David and Bathsheba David about 50 years old. Had always gone out to battle.
11 iIn the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle,
In that part of the world, wars were not normally fought during the winter months because rains and cold weather made travel and campaigning difficult. Fighting resumed in the spring. Good fighting weather. Summer too hot for armor.
David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.
Nevertheless, it is wrong to think that this began the chain of events David followed all the way down to adultery and murder. David showed his disregard of God’s plan for marriage many years before when he took more than one wife (1 Samuel 25:42-43, 2 Samuel 3:2-5). David’s practice of adding wives showed a lack of sexual restraint and an indulgence of his passions. This corrupt seed, sown long ago, grew unchecked long enough and would bear bitter fruit.
Therefore, staying home from the battle merely provided an opportunity for the long-standing lack of sexual restraint and indulgence of passion to display itself.
David is thinking he is old and King and doesn’t need to do what he did as a young man.
Idleness is the devils handiwork. Mid-life crisis.
2 It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house,
The Hebrew verb form of walked suggests that David paced back and forth on the roof. He couldn’t sleep and was uneasy – uneasy because he wasn’t where God wanted him to be.
that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; It may be that this woman (later called by the name Bathsheba) acted immodestly. Though it was evening and apparently the time when most people were asleep, it is possible (even likely) that she knew that her bath was visible from the roof of the palace. Any possible immodesty on Bathsheba’s part did not excuse David’s sin in any way, but if she was immodest, she was still responsible for her wrong.
and the woman was very beautiful. Glance and then a gaze.
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?” ie. She has a husband and a father. A warning before falling into sin. Ahithitel is grandfather and later he will turn on David. From this, David learned that the woman came from a notable family. She was from the upper classes. Her father was Eliam, one of David’s mighty men (2 Samuel 23:34). Her grandfather was Ahithophel – one of David’s chief counselors (2 Samuel 23:34, 2 Samuel 15:12). Bathsheba = Daughter of an oath.
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.
Can the king be refused? He already has many wives and concubines. Notice how much damage this will do to so many people after this. Compare to Joseph, he was seduced but here David was the seducer. Why does it say this, to prove that she was not pregnant before David.
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.
A Hittite is a Canaanite. Seems to have been converted to believing in Yahweh. He is concerned with keeping the law and the ark of the covenant. Listed among the mighty men of David is Uriah.
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. Where the kings guards slept.
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,(tents) 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. Seems a drunk Uriah is better than a sober David in this case. Some commentators believe that Uriah suspected some infidelity in Bathsheba and avoided her out of jealousy. “It is like he smelt something.” (Trapp)
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.” One sin leads to another. Lust to adultery to murder.
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. So this cost more than just Joab’s life.
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? Story of Judges 9 battle. 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.Not a good battle strategy getting close to the wall of the city or gate of the city.
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.” Flippant, you win some, you lose some. David now feels relieved that he’s getting away with his scheme.
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.
Do we think that maybe David’s fellowship with God is fractured right now?
Proverbs 5:21. For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord,
and he ponders all his paths.
We have no reason to believe that Bathsheba knew that David arranged the death of her husband. It is likely that David concealed all this from Bathsheba. Yet Bathsheba may have been partly relieved, knowing that the crisis of her pregnancy from David was now averted.