2 Samuel 11--David and Bathsheba

2 Samuel 11
English Standard Version

David and Bathsheba
11 In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

2 It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. 3 And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” 4 So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. 5 And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

6 So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going. 8 Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” And Uriah went out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king. 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 When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?” 11 Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field. 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.” 12 Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. 13 And David invited him, and he ate in his presence and drank, so that he made him drunk. And in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.

14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. 15 In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down, and die.” 16 And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men. 17 And the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the servants of David among the people fell. Uriah the Hittite also died. 18 Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting. 19 And he instructed the messenger, “When you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king, 20 then, if the king's anger rises, and if he says to you, ‘Why did you go so near the city to fight? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall? 21 Who killed Abimelech the son of Jerubbesheth? Did not a woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez? Why did you go so near the wall?’ then you shall say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.’”

22 So the messenger went and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell. 23 The messenger said to David, “The men gained an advantage over us and came out against us in the field, but we drove them back to the entrance of the gate. 24 Then the archers shot at your servants from the wall. Some of the king's servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.” 25 David said to the messenger, “Thus shall you say to Joab, ‘Do not let this matter displease you, for the sword devours now one and now another. Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it.’ And encourage him.”

​26 When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband. 27 And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.

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Today's text is likely a familiar story to many of us as it talks about one of the few times that it says that what David did displeased the LORD. This event didn't "just happen" though, as this comes on the heels of many years of blessings so that David assumed that he didn't even need to go to fight with his men when the whole nation was called to war anymore. The victory was sure, wasn't it? The LORD always caused the Israelites to win and their enemies to be defeated, right? What would David be able to do anyways? He was now probably much older than that young shepherd boy that we read about in 1 Samuel who charged out to meet Goliath and the Philistines. The years of being a king probably had taken quite a toll on him (just read some of the Psalms and you'll see how his body was wasting away, he had trouble sleeping and he seemed to be aging quickly due to the weight of feeling like the weight of the whole kingdom was on his shoulders).

If David had been out at the front lines with his people, the opportunity for this particular sin would not have been there, but that is not to say that it wouldn't have been waiting for him when he came home. David was up there on the roof letting both his mind and his eyes wander. He was on the roof of the tallest building because his palace stood high above everyone's houses and so he could see everyone's house--even places where people assumed they had privacy, like where Bathsheba was bathing, for it is unlikely that she was doing this in a place where the whole world was meant to see her. David falls to temptation in much the same way that Eve did in the Garden of Eden. First he was in the place where he should not have been. Have you ever wondered what Adam and Eve were even doing there next to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden? They were both there. Why even go near it if they knew the danger that it posed. So David if he knew his state of mind, for he probably felt lonely having sent all the men away to war and he was not with them, probably should not have been up on the roof letting his eyes look for "companionship." He then saw something desirable to him (that is to the fleshly part of him at least for she was beautiful and it made sense to him that this was the way to make himself not feel lonely anymore), then he ignored the direct command of God to not covet your neighbor's wife and to not commit adultery (for both he and Bathsheba were married), and he took her--possibly by force, making this passage all the worse if that's the case, and he involved others in the process bringing guilt onto them for their involvement as well.

But then came the consequences for the moment that he thought would make him happy and satisfy him. He had probably told himself that it was just a moment of weakness and made all kinds of excuses about it, but there was no kind of atonement for this kind of high-handed sin of rebellion. You don't just "accidently" have sex with someone, even if that someone is very beautiful. It's a series of choices of the will that usually both parties are involved in (sometimes one person forces themselves on the other which is another kind of sin too, but even then, that person that does this makes that choice). They put the desires of their flesh and their momentary gratification above the commandments of God and His call for them to live a pure and holy life. So then, David was confronted with the consequences of his actions when he was told that Bathsheba was pregnant (probably because she missed her period) and David knew that Uriah would be able to do the math and figure out that he was away at war when this happened. So, David tried to quickly figure out a way to trick Uriah and everyone else into thinking that he caused the pregnancy. Everyone would just imagine the baby was born a little early, which can happen, even though it would be big enough to appear to be full-term. No one would suspect a thing if David's plan worked out, but both David and Bathsheba would know, and it would eat away at both of them. When Uriah proves himself to be a more righteous man than David, the only way that David sees out of this is for Uriah to die in battle and for David to use his own army to assist him in the murder of Uriah. It is even worse than that though, as David has Uriah carry his own execution order as a sealed order for Joab the commander of the armies of Israel back to the front lines and trusts Uriah's integrity so much that he knows Uriah wouldn't open the sealed orders to read them and know what was coming.

Joab obeys the kings orders and ends up losing even more men in the process because he needed to make it look good like Uriah was just lost in battle like so many others were. He sent Uriah close to the walled city where he knew valiant men were fighting, and then had the other Israelites pull away from him, but unfortunately, others died in the process for that is the purpose of a walled city--you can be attacked from above and have little to no defense against those attacks. Joab presumed that David would be angry with Joab for using such tactics when they both knew the danger of getting close to the city wall, but Joab made sure to tell the messenger to end the message with "Uriah the Hittite is also dead." David would get the message loud and clear that that deaths of all the men were now on his head on their blood on his hands because this were the means necessary to fulfil David's orders to murder Uriah the Hittite. David tells the messenger to go back to Joab with a kind of encouragement telling him something along the lines of "These things just happen sometimes." That's not the truth at all, and both David and Joab know it.

David then takes Bathsheba into his own house as his own wife, and she bears him a son. It will not be the child's fault that any of this happened, but we'll see next chapter that the LORD is not going to let this child live because He wants to send David a message that this is not okay. The LORD is very displeased with what David has done for he not only gave into temptation, but he refused to confess his sin and repent of it, and he tried to cover it up and involved many others in other high-handed sins of rebellion that were as bad as or worse than the first sin.

​It will take the LORD sending the prophet Nathan to David to speak to him to get David's attention and get him to confess and repent. The LORD hasn't had to send prophets to David very much because the LORD spoke directly to David, and David obeyed all that the LORD commanded him (until now). Now it seems that David has stopped talking to the LORD and stopped listening to Him so that the LORD has to speak to David through another man. We are in trouble when the LORD has to send others into our lives to speak to us the Word that He has spoken to us plainly and we would not listen. This was a dangerous assignment for Nathan the prophet (and the other prophets of the Old Testament) to go in and confront the king and point out his sin and call him to repent. Yet, the LORD would protect Nathan and use him to get the message across to David in a way that David would understand, using a parable. We'll talk about that, and probably about Psalm 51 as well next time.