Why do names change in the Bible like - Bathsheba to Bath-shua?
David and Bathsheba by Jan Matsys, 1562, Louvre (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) For example, in 2 Samuel 11:3, David looks from his window and sees a beautiful woman bathing in an adjacent house. He inquires of her name, and finds out: “Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam ?” And from there it becomes your typical king-meets-wife-of-deployed-soldier, affair-pregnancy-murder-cover-up kind of story, and ends up costing David his kingdom. But this story can become confusing when you read in 1 Chronicles 3:5 that David had four children “by Bath-shua , the daughter of Ammiel .” So what gives? Why is Bathsheba’s name spelled differently, and was her father named Ammiel or Eliam? This question is not just simply an issue of missing the forest for the trees—although if you ask this question, please don’t neglect the larger issues of what God wants you to learn from David’s sin and how that ended up dividing the kingdom. But if you spend any time reading Samuel, Kings, and Chron...