The Kingdom · c. 990 BC
Chapter 11
Bathsheba
Create in me a clean heart, O God.Renew a right spirit within me.
For parents
This chapter tells how King David sent messengers to take Bathsheba, the wife of one of his soldiers, and slept with her (2 Samuel 11:2–5); it is told softly and without detail. Then David arranged for her husband Uriah to be killed in battle (11:14–17). The prophet Nathan says the sword will never leave David’s family and another man will sleep with David’s wives (12:10–12), and the Lord strikes David and Bathsheba’s baby son, who falls sick and dies (12:15–18). At the end, 2 Samuel 12:31 says David put the people of the captured Ammonite cities to work with saws, picks and axes, while 1 Chronicles 20:3 says he had them cut with saws, picks and axes; both are told briefly, as the WEB has them.
When the year came round again, at the time of year when kings go out to fight, sent out with his men and the whole army of Israel. They destroyed the , ruined their land and surrounded the city of . But David stayed in .
One evening David got out of bed and went for a walk on the roof of the king’s house. From up there he saw a woman bathing, and she was very beautiful to look at.
David had someone ask about the woman, and he was told, “Isn’t this , Eliam’s daughter, the wife of the ?”
David sent messengers and took her. She came to David, and he slept with her. (She was purified from her .) Then she went back to her house.
The woman became pregnant, and she sent word to David. “I am pregnant,” she said.
David sent Joab a message: “Send Uriah the Hittite to me.” Joab sent him.
When Uriah came, David asked him about Joab, about the army, and about how the war was going. “Go down to your house,” David told him, “and wash your feet.” Uriah left the king’s house, and a gift from the king was sent after him.
But Uriah slept at the palace door with all the king’s servants. He did not go down to his house.
David was told, “Uriah didn’t go down to his house.” So David said to Uriah, “You’ve come from a journey, haven’t you? Why didn’t you go down to your house?”
Uriah said to David, “The and the men of Israel and Judah are staying in tents. My lord Joab and my lord’s servants are camped out in the open field. Am I supposed to go into my house to eat and to drink, and to sleep with my wife? I swear by your life, I will not do such a thing!”
“Stay here today too,” David told him, “and tomorrow I will let you go.” So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day and the next.
David called for him, and Uriah ate and drank with him. David got him drunk. But in the evening Uriah went out and lay down on his bed among the king’s servants. He still did not go down to his house.
In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and had Uriah carry it. In the letter he wrote, “Send Uriah to the front, where the fighting is hardest. Then pull back and leave him there, so that he will be struck down and die.”
Joab had been keeping watch on the city, and he put Uriah where he knew the bravest fighters were. The men of the city went out and fought against Joab. Some of David’s own men were killed, and Uriah the Hittite died too.
Then Joab sent David a report of everything that had happened in the war. He told the messenger, “When you have finished telling the king everything about the war, he may become angry. He may ask you, ‘Why did you go so near to the city to fight? Didn’t you know that they would shoot from the wall? Who struck down son of ? Didn’t a woman throw the upper stone of a mill down on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez? Why did you go so near the wall?’ If he does, tell him, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is also dead.’”
So the messenger went to David and told him everything Joab had given him to say. “The men got the better of us,” he said. “They came out at us in the open field, but we pushed them back all the way to the gate. Then men on the wall shot at your soldiers. Some of the king’s men are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is also dead.”
David said to the messenger, “Tell Joab this: ‘Don’t let this displease you. The sword kills one person as easily as another. Make your attack on the city stronger, and bring it down.’ Encourage him.”
When Uriah’s wife heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband. When her time of mourning was over, David sent for her and took her home to his house. She became his wife, and she gave birth to his son.
But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.
The Lord sent to David. Nathan came to him and said, “There were two men in one town. One was rich and the other was poor. The rich man had a great many flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing, only one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and raised. It grew up together with him and his children. It ate what he ate, drank from his own cup and lay in his arms. To him it was like a daughter.
