David’s sin with Bathsheba
11
📚And this happened at the turn of the year, at the time when kings go forth to battle: David sent out Joab and his servants with him and all Israel. And they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David still stayed at Jerusalem 📖. The sin
2 📚And it so happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king’s house, and from the roof he saw 📖 a woman bathing. And the woman was very beautiful in appearance. 3 📚And David sent and inquired about the woman. And someone said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife 📖 of Uriah 📖 the Hittite?” 4 📚And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in to him, and he lay with her, for she was purified from her uncleanness 📖. Then she returned to her house.
11:4 Ancient heathen kings had their harems and brought anyone they wanted into them. But God’s standards for His people are different (Lev 18:1-4), and David knew this. Under God’s law David’s (and Bathsheba’s) sin was worthy of death (Lev 20:10). In the New Testament such sins are seen to be worthy of eternal damnation – 1 Cor 6:9-10; Rev 21:8.⚜
5 📚And the woman conceived, and sent and told David and said, “I am pregnant”.
11:5 Her sin would soon be evident to Uriah. Bathsheba leaves the solution of this problem to David.⚜
6 📚And David sent word to Joab, saying, “Send me Uriah the Hittite”. And Joab sent Uriah to David. 7 📚And when Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab did and how the people did and how the war prospered. 8 📚Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet”. And Uriah left the king’s house, and a gift from the king followed him. 9 📚But Uriah slept at the door of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house.
10 And when they told David, saying, “Uriah did not go down to his house”, David said to Uriah, “Did you not come from your journey? Why then did you not go down to your house?”
11 📚And Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camped in the open fields. Shall I then go to my house to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing”.
11:11 Observe Uriah’s devotion to duty. It is in glaring contrast to David’s behavior. He did not want to enjoy himself while his fellow soldiers were experiencing rough conditions and in danger.⚜
12 📚And David said to Uriah, “Wait here today also, and tomorrow I will let you depart”. So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day, and the next day. 13 📚And when David called him, he ate and drank before him, and David made him drunk. And at evening he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.
11:13 David thought drunkenness would overcome Uriah’s sense of responsibility and loyalty to his fellow soldiers. But it did not.⚜
14 📚And it came about in the morning that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. 15 📚And he wrote in the letter, saying, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle and draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die”.
11:14-15 David sent by Uriah the orders for Uriah’s own murder. For murder it certainly was (2 Sam 12:9). This incident throws further light on the character of Joab. Apparently David was confident that Joab would have no scruples about being involved in another murder. We can learn from all this how one sin leads to another and may involve more and more people. Trying to cover one sin usually results in lies and deception, and sometimes more violent sin. Altogether David broke three of God’s most important commandments (Ex 20:13-14, 17).⚜
16 📚And it came about, when Joab looked the city over, that he assigned Uriah to a place where he knew that valiant men were. 17 📚And the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the people of the servants of David fell. And Uriah the Hittite also died.
11:17 David’s way of getting rid of Uriah meant that he was responsible for the killing of others in his own army. Oh where does sin end once it has begun?⚜
18 Then Joab sent a man to tell David everything concerning the war, 19 and ordered the messenger, saying, “When you have finished telling the matters of the war to the king, 20 then if it so happens that the king’s anger is aroused and he says to you, ‘Why did you approach so near to the city while you were fighting? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall? 21 📚Who struck down Abimelech the son of Jerubbesheth 📖? Did not a woman hurl a piece of a millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebez 📖? Why did you go near the wall?’ Then you say, ‘Your servant Uriah 📖 the Hittite also is dead.’ ”
22 So the messenger went, and came and told David all that Joab had sent by him. 23 And the messenger said to David, “The men certainly prevailed against us, and came out to us in the field, but we pressed them even to the entrance of the gate. 24 And the archers shot from the wall at your servants; and some of the king’s servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite also is dead”.
25 📚Then David said to the messenger, “This is what you are to say to Joab: ‘Do not let this thing distress you, for the sword consumes one as well as another. Strengthen your battle against the city, and overthrow it’, and encourage him”.
26 📚And when the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband. 27 📚And when the mourning was past, David sent and had her brought to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD 📖.
11:27 The haste with which the marriage was arranged would indicate that the mourning was little more than a show.⚜