1 In the spring of the year, the time when kings march out, David sent Joab out with his servants and all Israel. They laid waste the children of Ammon and besieged Rabbah, while David stayed in Jerusalem.
2 One evening David got up from his couch and was strolling on the roof of the palace, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very lovely to look at.
3 David sent to ask about the woman, and was told, "Is this not Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"
4 David sent messengers and took her. She came to him and he slept with her (she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness), and then she went back home.
5 The woman conceived, and she sent word to David: "I am with child."
6 David sent word to Joab: "Send Uriah the Hittite to me." So Joab sent Uriah to David.
7 Uriah came to him, and David asked him how Joab was, how the troops were, and how the war was going.
8 Then David told Uriah, "Go down to your house and wash your feet." Uriah left the palace, and a portion from the king followed him out.
9 But Uriah slept at the door of the palace with all his lord's servants and did not go down to his house.
10 David was told, "Uriah did not go down to his house." David asked Uriah, "Have you not just come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?"
11 Uriah told David, "The ark, and Israel and Judah, are living in huts, and my lord Joab and my lord's servants are camped out in the open field. Am I to go to my house to eat and drink and sleep with my wife? As you live, by your very life, I will not do it."
12 David told Uriah, "Stay here today as well, and tomorrow I will send you off." So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day and the day after.
13 David invited him, and he ate and drank in his presence, and David got him drunk. In the evening he went out to lie on his bed among his lord's servants, but he did not go down to his house.
14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah.
15 In the letter he wrote, "Station Uriah in the front of the hardest fighting, then pull back from him, so that he is struck down and dies."
16 While Joab was keeping watch on the city, he put Uriah at the place where he knew the strongest defenders were.
17 The men of the city came out and fought Joab; some of the troops, some of David's servants, fell, and Uriah the Hittite was killed too.
18 Joab sent David a full report of the fighting.
19 He ordered the messenger, "When you have finished giving the king the full report of the fighting,
20 the king may become angry and ask you, 'Why did you go so close to the city to fight? Did you not know they would shoot from the wall?
21 Who killed Abimelech son of Jerubbesheth? Was it not a woman who dropped an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez? Why did you go so close to the wall?' Then say, 'Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead too.'"
22 The messenger set off, came and told David everything Joab had sent him to say.
23 The messenger told David, "The men got the better of us and came out against us in the field, but we pushed them back to the entrance of the gate.
24 Then the archers shot at your servants from the wall. Some of the king's servants died, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead too."
25 David told the messenger, "Say this to Joab: 'Do not let this trouble you, for the sword devours one as well as another. Step up your attack on the city and tear it down.' And encourage him."
26 Uriah's wife heard that her husband Uriah was dead, and she mourned for her husband.
27 When the time of mourning was past, David sent and had her brought to his house; she became his wife and bore him a son. But what David had done was evil in the LORD's sight.