2 Samuel 11:6 - Forerunner Commentary

2 Samuel 11:6

4 Then David sent messengers, and took her; and she came to him, and ^ahe lay with her, for she was ^bcleansed from her impurity; and she returned to her house.

5 And the woman conceived; so she sent and told David, and said, “I am with child.”

6 Then David sent to Joab, saying, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David.

7 When Uriah had come to him, David asked how Joab was doing, and how the people were doing, and how the war prospered.

8 And David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and ^awash your feet.” So Uriah departed from the king’s house, and a gift of food from the king followed him.

9 But Uriah slept at the ^adoor of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house.

10 So when they told David, saying, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “Did you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?”

11 And Uriah said to David, ^a“The ark and Israel and Judah are dwelling in tents, and ^bmy lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open fields. Shall I then go to my house to eat and 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, “Wait here today also, and tomorrow I will let you depart.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next.

13 Now when David called him, he ate and drank before him; and he made him ^adrunk. And at evening he went out to lie on his bed ^bwith the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.

14 In the morning it happened that David ^awrote 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 retreat from him, that he may ^abe struck down and die.”

16 So it was, while Joab besieged the city, that he assigned Uriah to a place where he knew there were valiant men.

17 Then 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 died also.

18 Then Joab sent and told David all the things concerning the war,

19 and charged the messenger, saying, “When you have finished telling the matters of the war to the king,

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II Samuel 11:2-17

This has been something that I always have wondered about. "It happened one evening that David arose from his bed." What was he doing? I mean, most people go to bed at night, not evening. Was he just lounging around? Here his men were out fighting in Rabbah, taking care of business, and he was lying around on his bed in the evening time. Maybe this was late evening. Maybe he had decided to turn in early and could not sleep, so he got up, but it is just one of those little hints that tells you he was not doing anything. He was lying on his bed.

We have to know something here, however. David's counselor was Ahithophel. He was about 70 at this time, and by the way, his name means "brother of folly," but he was known as pretty much the wisest man in Israel and they said his counsel was like that of the counsel of God, the words of the Lord. So he was David's chief counselor, a man he looked up to. And Eliam, which is mentioned here in chapter 11 as Bathsheba's father, was Ahithophel's son. Eliam was one of his 30 great warriors, and he was buddies with Uriah the Hittite, who was also one of the 30 great warriors. So I suspect that that is how Uriah came to be the husband of Bathsheba, that he married his buddy Eliam's daughter.

Uriah and Bathsheba, because of her age, we would think that they had not been married long, four or five years probably at the most. They married fairly early in those days, so I would not press that too far. I would think five years at the most. So she was at her peak of beauty at this point, 20 or so when David spied her bathing on her rooftop. And her culpability in all this is fodder for another message. I do not know if I will be giving it. But we do know that in Matthew 1:6, Matthew will not even say her name. He calls her the wife of Uriah. Who did he really respect in that couple?

Perhaps the most important sentence in the whole story here in chapter 11 is the last one. "But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord." That is a classic understatement. It does not say that in Hebrew. What it says, it tells us that God was not pleased in the least. It says literally, "But the thing that David had done was evil in the eyes of the Lord." Of course!

Let us just recount the sins here, and I probably have missed a few: lust, adultery, if their coming together was consensual. If it was not, then it was rape. Deceit, a lot of deceit, malice aforethought, conspiracy with Joab and his servants, murder, and cover up. These are serious, disqualifying sins. Any one of them could disqualify him for the Kingdom of God. Is that not what Paul says in I Corinthians 6:9-10? Anyway, they are actions unworthy of a converted man, at base. And in II Corinthians 13:5-6, it tells us that we need to be careful. We go to this scripture quite a bit during these times, but just notice this and plug it into David's life at this point.

Excerpted from Psalm 51 (Part One): Background by Richard T. Ritenbaugh

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The Tenth Commandment (1998)

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