“Bathsheba” by Jill Eileen Smith

Bathsheba

by Jill Eileen Smith

Book 3 of “The Wives of King David” Series

Description:

A single moment changed her life – will she ever regain all she’s lost?

Can love triumph over treachery?

Bathsheba is a woman who longs for love. With her husband away fighting the king’s wars, she battles encroaching loneliness–making it frighteningly easy to succumb to the advances of King David. Will one night of unbridled passion destroy everything she holds dear? Can she find forgiveness at the feet of the Almighty? Or has her sin separated her from God—and David—forever?

With a historian’s sharp eye for detail and a novelist’s creative spirit, Jill Eileen Smith brings to life the passionate and emotional story of David’s most famous—and infamous—wife. You will never read the story of David and Bathsheba in the same way again.

My Review:  ♥  ♥  ♥  ♥  ♥

One thing I love about Jill Eileen Smith’s novels about the wives of David is how the characters who were real human beings come alive. “Bathsheba” is no exception. In this novel, my heart aches, not only for Bathsheba, but for David who has gotten himself into a mess (as we often do) and can’t bring himself to do the only thing that will fix it (confess before God & face the consequences). It shows David at his worst but also at his best when he humbly confesses his sin with great remorse and goes about working to restore his relationship with God. In this novel, Bathsheba also deals with her part in this. Both are restored and forgiven.

I love the research in this novel. While Smith does bring conjecture into the story, she doesn’t deviate from the true Biblical facts that we do know or the historical culture. I disagree with her assumption that Bathsheba had a choice in the affair. The way I see the story, Bathsheba was a victim of David’s abuse of power. But the story that Smith weaves could be the way it happened, and it does show that David’s guilt both as an abuser of his position and a murderer was greater than Bathsheba’s. I guess we won’t know who’s right until we get to Heaven.

One scene, where Nathan confronts David, is so emotional and poignant, I read it a number of times. I could feel what David must have felt. It was that real. I also have imagined the scene many times when reading the scripture, and Smith’s version seemed very similar to mine. It’s the way I could imagine it happening. Another emotional scene that also touched me was when David heard that Absalom had killed all of his sons. Again Smith brought me into David’s emotions. Overall I loved this novel and highly recommend it.

Available March 2011 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.