2 Samuelchapter 11
27 verses · Samuel, Nathan and Gad, by tradition · 10th century BC · History
In the spring, at the time when kings march out to war, David sent out Joab and his servants with the whole army of Israel. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, but David remained in Jerusalem.
Introduction
Samuel, Nathan and Gad, by tradition, History, 2 Samuel Overview.
This chapter is the turning point of David's life and of the whole book. Its first hearers knew David as their greatest king, and his story is told here with nothing hidden. The kings of the nations around Israel kept records that made them look strong. This record names a king's sin and every person it touched. Listen for where the king is at the start and where he ought to have been. Watch the loyal soldier who will not go home, and listen for the last sentence, which gives the LORD's view of everything that came before it.
Context
- Who
- Israelites who knew this story was told about their own greatest king
- What
- David's adultery with Bathsheba, his attempts to hide it, and his arranging of her husband Uriah's death in battle.
- Where
- The palace roof in Jerusalem, and the siege lines before Rabbah in Ammon.
- When
- About 991 BC, during the siege of Rabbah that began in chapter 10; the chapter dates itself only by the season.
- Why
- To show that the king stood under the Law like every Israelite, and that the LORD saw what David did.
Historical context
The chapter is David's and it opens by placing him where he should not have been. He was king over a kingdom at war, and the first verse names the season when kings marched out and then names him at home.
Show the rest of the historical context, 5 more paragraphs
Campaigns ran on a calendar. Armies moved in the spring, after the rains stopped and the barley was in, when the roads were passable and there was standing grain in enemy fields to live on.
The setting is a roof above a courtyard. City houses were packed tight and flat roofs were living space, used for sleeping, for drying fruit and for work, and a palace built higher on the slope looked down into the courtyards below it.
A first hearer would have caught what the detail at 11:4 is doing. Bathing after a monthly period was a required purification, and the note fixes the timing so that the reader cannot mistake whose child follows.
A first hearer also knew the code Uriah quotes. Soldiers on campaign kept themselves ceremonially set apart and abstained from relations with their wives while under arms, and David himself states the custom to the priest at Nob at 1 Samuel 21:5. That code is why the plan needs Uriah drunk, and why it still fails.
Uriah is called a Hittite, a northerner serving as a professional in the king's own guard, and 23:39 lists him last among the mighty men. Letters were written on a folded and sealed sheet and carried by hand, so Uriah carries his own death warrant to the man ordered to act on it.
Significance
The kings of the surrounding nations wrote their own histories, and none of them recorded anything like this. Egyptian and Assyrian royal texts exist to make a king look invincible.
Show the rest of the significance, 2 more paragraphs
Israel's history names the sin of its greatest king in full, with the woman named, the husband named and the general named. For the first hearers that was evidence the book was no palace bulletin.
It also told them where the king stood. The man on the throne was under the Law with everyone else, and the last clause of the chapter says so in seven words.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
How it is read
The corpus for this chapter holds twenty-four commentary entries and thirty-three rabbinic locators. Seven entries carry English text under a licence that permits quotation, and all seven are Rashi in the Metsudah translation, Lakewood, N.J., CC-BY, cited below by ref alone. Metzudat David stands at seven further places, Radak at five and Malbim at five, with no English version, so those seventeen are cited and never quoted.
Rashi opens on the season and keeps to the plain sense. The time when kings go out is the time of year when the land is in growth and the horses find fodder in the field. That is why an army moves then (Rashi on II Samuel 11:1:1). The note about purification he reads as the law of menstrual impurity (Rashi on II Samuel 11:4:1). On the recall of Uriah he states David's purpose without softening it. David meant the man to go home to his wife so that the child would be taken for his (Rashi on II Samuel 11:6:1).
The comment that shapes the whole Jewish reading of this chapter stands at the letter carried to Joab. Rashi explains that every soldier who went out to war wrote his wife a conditional writ of divorce, valid if he did not return, so that a widow would not be left bound. He then applies it to this case, so that on the tradition's reckoning the woman was already divorced and David had not taken a married woman (Rashi on II Samuel 11:15:1). The classical commentary works in that direction throughout, narrowing the charge to what the law can define. The corpus anchors Sanhedrin 107a:3, Sanhedrin 107a:5, Sanhedrin 107a:6, Sanhedrin 69b:7 and Ketubot 9a:8 at the opening verses, where that discussion is carried. A Christian reader should know that this is a real difference and not a matter of tone. The site reads the chapter as sin plainly named and judged, and argues it at David and Bathsheba. It states no verdict on the rabbinic reading here, and it assigns the woman of this chapter no part in the design, since the text gives her none.
