenever a king succeeds to the throne of David, his mother's name will be given. Naming Jeroboam's mother here is a subtle prefiguring of his royal destiny".

This literary device stands as a tribute to Bathsheba and the pivotal role of a queen-mother work out for the worse. If Bathsheba's role worked out for the better, that of another queen-mother worked for the worse. We turn our attention to Athaliah, another influential female figure in the succession of kings. The daughter of Ahab, king of Israel, she married Jehoram, king of Judah, probably in a marriage of political expediency. Ahab and Jehoram's father, Jehoshaphat, had been good friends. Athaliah subsequently distinguished herself as the only queen to rule Judah. Like her mother Jezebel, she worshipped the god Baal, a foreign deity which both women imported from abroad and promoted in Israel and Judah.

Powerful Women

Jehoram was killed in the battle and their son Ahaziah reigned briefly with Athaliah as queen-mother. When he died prematurely from battle wounds, she seized power and proceeded to eliminate the entire royal family. What kind of a woman was she to murder her own grandchildren? Was it necessary since she could easily have continued as queen-mother? But her ambition to be queen and sole ruler blinded her to reason and robbed her of all human feelings. During the reign of her husband, she was probably the instigator behind the murder of his brothers. During the reign of her son, she was no doubt the influence behind his desecration of the temple and his promotion of Baal worship.

Ironically, her lust for power would be thwarted by another woman: Jehosheba, the daughter of Jehoram and the wife of Jehoiada the priest. She rescued Ahaziah's youngest son, Joash, the sole survivor of the massacre, and hid him. Athaliah's reign lasted six years during which her brutality wearied the people. Her rule ended when the priest presented Joash as the rightful heir to the throne, and no one stood with her when she cried, "Treason! Treason!"

Like her mother, she met an ignominious death.

"In her miserable end, Athaliah bore a resemblance to her mother Jezebel, who was abandoned to the dogs. Athaliah was left in a horse-path, to be trampled upon. Like her mother she died a queen, but without a hand to help her or eye to pity her".

Athaliah and Bathsheba represent a breed of women who wield power, overtly or covertly, over men. History would tell similar stories of such women.

Cleopatra ruled with her father Ptolemy XIV. But ruling as queen only whetted her appetite for the ultimate power base in Egypt-She eventually assumed the throne as sole Pharaoh. To consolidate her position, she forged a liaison with Julius Caesar, and later with Mark Anthony. Her influence straddled the power blocs of her time, Egyptian and Roman. The way she charmed and conquered one man after another led the philosopher Blaise Pascal to muse, "Cleopatra nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed".

Do we not see resemblances in these women with Bathsheba and Athaliah? We may add women like Helen of Troy, part human and part goddess, over whom a war was fought and by whose face a thousand ships were launched.

Then there is Josephine, the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he divorced, presumably because she bore him no children despite numerous affairs, divorce and remarriage, the emperor's last words as he lay dying in exile in St. Helena were: "France, the Army, the Head of the Army, Josephine".

Anonymous Women

But women need not be prominent to exert influence Biblical women such as Bathsheba and Athaliah are given considerable attention in scriptures which ensures the memory of their names. In contrast there are women who appear silently and disappear anonymously.

Throughout the narrative in the Bible, Jeroboam's wife remains unnamed and unheard. She utters not a word, while the men speak: Her husband speaks to her, telling her what to do; the prophet speaks to her, telling her what to say to her husband. She acts as a silent messenger, moving back and forth, in mute compliance to their instructions. The narrative makes no attempt to name her, or to tell us what she thought of how she felt. In fact, in the story, she plays her role as a woman in disguise, hiding her identity.

But her anonymity belies her role. She carries the voice of God's prophet back to her husband, declaring the death of their son, the end of his dynasty, and indeed the eventual collapse of the entire kingdom. Though she says nothing in the narrative, what she says to Jeroboam means everything to all of us. We now know what God is going to do, and how the whole story will end. Could there be an underlying message as to the role of women in the Bible: Wordless, yet bearing the Word of God; nameless, yet achieving God's purpose?

Though the opening story of Bill and Hillary Clinton may be fictitious, it encapsulates the truth about the role of women in the lives of men. Many achievers today dedicated/acknowledge their wives for their success, declaring that they could never have done it without their other halves. Women deserve such accolade but they must guard against the desire for vicarious power through their men. The mother of John and James came to Jesus, asking for them to be seated at the right hand and the left hand of Jesus when He established His Kingdom. She reminds us of queen mother's like Bathsheba and the Empress Dowager who sought their sons on the throne.

Women feature more significantly in succession stories than we choose to remember or care to admit. A man's rise to power or a fall from it may result from the words of a woman. Perhaps a Spanish proverb says it best: "A woman's advice is a little value, but he who does not take it is a fool". The words of Bathsheba to the dying king David provide ample proof of such a paradox.

"A VIRTOUS WOMEN IS FAR ABOVE RUBIES"
BLESSED SUNDAY!