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2 Samuel 11 of 24

2 Samuel 11

In the season when kings go out to battle, the king stays home — and from that single pause everything in the second half of the book follows.

Summary

In the spring, when kings go out to battle, David sends Joab and all Israel to destroy the Ammonites and besiege Rabbah, while he tarries at Jerusalem. One evening he rises from his bed and walks on the roof of the king's house. From the roof he sees a woman washing herself, and she is very beautiful. He sends to inquire about her and is told: she is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, wife of Uriah the Hittite. David sends messengers, takes her, lies with her — the narrative does not pause — and she returns to her house. She conceives and sends word to David. David sends to Joab: send me Uriah the Hittite. Joab sends Uriah to the king. David speaks with Uriah about the war, then tells him to go down to his house and wash his feet. Uriah leaves the palace and a gift of food from the king's table follows him. But Uriah does not go down to his house; he sleeps at the door of the king's house with all the servants. David, told of this, asks why he did not go down. Uriah answers: the ark, Israel, and Judah abide in tents and in the field; shall I then go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? As the Lord liveth, I will not do this thing.

David has Uriah stay another day and invites him to eat and drink before him, making him drunk. But that evening Uriah again sleeps at the door of the king's house and does not go down to his house. In the morning David writes a letter to Joab and sends it by Uriah's own hand. The letter instructs Joab to set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting and draw back so that Uriah may be struck down and die. Joab, besieging the city, assigns Uriah to a place where he knows valiant men are. The men of the city come out and fight with Joab; some of the servants of David fall. Uriah the Hittite dies. Joab sends a full report to David. David's response to the messenger, after hearing the bad news, is: encourage Joab, for the sword devoureth one as well as another. When Uriah's wife hears that Uriah her husband is dead, she mourns for him. The mourning period over, David sends and gathers her to his house, and she becomes his wife and bears him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.

Appears
David Bathsheba Uriah the Hittite Joab
Themes
The Bathsheba Affair Abuse of Power Cover-up and Consequence
All 24 chapters — click to jump
  1. 2 Samuel 1Chapter 1 is the hinge between 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel.
  2. 2 Samuel 2Chapter 2 opens the period of civil war that will occupy much of the first half of the book.
  3. 2 Samuel 3Chapter 3 is one of the most politically complex chapters in the book.
  4. 2 Samuel 4Chapter 4 closes the civil war with a brief, ugly episode.
  5. 2 Samuel 5Chapter 5 is the pivotal chapter of the book's first half.
  6. 2 Samuel 6Chapter 6 is one of the most dramatically charged chapters in 2 Samuel, covering two episodes that frame the ark's arrival in Jerusalem.
  7. 2 Samuel 7Chapter 7 is the theological centre of the entire David narrative and one of the most consequential passages in the Hebrew Bible for later Jewish and Christian thought.
  8. 2 Samuel 8Chapter 8 reads differently from everything around it.
  9. 2 Samuel 9Chapter 9 is the chapter the Court History uses to establish one key dimension of David's character before the crisis arrives.
  10. 2 Samuel 10Chapter 10 establishes the military context of the Bathsheba episode.
  11. 2 Samuel 11Chapter 11 is the turning point of 2 Samuel and one of the most consequential chapters in biblical narrative.
  12. 2 Samuel 12Chapter 12 contains the most famous confrontation in the book.
  13. 2 Samuel 13Chapter 13 is the first fulfilment of Nathan's sentence in chapter 12.
  14. 2 Samuel 14Chapter 14 covers the three years in which David longs for Absalom but will not recall him, and Joab's intervention to change that.
  15. 2 Samuel 15Chapter 15 is the emotional nadir of the first movement of the Absalom crisis.
  16. 2 Samuel 16Chapter 16 covers three encounters as David makes his way out of Jerusalem.
  17. 2 Samuel 17Chapter 17 is the intelligence chapter of the Absalom revolt and turns on a moment of competitive counsel.
  18. 2 Samuel 18Chapter 18 is the emotional climax of 2 Samuel.
  19. 2 Samuel 19Chapter 19 covers David's return to Jerusalem and the political settlements it requires.
  20. 2 Samuel 20Chapter 20 is the coda to the Absalom crisis.
  21. 2 Samuel 21Chapter 21 opens the appendix section of 2 Samuel — chapters 21-24 are not chronological narrative but supplementary materials: two episodes of famine and plague bracketing two poems and two hero lists.
  22. 2 Samuel 22Chapter 22 is an extended psalm, found also as Psalm 18 in the Psalter, which the editors of 2 Samuel have placed near the end of the book as David's retrospective meditation on his life.
  23. 2 Samuel 23Chapter 23 contains two distinct sections.
  24. 2 Samuel 24Chapter 24 is the second appendix episode bracketing the poems of chapters 22-23, and it closes the book on an unexpected note.
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2 Samuel 10
Next · Chapter 12 →
2 Samuel 12
The book itself
Summary & story
What 2 Samuel is, why it matters.
Analysis
Themes
Power, consequence, grief, the dynastic promise, and the realism of the prose.
Who's who
David's court
The household of a king who has everything and gives most of it away.

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