Rashi's last two comments here are small. The name Jerubbesheth he identifies with Gideon, who contended with Baal, reading the second half of the name as the shameful thing (Rashi on II Samuel 11:21:1). At the message back to Joab he marks where David's words end and the narrative resumes (Rashi on II Samuel 11:25:1).
What the rabbis say
Thirty-three locators stand on this chapter in the corpus, twenty-three from the Midrash and ten from the Talmud, every one of them a locator without text. The opening verses draw the most of them. Among them are Sanhedrin 107a:3, Sanhedrin 107a:5, Sanhedrin 107a:6, Sanhedrin 69b:7, Ein Yaakov, Sanhedrin 8:1 and Vayikra Rabbah 21:7. Eleven entries from Learning to Read Midrash stand on the same verses, a modern anthology rather than a classical source. Uriah's refusal to go down to his house draws Shabbat 56a:11, Kiddushin 43a:12, Jerusalem Talmud Sotah 8:3:3, Jerusalem Talmud Shekalim 6:1:5 and Otzar Midrashim, Baraita of Melechet HaMishkan 1:26. The letter to Joab draws Bamidbar Rabbah 23:13, Midrash Tanchuma, Masei 12:1 and Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Masei 9:1, all at the place where the order is written. The purification draws Ketubot 9a:8, and the closing verse of the chapter draws Sanhedrin 69b:11.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on II Samuel 11:1:1, 11:4:1, 11:6:1, 11:15:1, 11:21:1 and 11:25:1, The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J., CC-BY; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on II Samuel 11:7:1 and six further places, cited only, no English version in the corpus; Radak, Radak on II Samuel 11:2:1, 11:3:1, 11:11:1, 11:16:1 and 11:24:1, cited only; Malbim, Malbim on II Samuel 11:5:1, 11:17:1, 11:18:1, 11:19:1 and 11:22:1, cited only; The Midrash and the Talmud on this chapter, Sanhedrin 107a:3, 107a:5, 107a:6, 69b:7 and 69b:11; Ketubot 9a:8; Shabbat 56a:11; Kiddushin 43a:12; Vayikra Rabbah 21:7; Bamidbar Rabbah 23:13, as the corpus records them.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
At the time when kings go out, the king stayed home
In the spring, at the time when kings march out to war: The chapter opens “In the spring, at the time when kings march out to war”, and names David absent from it. He led the war in chapter 10. The sword Nathan says will never depart from David's house at 12:10 begins with the king out of his place.
2 Samuel 11:1
“After the year was expired - The next spring after the escape of the Ammonites into their city 2Sa 10:14. The children of Ammon - The marginal reference supplies the word “the land of,” which is obviously the right reading. David tarried at Jerusalem - The Syrians being subdued, the war with Ammon was not of sufficient moment to require David’s personal presence. The whole section relating to David’s adultery and Uriah’s death, from this verse to 2Sa 12:26, is omitted in the Book of Chronicles.”
3 more voices on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
2 Samuel 11:1
“After - When that year ended, and the next begun, which was in the spring time. When kings - Which is, when the ground is fit for the march of soldiers, and brings forth provision for man and beast.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 Samuel 11:1
“To the war with the Syrians David went in person, ch. x. Had he been now at his post at the head of his forces, he would have been out of the way of this temptation. When we are out of the way of our duty we are in the way of temptation.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Samuel 11:1
“This metropolis of the Ammonites was situated in the mountainous tract of Gilead, not far from the source of the Arnon. Extensive ruins are still found on its site.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2 Samuel 11:2-3
strolled around on the roof of the palace: He sends to ask about her, and the answer names three people: Bathsheba, her father Eliam, and her husband Uriah the Hittite. An Eliam son of Ahithophel stands among David's mighty men at 23:34, which would make Ahithophel her grandfather if the two are one man.
