2 Samuel 11:1-4

David Commits Adultery with Bathsheba

11:1 In the spring of the year, at the time when kings ¹  normally conduct wars, ²  David sent out Joab with his officers ³  and the entire Israelite army. ⁴  They defeated the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed behind in Jerusalem. ⁵  11:2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of his palace. ⁶  From the roof he saw a woman bathing. Now this woman was very attractive. ⁷  11:3 So David sent someone to inquire about the woman. The messenger ⁸  said, “Isn’t this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?”

11:4 David sent some messengers to get her. ⁹  She came to him and he had sexual relations with her. ¹⁰  (Now at that time she was in the process of purifying herself from her menstrual uncleanness.) ¹¹  Then she returned to her home.

[11:1]  ¹ tc Codex Leningrad (B19A), on which BHS is based, has here “messengers” (הַמַּלְאכִים, hammal’khim), probably as the result of contamination from the occurrence of that word in v. 4. The present translation follows most Hebrew mss and the ancient versions, which read “kings” (הַמֶּלָאכִים, hammela’kim).

[11:1]  ² tn Heb “go out.”

[11:1]  ³ tn Heb “and his servants with him.”

[11:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “all Israel.”

[11:1]  ⁵ tn The disjunctive clause contrasts David’s inactivity with the army’s activity.

[11:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “on the roof of the house of the king.” So also in vv. 8, 9.

[11:2]  ⁷ tn The disjunctive clause highlights this observation and builds the tension of the story.

[11:3]  ⁸ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the messenger) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[11:4]  ⁹ tn Heb “and David sent messengers and he took her.”

[11:4]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “he lay with her” (so NASB, NRSV); TEV “he made love to her”; NIV, CEV, NLT “he slept with her.”

[11:4]  ¹¹ tn The parenthetical disjunctive clause further heightens the tension by letting the reader know that Bathsheba, having just completed her menstrual cycle, is ripe for conception. See P. K. McCarter, II Samuel (AB), 286. Since she just had her period, it will also be obvious to those close to the scene that Uriah, who has been away fighting, cannot be the father of the child.