Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Samuel · About this commentary
At the Time When Kings Go Out
2 Samuel 11:1-13
1 At the return of the year, at the time when kings go out, David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed at Jerusalem. · WEB
A king in the wrong place, a woman summoned by a man who commands her husband, and a soldier whose integrity ruins every plan to cover it.
At the time when kings go out, David sent Joab and his servants with him... But David stayed at Jerusalem 2 Samuel 11:1.
The sentence is built to be read as an accusation. Campaign season opens, the army marches, and the man whose office is defined by going out before the people 1 Samuel 8:20 sends someone else. Nothing sinful has happened yet; a king with an empire may reasonably delegate. But the book has just spent ten chapters showing what David does when he is where he belongs, and the next verse shows what he does when he is not.
From the roof, he saw a woman bathing... David sent and inquired after the woman 2 Samuel 11:2–3.
The answer to his inquiry is a complete warning: isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, Uriah the Hittite's wife? Named father, named husband, both of them his own soldiers — Eliam and Uriah are both on the roll of his mighty men 2 Samuel 23:34 2 Samuel 23:39. He is told exactly who she belongs to and proceeds anyway.
David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in to him 2 Samuel 11:4.
Every verb in the account belongs to David: he saw, he sent, he took, he lay. Hers is a summons from a king who commands her husband, in a city where his word is law, and the text records no consent because it records no choice offered. Nathan's parable will settle the question of who is charged and who is the wronged party 2 Samuel 12:4. The note that she was purified from her uncleanness is not incidental either — it establishes that the child cannot be Uriah's.
The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, and said, "I am with child" 2 Samuel 11:5.
Five words are all she speaks in the chapter, and they set the rest of it in motion.
"The ark, Israel, and Judah, are staying in tents... Shall I then go into my house to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife?" 2 Samuel 11:11.
Uriah is recalled on a pretext, briefed on the war, and sent home with a gift — and he sleeps at the palace door with the servants. Pressed for a reason, the Hittite mercenary gives an answer more Israelite than the king's: while the ark and the armies are in the field, he will not take a night of comfort. Each attempt to use him tightens the trap, and the second night David gets him drunk and it still fails. A man of integrity cannot be made complicit even when he has no idea what is being asked of him — which leaves the king with one option, and he takes it in the morning.
settled What this mark means