For Teaching

2 Samuel 11: What the Passage Says

101 claims across 27 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 2 Samuel 11 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

David stays in Jerusalem while Joab and the army besiege the Ammonite city of Rabbah. From his roof David sees Bathsheba bathing, sends for her, and sleeps with her; she sends word that she is pregnant. David calls her husband Uriah home from the front, tries twice to get him to sleep at his own house, and keeps him in Jerusalem a further day; when Uriah still refuses, David sends him back carrying a letter that tells Joab to place him where he will be killed. Uriah dies in the fighting, David takes Bathsheba as his wife and she bears him a son, and the chapter closes by saying that what David had done was evil in the LORD's sight.

Claim by Claim

11:1
- It happened at the turn of the year, after the year had expired.
- It was the season when kings go out to battle.
- David sent Joab out.
- David sent his servants out with Joab.
- David sent all Israel out with them.
- They destroyed the Ammonites.
- They besieged Rabbah.
- David himself stayed in Jerusalem.
11:2
- At evening time David got up from his bed.
- David walked about on the roof of the king's house.
- From the roof David saw a woman washing herself.
- The woman was very beautiful in appearance.
11:3
- David sent and inquired about the woman.
- Someone answered David about her.
- The answer was that the woman was Bathsheba.
- Bathsheba was the daughter of Eliam.
- Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah.
- Uriah was a Hittite.
11:4
- David sent messengers.
- The messengers took her.
- She came in to David.
- David lay with her.
- She was purifying herself from her uncleanness.
- She returned to her house.
11:5
- The woman conceived.
- She sent word to David.
- She said, I am pregnant.
11:6
- David sent word to Joab.
- David's message was: send me Uriah the Hittite.
- Joab sent Uriah to David.
11:7
- Uriah came to David.
- David asked how Joab was faring.
- David asked how the people were faring.
- David asked how the war was faring.
11:8
- David said to Uriah, Go down to your house.
- David told Uriah to wash his feet.
- Uriah went out from the king's house.
- A gift of food from the king was sent out after Uriah.
11:9
- Uriah slept at the entrance of the king's house.
- Uriah slept there with all the servants of his lord.
- Uriah did not go down to his house.
11:10
- They told David that Uriah had not gone down to his house.
- David said to Uriah, Have you not come from a journey?
- David asked Uriah why he did not go down to his house.
11:11
- Uriah said to David that the ark, Israel, and Judah were staying in booths.
- Uriah said his lord Joab and his lord's servants were camped in the open field.
- Uriah asked whether he should go to his own house to eat and drink and lie with his wife.
- Uriah swore by David's life and by the life of David's soul.
- Uriah said he would not do this thing.
11:12
- David said to Uriah, Stay here today as well.
- David said he would send Uriah away tomorrow.
- Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day.
- Uriah stayed in Jerusalem the next day too.
11:13
- David called Uriah to him.
- Uriah ate and drank in David's presence.
- David made Uriah drunk.
- In the evening Uriah went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord.
- Uriah did not go down to his house.
11:14
- In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab.
- David sent the letter by the hand of Uriah.
11:15
- David wrote in the letter an order to place Uriah at the front of the fiercest fighting.
- David wrote an order to withdraw from behind Uriah.
- David wrote that the purpose was that Uriah would be struck down and die.
11:16
- Joab was keeping watch on the city.
- Joab assigned Uriah to a place where he knew valiant men were.
11:17
- The men of the city came out.
- They fought against Joab.
- Some of the people, of David's servants, fell.
- Uriah the Hittite also died.
11:18
- Joab sent word to David.
- Joab reported to David all the matters of the war.
11:19
- Joab commanded the messenger.
- Joab's instruction concerned the moment when the messenger had finished telling the king all the matters of the war.
11:20
- Joab said the king's anger might rise.
- Joab said the king might ask why they approached the city to fight.
- Joab said the king might ask whether they did not know that men would shoot from the wall.
11:21
- Joab said the king might ask who struck down Abimelech son of Jerubbesheth.
- Joab said the king might ask whether it was not a woman who threw an upper millstone down on Abimelech from the wall.
- Abimelech died at Thebez.
- Joab said the king might ask why they went near the wall.
- Joab told the messenger to then say that the king's servant Uriah the Hittite was also dead.
11:22
- The messenger went.
- The messenger came and told David everything Joab had sent him to say.
11:23
- The messenger said to David that the men prevailed against them.
- The messenger said the men came out against them into the field.
- The messenger said they drove them back as far as the entrance of the gate.
11:24
- The messenger said the shooters shot at the king's servants from the wall.
- The messenger said some of the king's servants died.
- The messenger said the king's servant Uriah the Hittite was also dead.
11:25
- David said to the messenger to speak thus to Joab.
- David said this matter should not be evil in Joab's eyes.
- David said the sword devours one as well as another.
- David told Joab to press his attack harder against the city and tear it down.
- David told the messenger to encourage Joab.
11:26
- The wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead.
- She mourned for her husband.
11:27
- The mourning period passed.
- David sent and brought her into his house.
- She became David's wife.
- She bore David a son.
- The thing David had done was evil in the eyes of the LORD.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

