In 1 Kings 2, Bathsheba goes to Solomon to present Adonijah’s request that he be given Abishag for his wife. This is tantamount, Solomon discerns (v 22), to a request for the throne, and yet Bathsheba relays the request. Why? Some have thought her naive or sentimentally maternal, but that portrait hardly fits with the shrewd woman of 1 Kings 1. In all likelihood, she relays the request in the full knowledge that Solomon will refuse it and act to cut off the threat from Adonijah once and for all. Bathsheba sees it as an opportunity to get rid of one of her son’s greatest rivals.
In the midst of this story, we have the wonderful typological scene of Bathsheba taking her place at the right hand of the king. The Queen, the king’s mother, sits at the right hand of her enthroned son, as the church is enthroned beside her Son, Jesus. Given this, we can take Bathsheba’s request as a type of prayer. What is intriguing here, if the interpretation above is correct, is that Bathsheba offers a request for Adonijah that she knows will not be answered, and which she knows will lead to Adonijah’s fall. She “prays” for an enemy, in the full knowledge that the prayer will be refused and the outcome the opposite of what she asks. Or, suppose that Bathsheba is naive, and presents Adonijah’s request in complete innocence. In that case, she offers a request for her son’s enemies, and her son is left to act on it.
This throws up some interesting questions about prayer, especially prayer for enemies. May we offer requests before God, in the full knowledge that what we ask is not going to be answered, even in the full knowledge that God will react with anger? More likely, we often offer prayers naively; we ask that God would do good to some enemy, but the Lord knows that if the request were granted our enemies would use it against us. So, He reacts as Solomon did: “May God do so to me and more also, if Adonijah has not spoken this word against his own life.” This is perhaps one of the dynamics of prayer: We obey God’s command to pray for our enemies, and He responds by carrying out His vengeance against our enemies.
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