2 Samuel 11:2
“In an evening-tide - David arose - He had been reposing on the roof of his house, to enjoy the breeze, as the noonday was too hot for the performance of business. This is still a constant custom on the flat-roofed houses in the East. He saw a woman washing herself - How could any woman of delicacy expose herself where she could be so fully and openly viewed? Did she not know that she was at least in view of the king’s terrace? Was there no design in all this? Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
2 Samuel 11:2
“Arose from off his bed - Where he had lain, and slept for some time. And the bed of sloth often proves the bed of lust. Washing herself - In a bath, which was in her garden.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 Samuel 11:2
“The sin came in at the eye, as Eve's did. Perhaps he sought to see her, at least he did not practise according to his own prayer, Turn away my eyes from beholding vanity, and his son's caution in a like case, Look not thou on the wine it is red. Either he had not, like Job, made a covenant with his eyes, or, at this time, he had forgotten it.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
the daughter of Eliam: Barnes says Eliam appears as Ammiel in 1 Chronicles 3:5, the same name reversed. Wesley says David inquired to learn whether Bathsheba was free, so that he might take her as his wife. She was the wife of a soldier then at Rabbah.
2 Samuel 11:3
“He inquired - Instead of suppressing that desire which the sight of his eyes had kindled, he seeks rather to feed it; and first inquires who she was; that if she were unmarried, he might make her either his wife or his concubine.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Samuel 11:3
“Eliam - Or Ammiel, 1Ch 3:5, the component words being placed in an inverse order. Bath-sheba was the granddaughter of Ahithophel 2Sa 23:34.”
2 Samuel 11:4-5
David sent messengers to get her: David sends, takes her and lies with her, and the narrator adds one detail: “she had just purified herself from her uncleanness”. The note fixes the timing, since Uriah was at the siege of Rabbah and cannot be the father. She returns home and sends word, “I am pregnant”.
2 Samuel 11:4
“An apartment is there assigned to her; and if she is made queen, the monarch orders the announcement to be made that he has made choice of her to be queen. Many instances in modern Oriental history show the ease and despatch with which such secondary marriages are contracted, and a new beauty added to the royal seraglio.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
2 Samuel 11:4
“Took her - From her own house into his palace, not by force, but by persuasion. Lay with her - See how all the way to sin is down hill! When men begin, they cannot soon stop themselves.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
the woman conceived and sent word to David: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown say the woman faced death, the penalty for adultery at Leviticus 20:10. Her word to David put her life in his hands. Clarke says she conceived at the time just after she purified herself.
2 Samuel 11:5
“And the woman conceived - A proof of the observation on 2Sa 11:4; as that is the time in which women are most apt to conceive.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Uriah will not go down to his house
2 Samuel 11:6-8
He calls Uriah home and asks “how Joab and the troops were doing with the war”. Then he sends him down with “Go down to your house and wash your feet”. The design is that Uriah sleep with his wife so the child could pass as his own.
2 Samuel 11:6
“And David sent to Joab,.... Who was with the army besieging Rabbah, which, according to Bunting (k), was sixty four miles from Jerusalem: saying, send me Uriah the Hittite; the scheme David had contrived in his mind was to get Uriah home to his wife for a few days, that it might be thought the child she had conceived was his, whereby the sin of David, and her own, might be concealed: and Joab sent Uriah to David; not knowing his business, and besides it was his duty to obey his command. (k) Travels, &c. p. 146.”
David asked how Joab and the troops were doing: Henry says a messenger of far less rank could have brought this report, and he calls the questions a pretext. Gill says David was at a loss for words. Barnes says the king was forced into falsehood to hide his sin.
2 Samuel 11:7
“And when Uriah was come unto him,.... To David, to whom he came first, before he went to his own house, desirous of knowing what was the special business of the king with him: David demanded of him how Joab did, and how the people did, and how the war prospered; he asked of the welfare of Joab the general, and of the common soldiers, and of the warriors, as the Targum, the mighty men that went along with Joab, 2Sa 10:7. David seems to have been at a loss what to say to him.”