11:1: Armies campaigned in spring and summer, after the rains ended and roads and food supplies allowed an army to move; "the time when kings go out" is a way of dating the events, not a comment on David. Joab was David's army commander, his nephew and the most powerful man in the kingdom after the king. The Ammonites were a neighboring people living east of the Jordan River; Rabbah was their capital, on the site of modern Amman in Jordan. "Besieged" means the army surrounded the city and cut it off rather than storming it, a slow operation that could last months, which is why David could be at home while a war ran on.
11:2: Roofs in this world were flat and were used as extra living space, for sleeping, drying food, working in the cool of the evening. The palace stood higher than the houses packed around it, so from its roof one could look down into neighboring courtyards, where washing was done. Bathsheba was not necessarily exposed to public view; David's vantage point was.
11:3: "The Hittite" marks Uriah as of foreign descent, from a people long settled in Canaan. Foreign-born professional soldiers served in David's army, and Uriah is later listed among his elite warriors. His name is Hebrew, meaning "the LORD is my light," which suggests he had taken on Israel's religion.
11:4: Israelite law counted a woman ritually unclean during her monthly period and for a set time after, ending with a ritual bath: this is the washing David saw. The narrator mentions it to tell the reader that the pregnancy could not have been from an earlier time: the child is David's.
11:8: "Wash your feet" is an everyday idiom for settling in at home for the night after travel; in this context it also carries the sense of David sending Uriah home to sleep with his wife, which is exactly what David needs to happen. The "gift of food" was a portion sent from the king's own table, a mark of favor, and here, an encouragement to have a comfortable evening at home.
11:9: The king's servants and soldiers on duty slept in the palace entrance area. By bedding down there, Uriah was choosing to stay on a soldier's footing rather than go off duty.
11:11: The ark was the sacred chest holding the covenant, and it was sometimes carried with the army on campaign, so God was understood to be present in the camp. Soldiers on campaign kept themselves ritually pure, which included abstaining from sex; this is why Uriah treats going home to his wife as unthinkable while the army is in the field. "As surely as you live" is a formal oath, swearing by the life of the king, the strongest refusal a subject could give.
11:13: Getting Uriah drunk is David's second attempt at the same plan, on the assumption that alcohol will break down the discipline that talking could not.
11:14: Letters were written on a folded and sealed sheet and carried by hand. An ordinary officer would not open one addressed to the commander, so Uriah could carry the order for his own death without knowing it.
11:15: KJV "retire ye from him" means pull back and leave him exposed. Ancient infantry fought in a line and depended on the men to either side; a unit that withdrew mid-fight left whoever stayed put surrounded and certain to die.
11:16: KJV "observed the city" means kept it under close watch, which is what a besieging army does. Joab already knew which stretch of wall was held by the defenders' best fighters.
11:17: KJV "there fell some of the people" means some of them were killed. Making Uriah's death look like an ordinary casualty of a failed attack required other men to die in the same attack.
11:18: A messenger was a person who carried news by walking or running. There were no phones or letters that traveled fast.
11:20: Attacking troops normally kept out of range of a city's walls, since defenders shot down at them from above with every advantage. Coming close enough to be shot at was a basic tactical error, and a commander who let it happen could expect to be blamed.
11:21: David's officers all knew this story: Abimelech, a son of Gideon, was killed at the town of Thebez when a woman dropped a millstone from the wall onto his head as he pressed too close to a tower (told in Judges 9). A millstone was the heavy round upper stone of a hand mill for grinding grain. "Jerubbesheth" is a deliberately altered form of Gideon's other name, Jerubbaal: later scribes replaced the element "baal", the name of a rival god, with "besheth," meaning "shame," so as not to pronounce it.
11:23: A city wall had one big gate that could be shut. Pushing enemies back to the gate meant pushing them all the way home.
11:25: "The sword devoureth one as well as another" is a proverb, meaning that battle kills at random and no commander can control who falls. David is telling Joab the losses were nobody's fault.
11:26: Formal mourning for a husband customarily lasted about seven days, with weeping, fasting and public lament. David waits only for this to end before marrying her, which is fast enough to look respectable and fast enough to cover the timing of the pregnancy.
11:27: Where the KJV prints LORD in capital letters, the Hebrew has the personal name of God, four consonants usually written Yahweh, which readers avoided saying aloud and replaced with the word for "Lord." The final sentence is the narrator stepping in with a verdict of his own after twenty-six verses of flat reporting, and it sets up the confrontation in the next chapter.

Read 2 Samuel 11