I was intrigued by how Jewish teachings interpret King David’s lament in the Psalms that “in sin my mother conceived me (1)”. Surely, Judaism does not regard sex as a sin. I was pleased to find an interpretation that made a lot more sense to me and expressed Judaism’s guidance about genuine intimacy.
Let us begin with the context of David’s exclamation. It is part of “a psalm by David…after he had come to Bathsheba” (2). David, a passionately religious (3) married man, had become interested in a married woman - Bathsheba. He slept with her, and used his royal power to ensure her husband died in battle (4). In this psalm, David expressed remorse, acknowledged his sins and continuing guilt, and pleaded with G-d for forgiveness.
A Midrash adds some explanation of what David meant. “David said to God; “Master of the worlds, did my father Yishai intend to cause me to stand [be born]?! …his intention was only for his own pleasure. Know that this is so, because after they did their needs, this one turned his face this way and that one turned her face there (5)”.
This seems to imply that David was not concerned about the act itself, but its intention - for pleasure rather than procreation (6).
This is problematic on two counts. The Torah mandates intercourse as a husband’s obligation and a wife’s right (7), regardless of the potential for procreation, for example, when a woman is past menopause (8). A husband’s priority during intimacy should be maximising his wife’s pleasure and he is encouraged to delay his own pleasure so that his wife climaxes first (9). The Torah portrays intercourse as pleasurable, using the euphemism ‘playing’ or ‘laughing’, regarding Isaac and Rebecca being sexually intimate (10). According to Raphael Aron, an Australian Chasidic Rabbi and counsellor, the Torah teaches that the “intimate relationship must be pleasurable (11)”. In 2008 Rabbi Aron wrote that “it is a serious mistake to think that the best way is the strictest way; that denial is the most effective means by which to achieve a ‘Kosher’ marriage (12)”.
To understand what ‘Kosher’ intimacy is, it is worth looking at its opposite. The Talmud lists nine types of children, conceived in situations that were, mostly, not accompanied by a full emotional union. These include children of fear, i.e., where the wife was afraid of her husband and engaged in sexual intercourse with him out of fear; children of a woman who was forced into intercourse by her husband; children of a hated woman; children of drunkenness (and thus the partners are not able to be emotionally present with each other); children of a woman who was divorced in the heart, i.e., the husband had already decided to divorce her when they engaged in intercourse; and children of substitution, i.e., while engaging in intercourse with the woman, the man thought that she was another woman (13).
Considering this list, further commentary written in the 19th century, on the midrash above, can advance our understanding of David’s lament.
This commentary cited a different midrash that relates that ‘Yishai, David’s father, separated from his wife Nitzevet [because of a technical religious concern] (14). Instead, he decided to sleep with his maidservant. The maidservant told her mistress, Yishai’s wife Nitzevet. Nitzevet then went into the bed, instead of the maidservant, and was intimate with her husband Yishai while Yishai thought he was sleeping with his maidservant. From this deed, David was born’ (15).
The nature of his conception rang in David’s mind during his situation with Bathsheba. Because he felt like he was inherently damaged goods, like a child of a substitution. [one of the nine mentioned above]. …David referenced this in this psalm about his sin with Bathsheba. …David said to God, “I had to sin with Bathsheba (16) because there is, in me, a side of sin, from my father’s side, in that he had no intention of creating me, but only his own pleasure, as he thought he was sleeping with his maidservant. …In this, my father made me like the ‘child of a substitution’. This rumbled inside of me when I sinned with Bat Sheva.” [perhaps, also, that he felt additional shame as he reflected on his sin, because he saw it as linked to his essentially damaged spiritual state because of the nature of his conception (17)].
This remarkable commentary can be understood to be critical of an act that was completely selfish. Yishai was not cementing his relationship with his wife in an act of love and togetherness – in the way the Torah says a man will leave his parents and cleave to his wife and become one flesh (18). He didn’t even know who he was sleeping with! (It is also unlikely that he had quickly formed a deeply committed relationship with his maidservant.) This understandably ‘messed’ with the head of his son, David, who regarded it as sinful.
I find this explanation very useful in an age that, although shameless in some ways, is in other ways excessively shame prone. So many of us feel ashamed of our bodies, telling ourselves we are fat etc. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for people to feel ashamed of themselves when they violate valid standards. However, for a religious Jew, being a considerate lover, giving and receiving intimate pleasure, in a committed loving relationship, sanctioned by marriage, is certainly not one of them.
Notes
1) Psalms, 51:7
2) Psalms, 51:1-2
3) Samuel II, 6:14 is one example, his
authorship of the psalms is another.
4) Samuel II, 11
5) Midrash Rabbah, Vayikra 14:5
6) Chanoch Zundel Ben Yosef (1829) in Anaf Yosef commentary on Midrash Rabba, Vayikra 14:5, in his first comment. Anaf Yosef links the objection to pleasure to a comment in the Talmud whose context suggests it does not mean what he suggests it means. The Talmud in Nedarim 20b relates a description of intercourse by a woman named Ima Shalom who described her husband’s behaviour as follows… My husband does not converse with me [a euphemism for sex] neither at the beginning of the night nor at the end of the night, but rather at midnight. And when he ‘converses’ he reveals a handbreadth and covers a handbreadth, and it [the sexual experience] is as though he were being forced by a demon. And I said to him: What is the reason? And he said to me: It is so that I will not set my eyes on [think about] another woman, which would then result in his children consequently come to a mamzer [bastard] status. [i.e., the nature of their souls is tantamount to that of a mamzer. Therefore, he engaged in sexual intercourse at an hour when there are no people in the street that might distract him from his attention on his wife because he was afraid of not being fully focused on her]. From his explanation, it is clear that he was not worried about how much pleasure he was having but about his degree of emotional connection with his wife, and that it is not diluted by thoughts of other women.
7) Exodus 21:10, Maimonides, Book of Women, Hilchot Ishut, 12:2
8) In Aron, R. (2008), Spirituality and Intimacy, Devora
Publishing, p. 81
9) Talmud Nida 31a, see Rashi there and Raavad quoted in Magen
Avraham on Orach Chayim 240:8
10) Genesis 26:8
11) Based on a comment by Rashi on Genesis 2:24 and the Netziv-
HaEmek Davar on Genesis 2:23, in Aron, R., p. 84, he also cited Nachmanides
that Intimacy should be “amidst an abundance of love and desire”
12) Aron, R., p. 85
13) Talmud Nedarim, 20b
14) As a descendant of Ruth, who was a Moabite woman, he was unsure
if the Torah forbids only Moabite men or also Moabite women from marrying into
the Jewish people.
15) Yalkut HaMachiri, and Sefer HaTodaah, Sivan and Shavuot, cited by Chanoch Zundel in Anaf Yosef and Rabbi Yisroel
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16) Maharal of Prague in Derekh Chayim (commentary on Pirkey Avot)
3:1:15 explained that David’s intention was not to excuse his behaviour- in the
psalm he expressed genuine remorse. It is more an argument of mitigating
circumstances.
17) Chanoch Zundel Ben Yosef (1829) in Anaf Yosef commentary on
Midrash Rabba, Vayikra 14:5, see more on this in this article, cited by Rabbi Yisroel
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18) Genesis 2:24