1 more voice on this verse
2 Samuel 11:7
“Thus does he pretend a more than ordinary concern for his army when that was the least thing in his thoughts; if he had not had another turn to serve, an express of much less figure than Uriah might have sufficed to bring him a report of the state of the war.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
a gift from the king followed him: Clarke says Uriah had come a long way and needed to wash his feet. Barnes says the gift was the portion of honour a host sends to his chief guest, as at Genesis 43:34. Clarke says David had no thought yet of murder.
2 Samuel 11:8
“Go down to thy house, and wash thy feet - Uriah had come off a journey, and needed this refreshment; but David’s design was that he should go and lie with his wife, that the child now conceived should pass for his, the honor of Bath-sheba be screened, and his own crime concealed. At this time he had no design of the murder of Uriah, nor of taking Bath-sheba to wife. A mess of meat from the king - All this was artfully contrived.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Samuel 11:9-10
slept at the door: Uriah “slept at the door of the palace with all his master’s servants” and the first plan fails. David asks him directly, “Why didn’t you go home?”, showing how far he will press a man to cover his own sin. Uriah's answer in the next verse gives his reasons.
2 Samuel 11:9
“Slept at the door - That is, in one of the apartments or niches in the court of the king’s house. But in Bengal servants and others generally sleep on the verandahs or porches in face of their master’s house.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Clarke hears David telling Uriah that a soldier back from the road should go home to his house and rest. Henry sees the hand of God in Uriah's choice to sleep at the door of the palace. It kept David's sin from being hidden.
2 Samuel 11:10
“Camest thou not from thy journey? - It is not thy duty to keep watch or guard; thou art come from a journey, and needest rest and refreshment.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
He will not go home to eat and drink and sleep with his wife. A foreign-born soldier keeps a stricter loyalty to Israel's war than the king who sent him home. He swears it to the man already plotting his death: “As surely as you live”.
2 Samuel 11:11
“The ark - This it seems, was now carried with them for their encouragement and direction, as was usual. Fields - In tents which are in the fields. His meaning is, now, when God's people are in a doubtful and dangerous condition, it becomes me to sympathize with them, and to abstain even from lawful delights.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Samuel 11:11
“The ark - Perhaps there was a double purpose in taking the ark; one, to excite to the utmost the enthusiasm of the people for its defense and against the Ammonites; the other, to have the means at hand of inquiring of the Lord, which David had found so serviceable.”
2 Samuel 11:12-13
David tries once more, keeping Uriah another day and promising to let him depart tomorrow. David makes him drunk, hoping wine will loosen what conscience and loyalty held firm sober. Even drunk, Uriah goes out to sleep among the king's servants and still does not go down to his house.
2 Samuel 11:12
“And David said to Uriah, tarry here today also,.... In his court, when he found he could not persuade him to go to his own house: and tomorrow I will let thee depart: after he had tried one method more with him: so Uriah abode in Jerusalem that day and the morrow; not in his own house, but the king's palace.”
he got Uriah drunk: Adam Clarke says David got Uriah drunk so that he would drop his guard and hurry home to his wife. Matthew Henry calls pressing drink on a man the devil's work.
2 Samuel 11:13
“He made him drunk - Supposing that in this state he would have been off his guard, and hastened down to his house.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
The letter carried by the man it killed
2 Samuel 11:14-15
wrote a letter to Joab: David turns to murder, and Uriah carries the letter that orders his own death. Its order: “Put Uriah at the front of the fiercest battle; then withdraw from him, so that he may be struck down and killed”. Adam Clarke sets the scene beside the Greek story of Bellerophon.
2 Samuel 11:14
“David wrote a letter - This was the sum of treachery and villany. He made this most noble man the carrier of letters which prescribed the mode in which he was to be murdered. This case some have likened to that of Bellerophon, son of Glaucus, king of Ephyra, who being in the court of Proetus, king of the Argives, his queen Antia, or as others Sthenoboea, fell violently in love with him; but he, refusing to gratify her criminal passions, was in revenge accused by her to Proetus her husband, as having attempted to corrupt her.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Samuel 11:14
“Thus David, who in the judgment of Him who chose him was well pleasing to Him in almost all his deeds, as soon as the weight of pressure was removed, broke out into a swelling sore, and, having been as a laxly running one in his appetite for the woman, became as a cruelly hard one in the slaughter of the man; and he who had before known pitifully how to spare the bad learnt afterwards, without impediment of hesitation, to pant even for the death of the good.”
