What is the story of David and Bathsheba?

David's grievous failure in his adulterous association with Bathsheba, followed by his shameful and treacherous behaviour towards her husband Uriah, present the blackest spot in David's life. His fall was the fall of Eve in the Garden of Eden. She saw; she coveted; she took. David saw the beautiful woman; he coveted her; he invited her into his house and seduced her. When Bathsheba eventually confided to David that she was pregnant he acted in the most despicable manner towards Uriah. He arranged for Uriah to come home hoping that his love for his wife would result in David's child being attributed to Uriah. This failed because Uriah was an upright and loyal soldier. David tried to get Uriah drunk that Uriah might go to Bathsheba. That failed too. David decided on extreme measures. When Uriah returned to the battle that was being waged, Joab, David's general, was ordered to place him where the fighting was most dangerous. Joab obeyed and as David hoped and anticipated Uriah was slain. David was an accessory to murder. David, when he received news of Uriah's death, took Bathsheba for his wife after her period of mourning for her husband had been completed. All was well. Uriah was dead and Bathsheba was David's wife. But was all well? David had cunningly and heartlessly achieved his evil purposes but he had forgotten one important consideration — God! What David had done was evil in the sight of Jehovah.

Nathan the prophet was sent by God to David and by telling him a simple story of selfishness and unfeeling greed he was able to convict David of his sinful behaviour. “Thou art the man”struck right into the heart of David's conscience. David immediately confessed his awful guilt. Nathan was able to tell David that God had forgiven him but governmental consequences would result because of his gross failure. David had despised Jehovah and the enemies of Jehovah had been given an opportunity to blaspheme Him. David was to feel God's government in his own house and the child that would be born to Bathsheba would die. The sins were forgiven, but the consequences of them would follow nevertheless.

Evident idleness led to his shameful fall, for he rose from his bed in the evening while it was still light enough for him to see from his rooftop a woman bathing herself (v.2). Honest self-judgment should have turned his eyes and his thoughts away immediately, but he was allured by her beauty. Inquiring about her, he found she was another man's wife. Why did this fact not stop him? He already had seven wives. He knew the law of God, that an adulterer should be put to death (Deut.22:23-24), but took advantage of his own position as king to break over the law of God. The woman's husband, Uriah, was a soldier in Joab's army, therefore away from home, and David sent messengers to bring her to him. After their shameful guilt of adultery, she returned to her own home (v.4).

David may have hoped that this was the end of the matter, but God intervened in His righteous government. Bathsheba sent word to David that she had become pregnant (v.5). Alarmed at this, David conceived a subtle plan to keep his sin from being discovered. He sent orders to Joab to send Uriah back to Jerusalem. Uriah may have wondered what reason David had for bringing him back, for David only inquired how the battle was going, then told Uriah to go to his house and wash his feet, for a soldier's feet need special care. When Uriah left, David sent a present after him (v.8). Whether Uriah received it did not go there, but stayed overnight with others of David's servants in the servants' quarters.

David's desperation then gave birth to the awful thought of plotting to have Uriah killed. Uriah was given a letter to carry to Joab that was intended to seal his own doom. This was the reward of his devotedness to the cause of Israel! David did not even try to veil his intentions concerning Uriah: he told Joab to place him in the front line of the fiercest battle, then have all others withdraw, so that Uriah would be left as the only target for the enemy, and thus be killed (v.15). Not only would David make himself guilty of the murder of Uriah, but he would implicate Joab and others in this too. Joab of course would say he had to obey his master, but in this case he ought to have had a conscience toward God that would not allow him to obey David.

And mark the fearful lengths to which David was carried in the commission of evil. Having sacrificed his character to indulge nature, he endeavours to make Uriah a cloak to screen him from the public eye. His reputation must be maintained at all cost. He tries kindness, but in vain; he makes the wronged and dishonoured Uriah drunk, but to no purpose; at last, he murders him by the sword of the children of Ammon. How dreadful!

On receiving news of the death of Urijah, killed close to the wall of Rabbah along with certain of the “mighty men,” David sends this message to Joab: “Let not this thing displease thee, for the sword devours one as well as another” (v. 25). Having achieved his purpose, David reassures his accomplice and then takes Bathsheba into his house, and she becomes his wife and bears him a son.

