2 Samuel 11:14 - Meaning and Application

When David’s plan to cover the child by making Uriah sleep with Bath-sheba failed, another evil thought took its place. In time, Uriah would certainly learn what had been done to him, and David feared revenge. So the devil put it into David’s heart to get rid of Uriah, thinking that then neither Uriah nor Bath-sheba would be any danger. What prosecution could there be if there were no accuser? And if Uriah were gone, Bath-sheba might, if David wanted, be his forever.

Adultery has often led to murder, and one sin is then covered by another. That is why the first steps into sin should be feared, because no one knows where they will end. David decided in his heart, which seems almost impossible to believe, that Uriah must die. That innocent, brave, noble man, who was willing to die for his king’s honor, must die by his king’s hand. David had sinned, Bath-sheba had sinned, both against him, and so David decided that Uriah must die.

Is this the man whose heart struck him because he had cut off Saul’s robe? How changed he was. Is this the one who once carried out justice for all his people? How could he now do such a wicked thing? See how fleshly lusts, sinful desires of the body, fight against the soul and bring ruin in that battle. They dull the mind, harden the heart, burn away conscience, and take away a person’s sense of honor and justice. Whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks understanding and destroys himself (Proverbs 6:32). And as the adulterer seeks secrecy with his eye, so the murderer seeks it with his hand (Job 24:14-15). Works of darkness hate the light.

When David bravely killed Goliath, he did it openly and was glad to speak of it. But when he shamefully plotted Uriah’s death, it had to be done in secret, because he was ashamed, and rightly so. Who would do something he does not dare to own? The devil, who first worked like a poisonous serpent in David’s heart, then worked like a crafty serpent to show him how to carry it out. David did not arrange it the same way Absalom, David’s son, later killed Amnon, or the way Ahab killed Naboth by hiring false witnesses. He did it by putting Uriah in the enemy’s reach, a method that might seem less hateful to conscience and to the world, since soldiers are often exposed to danger.

If Uriah had not been placed in that dangerous spot, someone else would have been. He was, as we say, given only a chance for his life. If he fought bravely, he might survive. If he died, it would be on the field of honor, where a soldier would choose to die. And yet none of that changes the fact that this was deliberate murder, planned ahead of time.

Orders were sent to Joab, David’s army commander, to put Uriah in the front of the hardest fighting and then pull back from him, leaving him to the enemy (2 Samuel 11:14-15). This was David’s plan to get Uriah killed, and it worked just as he wanted. Many things made this murder worse.

First, it was carefully planned. David took time to think it over, and even though he had time to reconsider, since he wrote a letter about it, and even though he had time afterward to cancel the order before it was carried out, he still went through with it. Second, he sent the letter by Uriah himself, which was as cruel and base as possible, making Uriah carry the orders for his own death. What a shocking thing, that David could hate Uriah and yet trust him enough to carry letters whose contents he must not know.

Third, David took advantage of Uriah’s own courage and loyalty to his king and country, qualities that should have earned him the highest praise and reward. If Uriah had not been so ready to put himself in danger, perhaps he was too important a man for Joab to expose so easily. To turn that noble spirit against himself was a hateful act of ingratitude. Fourth, many others were drawn into the guilt. Joab, the commander, who should have prized the lives of his soldiers, especially his best men, had to carry it out. He, and all who pulled back from Uriah when they should have supported him, became guilty of his death.

Fifth, Uriah did not die alone. The men under his command were in danger with him, and in fact that is what happened. Some of the people, even David’s servants, as they are called here to make David’s sin look even worse because he was so willing to spend their lives, fell with him (2 Samuel 11:17). Worse still, this wicked plan could have harmed the whole army and even forced them to stop the siege. Sixth, it would delight the Ammonites, the enemies of God and Israel. It would give them great pleasure. David had once prayed that he himself might not fall into human hands or flee before his enemies (2 Samuel 24:13-14), yet here he handed his servant Uriah over to the Ammonites, though Uriah had done no wrong.

Joab carried out the order. In the next attack on the city, Uriah was put in the most dangerous place. He was led to expect that if the enemy drove him back, Joab would help him. Trusting that support, he advanced bravely, but no help came, the fighting became too fierce, and he was killed in the battle (2 Samuel 11:16-17). It is strange that Joab would do such a thing just because of a letter, without even knowing the reason.

Perhaps he thought Uriah had done some great wrong, and that David had sent for him to investigate it. Then, because David did not want to punish him openly, he may have assumed this was David’s way of putting him to death. Or perhaps Joab, who himself had been guilty of bloodshed, was pleased to see David fall into the same guilt, and was glad to serve him in it so that David would continue to favor him. People who have done wrong often like to see others, especially respected people, doing wrong too, because it makes their own sin feel less shameful. Or David may have known that Joab had a grudge against Uriah and would be glad to get revenge on him. Otherwise, Joab knew how to resist the king’s orders when he had reason, as later passages show (2 Samuel 19:5; 2 Samuel 24:3).

Then Joab sent word to David about what had happened. At once a messenger was sent with news of this new loss and disgrace (2 Samuel 11:18). To soften the matter, Joab assumed David would seem to be angry about the poor judgment shown in the attack, and would ask why they came so close to the wall (2 Samuel 11:20). Did they not know that Abimelech died that way? (2 Samuel 11:21). The story was already known from Judges 9:53, and it is likely that book was already being read as part of the sacred history in Samuel’s day. Even the soldiers knew their Bible history, and could quickly quote a scriptural example to warn themselves not to make the same mistake that had once proved fatal.

He quietly tells the messenger to soften the report by adding that Uriah the Hittite was dead too. That wording was broad enough to hint to the messenger, and through him to others, that David would be glad to hear it. For hidden murder has a way of coming to light. When people do such shameful things, they must expect to be mocked and rebuked for them, even by those beneath them.

The messenger delivered his report just as he was told (2 Samuel 11:22-24). He says the besieged men came out against them into the field, making the attackers seem brave and steady, while his own side pressed them hard and drove them back to the city gate. Then he ends with a brief mention of the men struck down by arrows from the wall. Among the dead, he names some of the king’s servants, and especially Uriah the Hittite, an officer of some importance, who stood first in the list of the slain.

David receives the news with secret satisfaction (2 Samuel 11:25). He does not want Joab to feel troubled, because David himself is not troubled. He does not blame Joab’s judgment, and he does not think they did wrong by getting so close to the wall. Now that Uriah is out of the way, David treats the rest as settled. He makes light of the loss with an excuse: the sword kills one person as well as another, and it was just the chance of war.

He then tells Joab to press the battle harder next time, even though David’s own sin was weakening their cause and drawing down God’s displeasure. In a short time, he marries the widow. She kept the usual period of mourning only as long as custom allowed (2 Samuel 11:26), and then David brought her into his house as his wife. She bore him a son. Uriah’s planned revenge was stopped by his death, but the child’s birth so soon after the marriage exposed the crime. Sin has a way of bringing shame with it.

But that was not the worst part. The thing David had done displeased the Lord. The whole matter of Uriah, as it is called in (1 Kings 15:5), including adultery, lying, murder, and this final marriage, was all offensive to God. David may have pleased himself, but he displeased God. God sees and hates sin in his own people. In fact, the closer people are to God in outward profession, the more their sins offend him, because there is more ingratitude, betrayal, and dishonor in them than in others.

Let no one excuse sin by pointing to David’s example. Those who sin as he did will also come under God’s displeasure as he did. So let us live in reverent fear and not sin, and especially not follow the pattern of his transgression.