Gregory the Dialogist · written before 604 · The Book of Pastoral Rule, Part 1, Chapter 3patristic
Wesley says David laid one sin over another to cover it. Gregory the Dialogist writes that David, who had spared the wicked, now hurried without pause to the death of a good man. Henry says the letter put the men who fought beside Uriah in danger of being killed too.
2 Samuel 11:15
“He arose - So far is David from repenting, that he seeks to cover one sin with another. How are the beginnings of sin to be dreaded! For who knows where it will end?”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2 Samuel 11:16-17
he assigned Uriah to a place where he saw the strongest enemy soldiers: Joab carries out the order but widens it. He places Uriah where he knows the defenders are strongest, and when the men of the city sally out, soldiers fall alongside him. A single death might have raised questions; a skirmish with several losses does not.
2 Samuel 11:16
“And it came to pass, when Joab observed the city,.... Where lay its greatest strength, and where it was best defended; or besieged it, as the Targum: that he assigned Uriah unto a place where he knew that valiant men were; who would not easily give way, and when they saw an opportunity would sally out, Joab cannot be excused from sin, unless he thought that Uriah had been guilty of death, and that David took this way of dispatching him for some political reason; however David was king, and to be obeyed.”
Uriah the Hittite also died: Barnes says the men of the city came out as a lure, to draw the besiegers within reach of the archers on the wall. Henry says Uriah fought on in hope that Joab would come to his aid. Clarke says he gave his life gladly for his king.
2 Samuel 11:17
“The men of the city went out - i. e. they made a sally and attacked the troops which were blockading the city on that side, chiefly to entice them to pursue them, and so come within shot of the archers who lined the wall 2Sa 11:20, 2Sa 11:24. There fell some of the people ... - They, too, as well as the brave and faithful Uriah, were victims of David’s cruel artifice.”
2 Samuel 11:18-21
Joab sent to David a full account of the battle: Joab reports the fighting to David. The answer is the old case of Abimelech, killed at Thebez by “a woman who dropped an upper millstone on him from the wall”. Only after that defense is the messenger to add, “Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead as well”.
and instructed the messenger: John Gill says the messenger was to read the king's face. The whole news of the war, from the start of the siege, came first. His last words were to wait on what he saw there.
2 Samuel 11:19
“And charged the messenger,.... Gave him a particular direction and instruction what he should say at the close of his narrative, according as he should observe the king's countenance to be: saying, when thou hast made an end of telling the matters of the war unto the king; giving an account of all the events that happened since the siege was begun to that time.”
if the king’s anger flares: Adam Clarke suspects that Joab had lost men through his own error at the wall. Joab joined that loss to the death of Uriah, news the king wanted, to turn aside his anger. Every soldier knew the reach of the archers, John Gill observes.
2 Samuel 11:20
“If - the king’s wrath arise - It is likely that Joab had by some indiscretion suffered loss about this time;; and he contrived to get rid of the odium by connecting the transaction with the death of Uriah, which he knew would be so pleasing to the king.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
to strike Abimelech son of Jerubbesheth?: Barnes pairs Jerubbesheth with Jerubbaal, the name Gideon carries at Judges 6:32. He takes the question as a sign that David knew the history of his people and had it read to him. Henry says even the soldiers could quote how a woman on the wall killed Abimelech.
2 Samuel 11:21
“Who smote Abimelech ... - This reference indicates the existence in David’s time of the national annals of that period in an accessible form, and the king’s habit of reading, or having read to him, the history of his country. (Compare Est 6:1.)”
The thing that David had done displeased Jehovah
2 Samuel 11:22-25
the messenger set out and reported to David all that Joab had sent him to say: The messenger delivers the account, and Uriah's death comes last. David's reply is ready: “Do not let this matter upset you, for the sword devours one as well as another”. David alone knows the death was ordered, and he closes by telling Joab to strengthen the attack on the city.
2 Samuel 11:22
“So the messenger went,.... From Joab, from the army before Rabbah: and came; to David in Jerusalem, a course of sixty four miles: and showed David all that Joab had sent him for; all the events of the war hitherto.”
we drove them back to the entrance of the gate: John Gill reads the report as one sally from Rabbah, met by a rally that chased the defenders back to their gate. The chase carried the men of Israel under the wall.
