Bible Commentaries
2 Samuel 11

Verses 1-27

Chapter 11

Now in chapter eleven.

It came to pass, after these things that Joab, and the army in the springtime when it was a good time to go out and fight, after the winter rains were over, Joab with the forces went again against Ammon. [Or the Ammonites.] And David one evening, after his afternoon siesta, was taking a stroll on his roof: and from this vantage point, [up on his roof, looking over the city,] he noticed in the courtyard of a neighboring house a beautiful woman bathing. [David began to lust after this woman.] He said to his servant, Who is that woman that lives in that house over there? And the servant said, That is Bathsheba the wife of Uriah the Hittite. So David commanded his servant to go over and to bring her to him [There David committed adultery with her. After awhile she sent a message to David that she was pregnant.] ( 2 Samuel 11:1-5 ).

So David sought to cover his sin.

His son Solomon later wrote, "He who seeks to cover his sin shall not prosper, but whoso will confess and forsake his sin, he shall be forgiven".

David sought to cover for his sin by sending for Uriah who was in the army fighting with Joab.

He sent a note to Joab, Send Uriah back from the battle. So Uriah came back, and David said, How's the battle going, how's Joab, how are the troops? [Asking a lot of questions concerning the battle.] He said, Go home, spend the night with your wife tonight. And David sent after him a mess of meat, so they could just feast ( 2 Samuel 11:6-8 ).

He figured that he'd go home, and go to bed with his wife, and later on when his wife would say, "Honey, I'm pregnant," that no one would ever know the difference, except for David and Bathsheba, and he figured that the whole thing could be covered over. But Uriah seemed to be a very honorable man.

[Instead of going home,] he slept that night on David's porch with David's servants. In the morning it was told David that Uriah didn't go home, he spent the night there on the porch. So he called Uriah in, and he said, Hey man why didn't you go home and spend the night with your wife, I mean after all you've been out fighting and you have a chance to spend the night with your wife, why would you sleep on the porch? He said, Well Joab, and all of my buddies are out there in the fields, they're sleeping out in the fields at night: and it wouldn't be right for me to enjoy my wife, and my own bed [when my buddies are out there in the trenches, I just couldn't do that.] And so David said, Well tarry with me to day and tomorrow. And so he kept filling the guy's wine glass; got him pretty drunk, [Figuring that if he was drunk enough maybe he would go home.] but he staggered out to the porch of David's house and there he was asleep again ( 2 Samuel 11:9-13 ).

So, as sin so often does, it leads to something worse. It begins to compound, it begins to develop in its insidious manner. So David turned to a second plan, more dastardly than the first. That plan was to deliberately have Uriah killed in battle.

And so David sent a message to Joab, sealed orders by the hand of Uriah which said, When the battle gets hot, put Uriah in the front line of the hottest spot, that he might be smitten, and die. [So Joab began to assault the city of the Ammonites, and he sent an assault troop up towards the wall pursuing the Ammonites. And as they got close to the wall, the archers from the wall began to shoot at them,] and Uriah was shot and killed along with some of the other troops. So Joab sent a messenger unto David to tell him of the battle and how things were going. He said, If David gets angry because we approached the wall too close, then tell him that Uriah also is dead. And so the fellow came and told David of the battle, how that some of the men had fallen. They had been shot by the archers on the wall. [And David became sort of angry, because he said, That's foolish come so near the wall? Joab knows better than that!] The messenger said, Well Uriah the Hittite was also killed. And David said, Let the matter rest, it is okay. Bathsheba mourned for her husband. And after her period of mourning, David took her as his wife, [figuring things were all right. But things weren't all right. God could not allow David's sin to go unnoticed, or to go unpunished.] The child was born ( 2 Samuel 11:14-27 ).

David figured, "Well, that's great!" He no doubt came to love Bathsheba. His first experience with her was not an experience expressing love. It was an experience just expressing lust, but he no doubt came to love.

Even as I believe that many couples are attracted by certain physical characteristics, and later on they actually learn to love each other. Many times you're attracted to another person by certain physical characteristics, and later on you'll learn to hate them, as you really get to know them. So love doesn't always follow an attraction, a physical attraction. But people say, "Love at first sight". No, it doesn't really happen that way. Interest at first sight, attraction maybe, but love is something that grows. Love is something that develops in a relationship. "