The biblical narratives identify David’s father as Jesse but do not name his mother. That remains the answer whether the reader approaches the Bible as Jewish scripture, Christian scripture, or ancient literature. Later tradition can supply a name, but it should not be substituted for information the biblical text does not give.
First Samuel 16 introduces Jesse and his sons when Samuel anoints David. First Samuel 17:12 again identifies David through Jesse. First Chronicles 2:13–17 lists Jesse’s sons and David’s sisters, Zeruiah and Abigail, without naming David’s mother. The narrative attention to paternal genealogy should not be mistaken for evidence that his mother was absent or unimportant.
First Samuel 22:3–4 does mention her: David asks the king of Moab to shelter his father and mother while his own situation remains uncertain. The episode establishes that she is part of the story, but gives no name or biography. Ruth 4:13–22 makes Ruth an ancestor of David through Obed and Jesse; Ruth is his great-grandmother, not his mother. Matthew 1:5–6 repeats that ancestral line in a genealogy intended to connect Jesus with David. It adds no identification of David’s mother.
Psalm 86:16, in a psalm whose superscription associates it with David, calls the speaker the son of God’s female servant. Psalm 116:16 uses similar language without a Davidic superscription in the Hebrew text. Such devotional language cannot establish the woman’s name. Psalm 51:5’s statement about conception in sin also does not establish that David’s mother committed adultery. The line belongs to a penitential poem, not a narrated account of his parents’ marriage.
A later rabbinic tradition preserved in Babylonian Talmud Bava Batra 91a names her Nitzevet, also transliterated Natzvat, daughter of Adael. That is a genuine Jewish traditional source, not a verse omitted from English Bibles. Its later attestation and different literary setting should be clear when it is cited. More elaborate accounts about her family relationships likewise require their own sources rather than being presented as facts from Samuel.
This small question illustrates an important reading habit: a biblical silence, a reasonable inference, and a later tradition are three different kinds of evidence. A tradition need not be mocked because it is later, but neither should its details be attributed to the Bible. Here the biblical answer is limited: David’s mother appears, but remains unnamed.
Read in context: 1 Samuel 22; 1 Chronicles 2; Ruth 4; Bava Batra 91a.