Bathsheba and Jesus: A Vegan Comparison. By Dr Chapman Chen
- Chapman Chen
- Jan 2
- 3 min read
The story of Bathsheba’s first child (2 Samuel 12) will be examined from the perspective of Jesus, as reflected in his healing of the man born blind in John 9. It will be argued that Jesus explicitly rejects punitive theology and blood sacrifice.
1. The Shared Assumption (That Jesus Smashes)
Both stories rest on the same ancient assumption that suffering exists because someone sinned, and God is exacting payment. Concerning 2 Samuel 12, it is assumed that David sins and the child dies because “God struck the child.” In John 9, seeing that the man is blind, the disciples ask, “Man is blind → disciples ask: “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” Same logic. Same worldview. Same error.
2. Jesus’ Answer Is a Direct Theological Correction
Jesus’ reply in John 9:3 is revolutionary:-
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned.”
This is not pastoral softness. It is theological demolition. Jesus explicitly denies:
inherited guilt or transgenerational punishment or God using suffering as moral retribution. This means—logically and retroactively—that if Jesus is right, then the punitive reading of 2 Samuel 12 is wrong. Not “mysterious.” Not “hard but just.” Simply wrong.
3. What God Actually Does (In Both Stories)
In 2 Samuel 12: God sends Nathan to expose violence; In John 9: God sends Jesus to heal suffering. God reveals and restores. God does not kill. The punitive theology belongs to the interpreters, not to God.
4. From Punishment Theology to Blood Sacrifice
And Why Jesus overturns the entire logic? Now to the deeper root.
4.1. The Common Logic Beneath Both Stories
The logic behind “God killed Bathsheba’s child,” “someone must have sinned for this blindness,” and “an animal must die to appease God” follows the same structure:- As a result of sin, God demands innocent suffering, and order is restored. This is sacrificial thinking. And once that logic is accepted, babies can die “for justice” and animals can die “for atonement”. Eventually, someone claims God needs blood in order to forgive humans.
4.2. Why Blood Sacrifice Feels Theologically Natural in This System
If one already believes that God punishes through suffering and allows innocents to suffer for others’ sins, then animal sacrifice—and even the blood sacrifice of Christ Himself—becomes logical, merciful rather than human sacrifice, and divinely sanctioned. That’s why punitive theology must produce sacrifice. You can’t keep one without the other.
5. Jesus’ Systemic Overturning (Not a Minor Reform)
Jesus does not merely say that “sacrifice is optional.” He says, “I desire compassion, not sacrifice” (Matt. 9:13, 12:7). God does not need blood. God does not trade death for forgiveness. God does not heal by killing. This is why Jesus heals instead of punishing; Jesus forgives without sacrifice; Jesus rejects blame theology outright (John 9). And crucially, Jesus never once attributes suffering to God’s need for retribution. Not once.
6. Re-reading Bathsheba’s Story After Jesus
Once John 9 is allowed to speak, the child’s death is not divine punishment. It is tragic fallout from royal violence. God’s role is exposure, not execution. Nathan stands where Jesus later stands: unmasking the lie that God demands innocent blood, which means that the Bathsheba story is not about God killing a child. It is about how violent theology claims God did.
6.1. Redemption via Repentance
Read thr’ Jesus’ lens, redemption in the David narrative comes through genuine repentance, not through blood sacrifice, not through ransom logic, and not through the death of an innocent substitute.
7. The Competing Model: Paul’s Ransom Logic
By contrast, later Christian theology—especially that associated with Paul, the self-claimed Apostle—reintroduces a fundamentally different framework: sin creates a debt, justice requires payment, blood functions as ransom, and forgiveness is conditional upon death. This logic appears most clearly in texts like Romans 3, where justification is framed in legal–economic terms rather than prophetic–relational ones.
But that is not how David is forgiven. And it is not how Jesus forgives in the Gospels.
8. Conclusion
The assumption that God killed Bathsheba’s child belongs to the same punitive theology explicitly rejected by Jesus in John 9, where he denies that suffering is caused by personal or inherited sin. This logic—sin demanding innocent suffering—also underlies animal sacrifice, normalising bloodshed as divine necessity.
Jesus overturns this system entirely, revealing God not as a punisher who demands death, but as the healer who exposes and redeems human violence. Innocent suffering, whether animal or human, is never God’s instrument. Redemption comes via genuine repentance, instead of blood sacrifice. #VeganChrist #VeganGod #VeganTheology
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