“Then a traveler came to visit the rich man. The rich man didn’t want to take an animal from his own flocks or herds to make a meal for the visitor. So he took the poor man’s lamb and cooked it for the man who had come to him.”
David’s anger burned hot against the man. “As surely as the Lord lives,” he said to Nathan, “the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay back four lambs for that one lamb, because he did this and because he had no pity!”
Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I you king over Israel. I saved you from . I gave you your master’s house, and his wives to be your own. I gave you the nation of Israel and Judah. If that had been too little, I would have given you many more things like these.
“‘Why have you looked down on the Lord’s word, and done what is evil in his eyes? You struck Uriah the Hittite down with the sword. You took his wife as your own. You killed him with the Ammonites’ sword. So now the sword will never leave your family, because you looked down on me and took Uriah the Hittite’s wife to be your wife.’
“This is what the Lord says: ‘I will stir up harm against you from inside your own family. I will take your wives while you watch and give them to your neighbor, and he will sleep with them in plain daylight. You did this secretly, but I will do this thing in front of all Israel, in the light of day.’”
David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”
Nathan said to David, “The Lord has taken your sin away. You will not die. But by doing this you have given the Lord’s enemies great reason to speak against him with scorn. So the child born to you will certainly die.”
Then Nathan went home.
One of David’s psalms was written “when Nathan the came to him,” after David had slept with Bathsheba. It begins:
Have mercy on me, God, because of your loving kindness.Your tender mercies are so many: erase the wrongs I have done.Wash me all the way through from my guilt,and clean away my sin.I know the wrongs I have done.My sin is always in front of me.Against you, and you only, I have sinned,and done what is evil in your eyes,so you are proved right when you speak,and shown to be just when you judge.
Later in the same psalm he prays:
Create in me a clean heart, O God.Make my spirit right and new again.Don’t throw me out of your presence,and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me.
The Lord struck the child David had with Uriah’s wife, and the child grew very sick.
David begged God for the child. He fasted, eating nothing, and he went in and lay all night on the ground.
The older men of his household stood beside him and tried to get him up off the ground. But he would not get up, and he ate nothing with them.
On the seventh day the child died. David’s servants were afraid to tell him that the child was dead. “While the child was still alive, we talked to him, and he wouldn’t listen to us,” they said. “What harm might he do to himself if we tell him the child is dead?”
But David saw his servants whispering together, and he knew the child was dead. He asked them, “Is the child dead?”
“He is dead,” they said.
Then David got up from the ground. He washed, rubbed oil on his skin, and changed his clothes. He came into the Lord’s house and worshiped, and then went home. When he asked for food, they set it before him, and he ate.
“What is this you’ve done?” his servants asked him. “While the child lived, you went without food and cried over him. But when he died, you got up and had a meal!”
He said, “While the child was alive, I fasted and wept, because I said to myself, ‘Who knows? Maybe the Lord will be kind to me, and the child will live.’ But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not come back to me.”
Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba. He slept with her, and she gave birth to a son. He called him . The Lord loved the boy, and through Nathan the prophet he was named , for the Lord’s sake. (The name means “loved by the Lord.”)
Joab went on fighting against Rabbah of the Ammonites, and he captured the royal city.
Joab sent messengers to David with this message: “I have fought against Rabbah. I have even captured the city of waters. Now gather the rest of the army, camp around the city and capture it. If you don’t, I will capture it myself, and it will be named after me.”
So David gathered the whole army together, marched to Rabbah, fought against it and captured it.
He took the crown off their king’s head. It weighed a of gold, about sixty-six pounds, and had precious stones in it. Then the crown was put on David’s head. He also carried a great amount of plunder out of the city.
He brought out the people who were in it and put them to work at the saws, the iron picks and the iron axes. He made them go to the brick kiln, the oven where bricks were baked. He did this to all the cities of the Ammonites.
The book of Chronicles tells this part differently. There, David brought out the people who were in the city and had them cut with saws, with iron picks and with axes. He did the same to all the cities of the Ammonites.
Then David and the whole army went back to Jerusalem.