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David and Bathsheba
2 Samuel 11.1-15
Good News Translation (GNT)
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1 The following spring, at the time of the year
when kings usually go to war, David sent out
Joab with his officers and the Israelite army;
they defeated the Ammonites and besieged
the city of Rabbah. But David himself stayed
in Jerusalem.
2 One day, late in the afternoon, David got up
from his nap and went to the palace roof.
As he walked around up there, he saw a
woman taking a bath in her house. She was
very beautiful.
3 So he sent a messenger to find out who she
was, and learned that she was Bathsheba,
the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah
the Hittite.
4 David sent messengers to get her; they
brought her to him and he made love to her.
(She had just finished her monthly ritual of
purification.) Then she went back home.
5 Afterward she discovered that she was
pregnant and sent a message to David to tell
him.
6 David then sent a message to Joab: "Send me
Uriah the Hittite." So Joab sent him to David.
7 When Uriah arrived, David asked him if Joab
and the troops were well, and how the fighting
was going.
8 Then he said to Uriah, "Go on home and rest
a while." Uriah left, and David had a present
sent to his home.
9 But Uriah did not go home; instead he slept at
the palace gate with the king's guards.
10 When David heard that Uriah had not gone
home, he asked him, "You have just returned
after a long absence; why didn't you go
home?"
11 Uriah answered, "The men of Israel and Judah
are away in battle, and the Covenant Box is
with them; my commander Joab and his
officers are camping out in the open.
How could I go home, eat and drink, and sleep
with my wife? By all that's sacred, I swear that
I could never do such a thing!"
12 So David said, "Then stay here the rest of the
day, and tomorrow I'll send you back."
So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day and
the next.
13 David invited him to supper and got him drunk.
But again that night Uriah did not go home;
instead he slept on his blanket [a] in the
palace guardroom.
14 The next morning David wrote a letter to Joab
and sent it by Uriah.
15 He wrote: "Put Uriah in the front line, where
the fighting is heaviest, then retreat and
let him be killed."
Footnotes
2 Samuel 11:13 blanket; or cot.
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Taken from 'word-on-the-web' supplied by the
Scripture Union
Dangerous beauty
2 Samuel 11.1-15
Bathsheba was the beautiful daughter of Eliam and the wife of a Hittite named Uriah.
When the Israelites were besieging Rabbah, David did not go with his troops.
We are not told why. From the roof of his palace in Jerusalem he saw Bathsheba bathing as she ritually cleansed herself.
What David did next marks a turning point in his life.
In the story of David and Bathsheba as we have it in 2 Samuel 11 we are given no indication of what went on in Bathsheba's mind.
When the king sent messengers for her, Bathsheba came. David 'lay with her', and then she went home. She became pregnant.
(Verses 8-3 are brilliantly narrated. Read them very carefully, paying attention to all that is not said about what is going on in the mind of both David and Uriah.)
David went to extreme lengths to cover up his sin. Anxious for it to appear that the child to be born was Uriah's, he sent for Uriah from the battle. But Uriah refused to go home, and made sure there were witnesses when he slept instead at the door of the palace. Even when David made him drunk he did not go home.
David, ever more desperate, arranged for Uriah to be placed in a position in battle where he would almost certainly be killed.
When Bathsheba heard that he was dead she mourned for her husband. Then David took her as his wife.
The child she bore died, and Bathsheba grieved. But she then had another child, Solomon.
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