BILHAH !!!!!!
Laban gave his servant girl Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as her maidservant. (GENESIS 29:29)
Had Bilhah known what this change in her life would mean, perhaps she would have run the other way. For seving Rachel meant more than looking after her and running her errands. When Rachel did not have children, she decided her husband, Jacob, should follow a custom of the day and take Bilhah as a concubine. According to the custom, Rachel would adopt Bilhah's children as her own. But instead of establishing a happy family, Rachel began a competition with her sister, Leah, Jacob's other wife, who had borne him four children. Eventually their face-off saddled Jacob withtwelve sons and a far-from-peaceful household, disrupted by two wives and two concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah. Though God used Bilhah to raise up some of Jacob's sons, who would eventually become leaders of the twelve tribes of Israel, her role was not a thoroughly pleasant one.
# 2 _God established marriage as between one man and one woman (See GENESIS 2:24) to reflect His covenant. Ignore that, and your family life, like Jacob's, can become as confused as the plot of a modern-day soap opera. But God blesses marriages that reflect His covenant love. Fithful love ends soap-opera lives and establishes a firm family that can serve God well. Would that describe your family? If not, what can you change?
BATHSHEBA !!!!!!!
One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite? (2 SAMUEL 11:2__3)
Bathsheba must have been a real looker__a king was unable to resist her when he got a look at her from the roof of his palace. David sent messengers to bring the Hittite's wife to him, and then David slept with her. Scripture never seems to ask how Bathsheba felt about this. Was she offended at being commandeered by a knig, or was she flattered that he had noticed her? Whatever her response, she didn't have any say in her situation.
# 2 _Then, to her horror, Bathsheba discovered she was pregnant. In Jewish law, the punishment for adultery was death for both the man and woman. Fear must have struck this beauty's heart. Even if she though to pass the child off as her husband's, Uriah had been away at war and surely would know the child was not his. So she told David, and the king came up with a solution. He called Uriah back to Jerusalem, assuming Bathshe ba could entice him into a romantic interlude__and the problem would be solved.
# 3 _But the king, who had fallen into this sin when he should have been on the battlefield, did not count on the uprightness of this foreigner who had taken the Jewish faith to heart. Coming to the king as ordered, Uriah refused to so much as cross his own threshold. When others were camping out, readying for war, he would not sleep with his wife in Jerusalem. David made him drunk, but he still would not go home. Seeing no other alternative, and perhaps feeling growing guilt over his own sins, the king changed plans, commanding that Uriah should be placed in the heat of battle and left defenseless. The plan worked: Uriah died.
# 4 _Bathsheba lost her husband at the connivance of her lover. Perhaps she initially felt relief at getting out of a very tight situation. But if her husband treated her tenderly, as Nathan's accusation of David in 2 Samuel 12:3 implies, she must at least have felt some emotional conflict.
# 5 _When Bathsheba's short period of mourning ended, David made her his wife. In a few moths, she gave him a son. Though the Bible never blames Bathsheba for the sin between herself and the king, she shared in his grief when God punished David by taking the life of their child. But God quickly blessed her with another son, Solomon, who was loved by God and would become one of Israel's greatest kings. She also had three more children (See CHRONICLES 3:5).
# 6_ Years later, Bathsheba stood up for her son's right to become king of Israel, when his older brother Adonijah sought to grab the throne from the aging David (See 1 KINGS 1:5__21). At her request, Daivd kept his promise to make Solomon king (See verse 29).
# 7_Still, Bathsheba must have been more kindhearted than politically savvy, for when Adonijah asked to marry Abishag, who'd been David's nurse in his old age, Bathsheba pled his case to Solomon. Solomon deeply loved his mother, if the great respect he treated her with is any sign (See 1 KINGS 2:19). But he immediately saw that his brother was again threatening his throne, denied her mission, and had his brother killed.
# 8 _Bathsheb's story is that of the second chance. Her life was turned upside down by a king's desire, and she was seduced into sin with him. But she didn't stay there. God gave her another chance as David's wife, and the rest of the biblical account shows her as a caring mother and concerned wife. No one accused her of further sin, and she lived blamelessly.
# 9 _When God gives us second chances, we can follow in Bathsheba's footsteps. As long we are alive, we are on a mission for Him. Wil we make ours as successful as hers? Remember this: Bathsheba is one of only four women mentioned in the lineage of Jesus (See MATTHEW 1:6)
