Chapter 11
Starts this way:
1 In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. [2Sa 11:1 ESV]
Chapter 10 ended with the defeat of Ammon's mercenary allies in Syria. Syria was now afraid to aid Ammon, and that left Ammon to fight alone. Apparently, David had not forgotten about the way the new king of Ammon had treated his messengers of peace after the death of Hanun's father. David sends his armies. Note that they "ravaged" the Ammonites. The city of Rabbah (modern day Amman, Jordan) is besieged. But David doesn't go to war. He stays in Jerusalem.
2022 - I wonder...was this springtime attack on Ammon spiteful and vengeful, and maybe the army should have just taken a break this spring? If they had, Uriah would have been at home. None of this would have happened. Was David's first mistake his sense of vengeance in the matter of the consoling ambassadors?
David and Bathsheba.
David sees her, wants her, sends for her. All these are on him. Bathsheba is the daughter of Eliam, wife of Uriah.
She comes when David sends for her. Several translations say that he "sent messengers and took her" as if to say it was not entirely a free choice on her part. After all, the King himself has sent for her. Did she really have a choice so that she too is guilty in this? Note also that it says she had just finished the purification rites following her menstrual period. She was not pregnant by Uriah before going to see David. (Uriah didn't go home when David told him what to do. I think she could have said no.)
2021 - This verse: 4 So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. [2Sa 11:4 ESV] As I read this today, I don't think she really had much choice. Here are the possible translations for the word "took" in this verse: to take, get, fetch, lay hold of, seize, receive, acquire, buy, bring, marry, take a wife, snatch, take away. There seems to me to be a strong implication of coercion at the least and force is not out of the question. Add to this that this young wife - presumably childless, possibly very young - is summoned into the presence of a man that has the authority to say "off with her head" if she dares resist him. At the very very least, David is using his authority to gain sexual favors from Bathsheba. And it may have been out and out rape. Maybe that's why she sent him word by messengers, because she was angry about the whole thing. But...knowing the rest of the story, she seemed positively disposed toward David in the rest of the story, and over the years. Despite what David did, she was perhaps also swept off her feet.
2023 - There is also the question of why Bathsheba would be bathing - performing the rites of purification after her period - up on a rooftop in the middle of the afternoon. Was that the procedure? It hardly seems likely. There was nothing wrong with her eyesight. If she could see the roof of David's house, then he could see the roof of her house. Even so, the Bible never gives us a glimpse of what was really in her head at the time. Maybe she was just young and stupid - she wouldn't be the first. Maybe she like to wear short shorts and halter tops with no thought of consequences. And sure enough, her disdain for modesty and propriety, and her "showing off" her attributes provoked an entirely inappropriate response from a man who had the power and the will to do whatever he wanted. This version sounds very likely to me this year. She was showing off, and he got excited, and he took her.
This verse:
5 And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, "I am pregnant." [2Sa 11:5 ESV]
So she didn't go and tell him herself. She sent a messenger. Many had to know that she went to the palace to see David. So there was no real secret here. But now she sends the pregnancy message, so that is not a secret either...at least not a very well kept secret.
David finds out she is pregnant, and calls her husband. David is plotting now to cover up his sin, rather than confessing his sin.
Uriah won't go home.
Next, since Uriah felt a strong sense of duty, and would not go home to be with his wife while his fellows camped in the open field, David got him drunk. Drunkenness lowers one's sense of responsibility. It makes self-imposed denial seem less restrictive. David knew this also.
But Uriah does not go home.
So David sends an order to Joab to put Uriah in a hot spot, and then abandon him there to die. Uriah carries the order for his own death, unknowingly. Joab, who has no idea what this is about, but only that his King has ordered it, complies. Is Joab also guilty? Uriah is certainly dead.
A messenger is instructed to tell David how the fighting is going. He is told that if David is angry about the tactics, to mention that Uriah is also dead. When David learns this, he surmises that Joab is angry about having to send good men to be killed, having to order what he also knows are poor tactics. Joab's men surely know that Joab ordered this pursuit that resulted in the deaths of some good soldiers. Joab is bearing the shame that should have been David's. David tells Joab that Uriah might have been killed anyway. David is making light of Uriah's death, he is saying that all he did was maybe help "fate" along a little bit.
Bathsheba mourns for the appropriate time. David sends for her, marries her, and she gives him a son.
All seems well, David has gotten away with this, and there is little if any suspicion thrown on him. Still...a few people must have known, besides Joab and the servants of Bathsheba. Then there is the last sentence in the chapter...
"...But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord." 2 Samuel 11:27b
Whatever may have seemed hushed up as far as various messengers and servants and soldiers were concerned, these events were never ever a secret to God. It is unwise ever to believe that any sin is without consequences. Or that the consequences will not fit the crime.