II Samuel 11, Bathsheba

David is king of all Israel and has consolidated his power.

2 Samuel 11: 1-4, Adultery with Bathsheba

In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.

One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"

Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she went back home.

David, having allowed Joab to lead the army against the Ammonites, is bored and restless.  He sleeps late into the evening and then is aroused by watching, from a rooftop, a woman bathing. David asks about her and is told that she is the wife of one of his soldiers and the daughter of another. (Bathsheba's father, Eliam, is probably the same soldier that is listed in 2 Samuel 23: 34. That list of mighty warriors of David includes Uriah in 2 Samuel 23: 39.)

After asking about her, David has the married woman brought to the palace, to his bed where he has sex with her.  

Bathsheba is bathing when David spies on her. The narrator then mentions that Bathsheba had purified herself from her uncleanness. Commentators Alter and Youngblood argue that this is a parenthetical reference to the original rooftop bath where she was purifying herself after the end of her menstrual period. This is especially significant if this is Bathsheba's last period for some time....

On the other hand, the purification described might have been after sex with David. (The NIV footnotes give a possible translation "When she purified herself from her uncleanness, she went back home.") According to the Mosaic law, both sexual intercourse and menstrual periods included ritual baths, see Leviticus 15: 18-19.  Of course, according to the Mosaic law, adultery is an entirely different activity than ordinary sexual intercourse or menstruation and no simple bathing can wash away that uncleanness!

2 Samuel 11: 5-8, A problem

The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."

So David sent this word to Joab: "Send me Uriah the Hittite." And Joab sent him to David.

When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house and wash your feet." So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him.

So far Bathsheba has appeared to be completely passive, saying nothing.  Now, in two Hebrew words, she tells David she is pregnant.  (This is surely several months after the affair.) David attempts to remove himself from the problem by bringing Uriah home to have sex with his wife, so that Uriah would appear to be father of the child.

Uriah is repeatedly described as "the Hittite." He is not an Israelite. In this chapter, it is the Hittites who act with integrity while the powerful Israelites abuse and deceive.

At this point, David has sent palace messengers on a variety of tasks. They found out about the woman bathing on the roof top, they brought her to David's bedroom, and later they probably escorted her home. A messenger has later conveyed her message of pregnancy and now David has had the woman's husband brought home and cared for. David is lazy and dissolute, doing little on his own. Surely the palace gossip line is active.

2 Samuel 11: 9-11, A soldier with integrity

But Uriah slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master's servants and did not go down to his house. When David was told, "Uriah did not go home," he asked him, "Haven't you just come from a distance? Why didn't you go home?"

Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my master Joab and my lord's men are camped in the open fields. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!"

Despite every attempt by David, this foreigner serving in his army refuses to go home to his wife, when his fellow soldiers don't have similar luxuries.

Servants of David are now monitoring Uriah and reporting back to David. After helping Bathsheba in and out of the palace months before, surely the palace staff have suspicions. Robert Alter suggests that Uriah's response may indicate that even he has some suspicions. After all, says Alter, Uriah is sleeping at the entrance to the palace with servants, some of whom are probably also soldiers, and at that gate there may be considerable gossip. Alter believes it is significant that it is Uriah who mentions sleeping with his wife.

2 Samuel 11: 12-13, Integrity, even when drunk

Then David said to him, "Stay here one more day, and tomorrow I will send you back." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next.

At David's invitation, he ate and drank with him, and David made him drunk. But in the evening Uriah went out to sleep on his mat among his master's servants; he did not go home.

David gets Uriah drunk.  But still Uriah's integrity is intact.

2 Samuel 11: 14-17, A death arranged

In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. In it he wrote, "Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die."

So while Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at a place where he knew the strongest defenders were. When the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of the men in David's army fell; moreover, Uriah the Hittite died.

Uriah unknowingly carries back to Joab the instructions for Uriah's execution. Joab follows David's instructions and Uriah is betrayed by his commander and fellow soldiers.

2 Samuel 11: 18-22, Joab's message

Joab sent David a full account of the battle. He instructed the messenger: "When you have finished giving the king this account of the battle, the king's anger may flare up, and he may ask you, `Why did you get so close to the city to fight? Didn't you know they would shoot arrows from the wall? Who killed Abimelech son of Jerub-Besheth? Didn't a woman throw an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebez? Why did you get so close to the wall?' 

If he asks you this, then say to him, `Also, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.'"

The messenger set out, and when he arrived he told David everything Joab had sent him to say.

Joab communicates back to David the death of Uriah. There is a callousness in Joab's reply -- the messenger is to make sure that David knows Uriah is dead. David has embroiled Joab in his royal scandal and Joab recognizes that.

(The previous death of Abimelech is recorded in Judges 9: 50-55.)

2 Samuel 11: 23-25, Partners in excuses

The messenger said to David, "The men overpowered us and came out against us in the open, but we drove them back to the entrance to the city gate. Then the archers shot arrows at your servants from the wall, and some of the king's men died. Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead."

David told the messenger, "Say this to Joab: `Don't let this upset you; the sword devours one as well as another. Press the attack against the city and destroy it.' Say this to encourage Joab."

Uriah is not the only one killed in this sally.  But David is content.  Uriah is dead. David responds to Joab's report with his own callousness: "The sword devours one as well as another", a version of the modern, "These things happen."

"These things happen." But many of David's followers, including Joab, are aware of David's corrupt acts.  And YHWH is also watching.

2 Samuel 11: 26-27, One more wife

When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. 

But the thing David had done displeased the LORD.

The last sentence suggests the next chapter.  David, like almost all who are in power, thinks he can hide his scandals.  But David is a special representative of YHWH and so, NO, he will not escape the effects of his sin.  Those effects will carry us throughout the rest of this book.

This is one of the saddest chapters in the Old Testament. If I can take any comfort from this story of arrogance and depravity, it is that the broken character that is the subject of this story is the same one said to be "after God's own heart." (1 Samuel 13: 14, Acts 13: 22) This is the psalmist, whose painful Psalm 51 recalls this depravity.