Mike
Another year had passed, and it was time for war again.
Normally, as the king of Israel, David should have gone out to battle with his men. But this time, he didn’t go.
He sent Joab with the army and the soldiers of Israel to fight the Ammonites and surround their capital, Rabbah.
David himself? He stayed back in Jerusalem.
One day, when the sun was going down, David woke up, got out of bed, and started wandering around on the roof of the palace.
While he was walking around, he happened to look into the distance and saw a woman bathing.
She was mighty beautiful.
The moment David saw her, he started having the wrong kind of thoughts.
So he sent someone to find out:
“Who is that woman?”
His men told him:
“Her name is Bathsheba. She’s the daughter of Eliam, and she’s the wife of Uriah the Hittite.”
David should have understood right then:
She already had a husband.
But he didn’t stop. Instead, he sent for Bathsheba and brought her to the palace.
Later, David sinned with Bathsheba.
After some time, Bathsheba found out that she was pregnant.
She quickly sent word to David:
“I’m pregnant.”
Now David was really in a bind.
He thought to himself:
“If people find out about this, what am I gonna do?”
So he started looking for a way to cover it up.
He had Uriah brought back from the battlefield.
When Uriah arrived, David acted like nothing was going on and asked:
“How’s Joab? How’s the army? How’s the fighting going?”
Then David said to Uriah:
“You’ve worked hard. Go home and get some rest. Have a good meal and spend some time with your wife.”
David even sent food to him.
But Uriah was truly loyal.
He didn’t go home at all.
He slept at the entrance of the palace with the other servants of his master.
Someone told David:
“My king, Uriah didn’t go home.”
David was puzzled:
“You just came back from the battlefield. Why didn’t you go home?”
Uriah answered:
“The ark, Israel, and Judah’s armies are out there fighting. My lord Joab and my fellow soldiers are camped in the open field. How could I go home, eat and drink, and sleep with my wife? I can’t do that.”
Hearing that probably made David feel even worse.
Because he realized:
Uriah was more honorable than he had imagined.
But David still didn’t repent.
The next day, he called Uriah in again, had him eat and drink with him, and deliberately got him drunk.
David thought:
“Now that he’s had too much to drink, surely he’ll go home, right?”
But what happened?
Uriah still didn’t go home.
He went out and slept with the other soldiers again.
At this point, David had gone completely down the wrong road.
The next morning, David wrote a letter to Joab.
And this was no ordinary letter.
It said:
“Put Uriah where the fighting is fiercest. Then pull back from him, so that he will be struck down and die.”
And here’s the worst part—
David made Uriah carry this very letter—the one that would get him killed—to Joab himself.
Just think how messed up that was.
Uriah had no idea what was in it, and faithfully delivered the letter to Joab.
Joab did exactly what David told him to do.
He sent Uriah to the most dangerous part of the battle.
During the fighting, several other Israelite soldiers were killed too.
Uriah was killed in battle too.
Joab quickly sent a messenger back to report to David.
The messenger told David:
“My king, during the battle, the enemy came out of the city. We chased them all the way to the city gate, but the archers on the wall shot down at us. Some of our men were killed, and Uriah died too.”
David heard this and showed no remorse.
Instead, he said:
“Tell Joab, ‘Don’t let this upset you too much. In war, the sword takes one person and then another. You never know who will fall. Keep fighting and take the city.’”
That might sound pretty calm on the surface.
But what was really going on?
By this point, David was blinded by his own sin.
First came desire,
then sin,
then lies and cover-up,
and finally, a plan to have someone killed.
Step by step, he sank deeper and deeper.
Later, when Bathsheba heard that her husband Uriah had died, she mourned for him.
After her time of mourning was over, David brought Bathsheba into the palace and made her his wife.
Later, Bathsheba gave birth to a son for David.
On the surface, it looked like David had finally “taken care of the problem.”
The man was dead,
the woman was in the palace,
and the child had been born.
It looked like everything had blown over.
But the final sentence of the chapter hits hard:
“But the thing David had done displeased the LORD greatly.”
That is the real ending of this chapter.
People may be able to hide things from other people,
and a king may be able to use his power to bury a matter,
and others may never know the truth,
but—
God knows everything.