2 Samuelchapter 11
27 verses · BSB2 Samuel book hub →
Key verse
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.
It stands in scene A of the chapter, verses 1 to 5.
The chapter
Chapter summary
'At the return of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle,' David sends Joab to besiege Rabbah, 'but David tarried at Jerusalem.' From the roof at evening he sees a woman bathing, asks who she is, is told plainly that she is another man's wife, and sends and takes her anyway. The message comes back: I am with child. Then the cover-up, step by escalating step. Uriah recalled and urged to go down to his house; Uriah sleeping at the door because the ark and Israel and Judah are in tents; Uriah made drunk and still refusing; and at last Uriah carrying his own death warrant to Joab. 'But the thing that David had done displeased Jehovah.'
Context
History · Nathan, Gad · 2 Samuel overview
Where the chapter sits
2 Samuel 11 falls in The Fall: Bathsheba and Uriah (chapters 11–12). ‘And it came to pass … that David sent Joab.’ The rooftop, the adultery, the murder, Nathan's ‘thou art the man,’ the child's death, Solomon's birth.
Bathsheba and Uriah. ‘The thing that David had done displeased the LORD.’
Before it: Rise: David over all Israel, chapters 1–10. After it: Consequences: Amnon, Absalom, Sheba, the census, chapters 13–24.
The whole shape of 2 Samuel→The world behind this chapter
2 Samuel 11The history
Campaigns ran in a season. Armies moved out in the spring, after the rains stopped and the barley was in, when roads were passable and there was standing grain in enemy fields to live on. The chapter opens by noting the season and then noting that the king stayed home.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
City houses were packed tight, and roofs were living space, flat, plastered, used for sleeping, drying figs, and working. A palace built higher on the slope looked down into the courtyards below it. Bathing was done in a courtyard, and the detail that she was purifying herself after her monthly period is not incidental: it tells the reader she was not already pregnant, and it places the day at the most likely point in her cycle to conceive.
Uriah is called a Hittite, a northerner, a foreign professional in the king's standing army, and one of the elite fighters listed at the end of this book. Soldiers on campaign kept themselves ceremonially set apart, abstaining from marital relations while under arms; that is the code Uriah is quoting when he refuses to go home, and it is why David's plan needs him drunk.
The last detail is the coldest. Letters were written on a folded and sealed sheet and carried by hand, and Uriah carries his own death warrant to the man ordered to arrange it. Joab, who now holds the king's written signature on a murder, will be a difficult man to dismiss for the rest of the reign.
What it meant to them
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 the king look invincible.
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 proof the book was not the palace's press release, and warning that the man on the throne was under the Law like everyone else.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews & Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
A. At the time when kings go out, the king stayed home
1. (v. 1)
a.The chapter opens at the time when kings go forth to battle, the very words of the season, and names David absent from it. He had led the war against the Syrians in the previous chapter; here he sends Joab and stays behind. The narrator states the bare geography, Joab and Israel at Rabbah, David still at Jerusalem, and offers no comment yet. This is the first line of the thread the covenant chapter will name later in the book: the sword that never departs from David's house begins with the king out of his own place.
2 Samuel 11:1, 5 voicesWhat preachers and commentators have said about these verses, in their own words.
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.”
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 11:1
“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
“The sin he was guilty of was adultery, against the letter of the seventh commandment, and (in the judgment of the patriarchal age) a heinous crime, and an iniquity to be punished by the judges ( Job xxxi. 11 ), a sin which takes away the heart, and gets a man a wound and dishonour, more than any other, and the reproach of which is not wiped away.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
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. (vv. 2-3)
a.David rises in the evening and walks upon the roof, and the sight moves before any word is spoken. He sends and enquires, and the answer names three people in one breath, the woman, her father Eliam, and her husband Uriah the Hittite. Eliam himself later stands among David's mighty men at the end of the book, son of Ahithophel; some draw a line from that later verse to this one and read Ahithophel as her grandfather, though the text itself never says so here. The enquiry could have ended the matter; instead it becomes the first step past looking.
2 Samuel 11:2, 3 voices
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 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
2 Samuel 11:3, 2 voices
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 11:3
“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
3. (vv. 4-5)
a.David sends, takes her, and lies with her, and the narrator adds one clinical detail, that she was purified from her uncleanness. The note fixes the timing so plainly that a reader cannot mistake whose child follows, since Uriah has been at the siege of Rabbah and cannot be the father. She returns to her own house, and then sends word that she is with child. The whole sequence runs in short verbs with no comment, sight, taking, conceiving, and the silence is part of how the chapter accuses.
2 Samuel 11:4, 2 voices
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
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
2 Samuel 11:5, 1 voice
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
B. Uriah will not go down to his house
1. (vv. 6-8)
a.David's plan starts as concealment. He calls Uriah home under cover of a report on the war, asks after Joab and the army and how the fighting goes, and then sends him down to his own house with a gift of food following him. The design is that Uriah lie with his wife so the coming child could pass as his own. Nothing in the summons names the true reason; David asks about the siege of Rabbah to a man he intends to use, not to consult.
2 Samuel 11:6, 1 voice
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.”
