Finding an Alternative to the Story of Bathsheba

[JJM]

I need to teach a lesson to middle school students on the importance of narrative within the context of salvation. If it weren't for the sex the story of Bathsheba I would use that because God attempts through "logical proofs": Bathsheba's pregnancy as a consequence of his actions, Uriah, the gentile's, twice refusal to go to his wife out of respect for God and his comrades, Joab's refusal to follow the impractical particulars of his attempt to have Uriah killed and the loss of additional men that was a result of David's plot. But it is only when Nathan comes with a story that David understands and repents. Does anyone know of another passage which demonstrates the same principal?

 

[RC1970]

There's the story of Jacob and his trickery to receive the blessing and then wrestling with the angel.
There's the story of Joseph and his brothers selling him into slavery and then having to come clean about what they had done.

 

[JJM]

There's the story of Jacob and his trickery to receive the blessing and then wrestling with the angel.
There's the story of Joseph and his brothers selling him into slavery and then having to come clean about what they had done.

Those are great stories of repentance in stages and how God brings it about, but I don't see that it is a metanarrative which brings them about. Perhaps I'm missing them. However the story of Jacob could not ignore the Leah-Rachel debacle. With Joseph I could easily gloss over Potiphar's wife.

 

[RC1970]

Sorry, I'm not into postmodern critical theories.

 

[Fireinfolding]

I dont know if it would be helpful or not, (but in brief) the one I connect between the two pictures (David, Uriah and Bathsheba) is the one with women being told to be discreet (obedient to their own husbands) that the word of God be not blasphemed. Whereas even Bathsheba ought to have been so with her own (and not to David) but likewise how it shows David through this deed (in coveting another man's wife) was told he had given great occassion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme is there as well.

 

[JJM]

Sorry, I'm not into postmodern critical theories.

I didn't mean to imply you need to be. What I meant was that in the story of David's adultery a story is told to him. That story (a narrative within the narrative, a metanarrative) is what causes his repentance. I need another story with that same reality essentially to relate our reliving of the story of salvation, Christ's life, etc. through the liturgical year as a means to our own salvation.