The story, instead of ending, only is beginning at this point. At the end of this chapter, so full of corruption and shame, we find a little expression, the only thing David had not thought of and the only one he ought to have remembered: “But the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of Jehovah.”

“And it came to pass … that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel.” The lesson he had learned at the end of 2 Samuel 10 ought to have again set him at the head of his army. Such is the beginning, often so insignificant, of a fall. Once and again God reproves His servant; he fails and God restores him; he falls again and God allows him to follow his own path. David remains behind at Jerusalem; a little idleness detaches him from the interests of the war. A passer-by appears on the scene: this traveler is lust. The king's gaze is attracted by an object that seems desirable to him; his flesh is conquered; the authority at his disposition becomes servant to his desire; the evil is consummated; the Lord's anointed is an adulterer!

At the time when kings go forth to war, and there being war, David remains at Jerusalem. These things which Scripture puts together tell their own tale as so put together. David was seeking ease and engirding himself when circumstances called for activity and energy. What a contrast with the behavior of the Hittite soldier, whom for his faithfulness he presently condemns to death! "The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord camp in the open field: and shall I go to my house?" What a wound for the conscience from this Hittite sword! David is at his house, and on his couch, and then walking upon the roof of his house, when he is snared through his eyes. The woman he finds is a wife, and of one of his own heroic men now at the war for Israel and for him; but nothing stops him. He is a king, and everything yields to him with the facility which is the curse of power. She returns — purified, alas! — to her dishonored home.

But the consequences follow, and to escape them sin follows sin. He sends for Uriah, plays the deceiver, is balked by the devotedness and honesty that contrast so manifestly with his own conduct here, and at last, wrought into madness by the thought of his own shame and what may come of it, sends back the unsuspecting man with his own death-warrant in his hand, to be put into execution by the unscrupulous man he knows so well, and who is to serve him by it.

He has Urijah brought from the camp and hypocritically asks him about Joab, the people, and the war (v. 7). Did he really care? Were not all his thoughts directed toward the single object of hiding his sin? Urijah, whom the king sent to his wife, instead slept with all the king's other servants at the palace door. “Why,” asks the king, “didst thou not go down to thy house?” What a beautiful answer Urijah gives: “The ark, and Israel, and Judah abide in booths; and my lord Joab, and the servants of my lord, are encamped in the open fields: shall I then go into my house!” (v. 11). He had learned this devotion in the school of David himself. In 2 Samuel 7:2 did not David say to Nathan: “See now, I dwell in a house of cedars, and the ark of God dwells under curtains”? This godly desire and this testimony on David's part had been received and had borne fruit among his attendants. Urijah speaks like the David of earlier days. What an unwitting reproach he addresses to his respected master! The man is simple and noble in heart. He says, God is calling me to perform a service, an activity for Himself, and as long as He does not rest I cannot rest.

The next chapter (2 Samuel 11) introduces the first dark shade since David came to the throne. "And it came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah." There was a bitter vengeance. "But David tarried still at Jerusalem." I doubt that the soul of David was thoroughly with the Lord either in taking his ease, or in wreaking the vengeance that had been poured on the Ammonite. At all events the history that follows is too painful for us to dwell much on at this time. It need only be briefly touched on. His heart was ensnared, and sin soon followed — the gravest sin, more particularly in such a one as David. It was followed, as sin usually is, by the worst efforts to cover all, and he who did the wrong with Bath-sheba tried ineffectually to conceal his sin by having home his faithful servant Uriah; and when this failed to gloss over his own wickedness, he devised the means by which Uriah should be brought to his grave. Thus did the fallen king still more pursue, and now without a check, the course of wickedness on which he had entered. Oh, what sin and shame for David!

And sin follows sin. The offspring of sin is sin. What cunningness and deception followed. But honest Uriah frustrates his wicked plan. Did not David's conscience smart under it? No doubt it was deadened. Then he becomes actually the murderer of Uriah the Hittite. When the news of the death of Uriah is announced to David, hypocrisy is crowned in the words of the King, "Let not this thing displease thee, for the sword devoureth one as another." And here we read still the dreadful record, the sin of David and how God dealt with it.