2 Samuel 11:23
“And the messenger said unto David,.... The particulars of his account follow: surely the men prevailed against us; the men of the city of Rabbah, the besieged there, in one onset they made upon them: and came out unto us in the field; the besiegers that lay encamped there; they sallied out upon them: and we were upon them, even unto the entering of the gate; rallied upon them, and drove them back, and pursued them to the gate of the city.”
the archers shot at your servants from the wall: Matthew Henry notes that the dead are named the king's servants, which sets their loss against the king who spent them. Uriah's name comes last, as Joab had scripted.
for the sword devours one as well as another: Matthew Henry says that once Uriah was dead, David could make light of every other loss as a common chance of war. Adam Clarke answers that David himself had ordered it. David closes by sending comfort to Joab.
2 Samuel 11:25
“This point being gained, he can make light of the loss, and turn it off easily with an excuse: The sword devours one as well as another; it was a chance of war, nothing more common. He orders Joab to make the battle more strong next time, while he, by his sin, was weakening it, and provoking God to blast the undertaking.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
2 Samuel 11:25
“The sword devoureth one as well as another - What abominable hypocrisy was here! He well knew that Uriah’s death was no chance-medley; he was by his own order thrust on the edge of the sword.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 Samuel 11:26-27
When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband was dead: Bathsheba mourns for her husband, and the record gives only the outward form. David brings her to his house, marries her, and she bears him a son. Only the chapter's last clause breaks the silence: “the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the LORD”.
2 Samuel 11:26
“She mourned for her husband - The whole of her conduct indicates that she observed the form without feeling the power of sorrow. She lost a captain and got a king for her spouse; this must have been deep affliction indeed: and therefore: - - Lachrymas non sponte cadentes Effudit; gemitusque expressit pectore laeto. “She shed reluctant tears, and forced out groans from a joyful heart.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Samuel 11:26
“Note, God sees and hates sin in his own people. Nay, the nearer any are to God in profession the more displeasing to him their sins are; for in them there is more ingratitude, treachery, and reproach, than in the sins of others. Let none therefore encourage themselves in sin by the example of David; for those that sin as he did will fall under the displeasure of God as he did.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
David had her brought to his house: Adam Clarke puts the mourning at about seven days, which makes the marriage a hurried one. John Wesley notes that the birth of the son means David went months without repentance, all the while keeping up his worship. Clarke reads the last clause as a guard against excuse.
2 Samuel 11:27
“When the mourning was past - Probably it lasted only seven days. She became his wife - This hurried marriage was no doubt intended on both sides to cover the pregnancy. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord - It was necessary to add this, lest the splendor of David’s former virtues should induce any to suppose his crimes were passed over, or looked on with an indulgent eye, by the God of purity and justice.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
2 Samuel 11:27
“Bare a son - By which it appears, That David continued in the state of impenitency for divers months together; and this notwithstanding his frequent attendance upon God's ordinances. Which is an eminent instance of the corruption of man's nature, of the deceitfulness of sin, and of the tremendous judgment of God in punishing one sin, by delivering a man up to another.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
How this psalm is built
The form: A narrative told in bare verbs with the verdict held back to the final clause, as 11 classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| The king who sends | The chapter is built on one verb. David sends the army out at 11:1, sends to enquire at 11:3, sends messengers to take her at 11:4, sends orders for Uriah at 11:6, and sends the letter that kills him at 11:14. Bathsheba sends word at 11:5 and Joab sends his report at 11:18, so the only two other people who send are answering the king. The chain is read off the Berean text in the store, and no commentator in the store's quotation pool is cited for it. | 2 Samuel 11:1, 2 Samuel 11:3, 2 Samuel 11:4, 2 Samuel 11:6, 2 Samuel 11:14, 2 Samuel 11:18 |
| The peace asked after by a man who has broken it | David's question to Uriah at 11:7 asks after the welfare of Joab, of the troops and of the war, and the word under all three is shalom. This site's published word ladder for the book carries it at Strong's h7965 and notes that it stands under this question. The same root is built into the names of the two sons who matter most in these chapters, Absalom and Solomon.This site's published word ladder for 2 Samuel, src/components/book/dossier-content/2-samuel.ts, the wordLadder entry for Strong's h7965, shalom. | 2 Samuel 11:7 |
