1In the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab out with his servants and all Israel. They destroyed the people of Ammon and laid siege to Rabbah. But David stayed behind in Jerusalem.
2One evening David got up from his bed and walked on the roof of the king's house. From the roof he saw a woman washing herself. The woman was very beautiful to look at.
3David sent someone to ask about the woman. And one said, "Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"
4David sent messengers and took her. She came in to him, and he lay with her, for she had been made clean from her uncleanness. Then she returned to her house.
5The woman became pregnant. She sent word to David and said, "I am with child."
7When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was, and how the people were, and how the war was going.
8Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house, and wash your feet." Uriah left the king's house, and a gift of food from the king was sent after him.
9But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord. He did not go down to his house.
10They told David, "Uriah did not go down to his house." So David said to Uriah, "Have you not come from a journey? Why then did you not go down to your house?"
11Uriah said to David, "The ark, and Israel, and Judah are staying in tents. My lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camped in the open fields. Shall I then go into my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing."
12Then David said to Uriah, "Stay here today as well, and tomorrow I will let you go." So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day and the next.
13David called him, and he ate and drank in front of him, and David made him drunk. In the evening he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.
15In the letter he wrote, "Put Uriah at the front, where the fighting is hardest. Then pull back from him, so that he may be struck down and die."
16So when Joab was watching the city, he put Uriah in a place where he knew brave men were.
17The men of the city came out and fought with Joab. Some of the people, David's servants, fell. Uriah the Hittite died too.
19He gave this order to the messenger: "When you have finished telling the king all about the war,"
20the king may become angry and say to you, 'Why did you go so near the city to fight? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall?
21"Who struck down Abimelech the son of Jerubbesheth? Did not a woman throw a piece of a millstone down on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez? Why did you go near the wall?' Then you shall say, 'Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.'"
23The messenger said to David, "The men were stronger than we were. They came out to us into the field, and we drove them back as far as the entrance of the gate."
24"Then the archers shot from the wall at your servants. Some of the king's servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also."
25Then David said to the messenger, "Say this to Joab: 'Do not let this thing trouble you, for the sword destroys one as well as another. Press your attack harder against the city, and tear it down.' Encourage him in this way."
26When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband.
27When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.