2 Samuel 11:7, 2 voices
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.”
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
2 Samuel 11:8, 1 voice
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. (vv. 9-10)
a.slept at the door: Uriah does not go down. He sleeps at the door of the king's house with the king's own servants, and the first plan fails without a word of protest from him. David hears of it and asks him directly why he did not go down to his house after coming from the field, and the question shows how far David will press a man to cover his own sin. Uriah's silence about his reasons here makes his answer in the next verse land with its full weight.
2 Samuel 11:9, 2 voices
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
2 Samuel 11:9-12
“Whether he suspected any thing or no, Providence put this resolution into his heart, and kept him to it, for the discovering of David's sin, and that the baffling of his design to conceal it might awaken David's conscience to confess it and repent of it. The reason he gave to David for this strange instance of self-denial and mortification was very noble,”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
3. (v. 11)
a.Uriah gives the reason himself: the ark, and Israel, and Judah abide in tents, and Joab and his lord's servants camp in the open field, and he will not go down to eat and drink and lie with his wife while they do. The ark's presence with the army ties this verse to its own thread; some read it carried along to rally the troops and to keep enquiry of the Lord near at hand. A foreign-born soldier keeps a stricter loyalty to Israel's war than the king who sent him home to break it. Uriah's oath, as thou livest and as thy soul liveth, is spoken in the very words a man would use to swear before God, to the man already plotting his death.
2 Samuel 11:11, 2 voices
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 11:11
“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
4. (vv. 12-13)
a.David tries once more, keeping Uriah another day and promising to let him depart tomorrow. At the meal 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. The soldier's self-command outlasts the king's own scheming, and the older commentators note the irony plainly, that David cannot out-drink a man's integrity.
C. The letter carried by the man it killed
1. (vv. 14-15)
a.wrote a letter to Joab: Concealment fails, so David turns to murder, and Uriah himself carries the letter that orders his own death. The letter's instruction is precise, to set him in the forefront of the hottest battle and then withdraw, that he may be struck down. Adam Clarke likens the scene to the old story of Bellerophon, who carried to his own death the letter meant to destroy him, unknowing. Uriah's last act of obedience to his king becomes the means of his death, the same loyalty that refused to go home to his wife now sent instead to the front line.
2 Samuel 11:14, 4 voices
2 Samuel 11:14-15
“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
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
2 Samuel 11:14-15
“Uriah cannot thus die alone: the party he commands is in danger of being cut off with him; and it proved so: some of the people, even the servants of David (so they are called, to aggravate David's sin in being so prodigal of their lives), fell with him,”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Samuel 11:14
“It is resolved in David's breast (which one would think could never possibly have harboured so vile a thought) that Uriah must die. That innocent, valiant, gallant man, who was ready to die for his prince's honour, must die by his prince's hand. David has sinned, and Bath-sheba has sinned, and both against him, and therefore he must die;”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 Samuel 11:15, 1 voice
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. (vv. 16-17)
a.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, David's own servants among the dead. A single death might have raised questions; a skirmish with several losses does not. Uriah dies in the company of other men killed to make his own death appear ordinary, the cost of David's scheme paid twice over.
2 Samuel 11:16, 1 voice
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.”
2 Samuel 11:17, 1 voice
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.”
3. (vv. 18-21)
a.Joab reports the fighting to David and coaches the messenger for the moment David's anger rises over troops sent too near the wall. He is told to answer with the old precedent of Abimelech, killed at Thebez when a woman cast a piece of a millstone from the wall onto him, a story known well enough that naming it would explain why men should not approach a wall so closely. Only after that defense is ready does the messenger have leave to add, almost in passing, that Uriah the Hittite is dead also. Joab manages David's expected reaction before David has reacted at all, and buries Uriah's name inside a report about tactics.
2 Samuel 11:20, 1 voice
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
2 Samuel 11:21, 1 voice
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.)”
D. The thing that David had done displeased Jehovah
1. (vv. 22-25)
a.The messenger delivers the account exactly as instructed, and Uriah's death lands among the war news rather than at its head. David's reply is chosen already: let not this thing displease thee, for the sword devoureth one as well as another. The words are hypocrisy spoken with full knowledge, since David alone knows the death was ordered and not chance. He closes by telling Joab to press the siege harder, weakening the very war he claims to serve while his own sin has already done the greater damage to it.
2 Samuel 11:25, 2 voices
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 11:25
“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
2. (vv. 26-27)
a.Bathsheba mourns her husband, and the record does not weigh her grief; it states only the outward form, as widows were expected to observe. When the mourning ends David sends for her, marries her, and she bears him a son, the marriage timed to cover what began at verse four. Every step to this point has been told without a word of judgment, sight, taking, covering, killing, marrying. Only the chapter's last clause breaks the silence, that the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, the narrator's one verdict on the whole account, and the sentence that opens directly into Nathan's parable in the chapter that follows.
2 Samuel 11:26, 2 voices
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
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
2 Samuel 11:27, 2 voices
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
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
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on 2 Samuel 11. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Gregory the Dialogist, The Book of Pastoral Rule, Part 1, Chapter 3; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); John Gill; John Wesley and Matthew Henry.
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