| The two nights that fail | David tries the same thing twice and it fails twice. At 11:8 and 11:9 Uriah sleeps at the palace door instead of going home, and at 11:13, made drunk at the king's own table, he sleeps there again. The older writers read the pairing as a soldier's self-command outlasting a king's scheming.John Gill and Matthew Henry, Exposition of the Old Testament, 1748 to 1763, and Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710, on 2 Samuel 11:12 to 11:13, as this site's published exposition note on those verses reports them. | 2 Samuel 11:9, 2 Samuel 11:13 |
| Uriah's oath | Uriah answers at 11:11 with the only speech of any length in the chapter. He names the ark, Israel and Judah in tents and Joab's men in the open field, and swears by the king's own life that he will not go home. A foreign born soldier holds Israel's war custom more strictly than the king who sent him home to break it.John Wesley and Albert Barnes, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765, and Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1832 to 1869, on 2 Samuel 11:11, as this site's published exposition note on that verse reports them. | 2 Samuel 11:11 |
| The name that closes the report | Joab coaches the messenger to deliver a defence about the wall and the precedent of Abimelech at Thebez, and to add Uriah's death last, almost in passing. The order of the report is the device. A name that should have opened the message is buried at the end of a list of tactics.Albert Barnes and John Gill, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1832 to 1869, and Exposition of the Old Testament, 1748 to 1763, on 2 Samuel 11:18 to 11:21, as this site's published exposition note on those verses reports them. | 2 Samuel 11:20, 2 Samuel 11:21, 2 Samuel 11:24 |
The text of this chapter, and the Greek
12 more paragraphs on the patterns
This chapter is where the Greek Samuel changes character. This site's published manuscripts section for the book records what Dominique Barthelemy showed in Les Devanciers d'Aquila, 1963. A section running from 2 Samuel 11:2 to 1 Kings 2:11 had been revised toward a proto-Masoretic Hebrew, the kaige recension.
The practical effect for a student is that a citation of the Septuagint in this chapter has to say which Greek is meant. The Lucianic manuscripts often carry the older Old Greek underneath the revision, and reading the two layers apart is standard practice in Samuel textual criticism.
The New Testament's use
The one New Testament use of this chapter is a refusal to name Bathsheba. Matthew 1:6 traces the line from David to Solomon through her of Uriah, so the genealogy of Jesus carries the crime in the wording of the list. The New Testament does not quote any verse of the chapter.
The debated point
The commentators divide over how much Bathsheba's father and grandfather explain later events. Eliam is named at 11:3, and a man of that name stands among the mighty men at 23:34 as the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite. Some draw the line from that verse back to this one and read Ahithophel, who joins Absalom's revolt at 15:12, as her grandfather with a grievance.
This site's published exposition note on verses 2 and 3 states the position and states its limit in the same breath, that the text itself never says so here. The position is held on the coincidence of one name, and this row states it as a position and takes no verdict.
The historical value
The practice the chapter turns on is real and attested in the text itself. Men under arms kept away from their wives while a campaign ran, which is why Uriah's refusal at 11:11 is an argument rather than a mood. The parallel at 1 Samuel 21:5 has David himself state the custom to the priest at Nob.
The precedent Joab reaches for at 11:21 is also a real citation. Abimelech died at Thebez when a woman dropped an upper millstone on him from the wall, and the account stands at Judges 9:53. That a field commander could expect a king to know the story tells a reader how Israel's own history was used in argument.
The feature page
The estate argues the chapter's question in full at /featured/david-and-bathsheba, labelled in this site's published dossier as "David and Bathsheba, in full". The dossier states the question as whether David's sin was treated as forgiven or as unpunished, and answers that neither word alone covers it. A reader who wants the argument goes there, and this row keeps the chapter.
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Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The form and classifications
This site's published exposition of 2 Samuel 11 and This site's published guide to 2 Samuel, src/components/book/guides/2-samuel/Book2SamuelGuide.tsx, act II, the beat at chapter 11.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Gregory the Dialogist, The Book of Pastoral Rule; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.