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          DASV: 2 Samuel 11    

1 In the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to
war, David sent out Joab with his officers and the entire
Israelite army. They defeated the Ammonites, and besieged
Rabbah. But David stayed back at Jerusalem.
2 One evening David got up off his couch, and walked around on
the roof of the king's palace. From the roof he saw a woman
bathing. The woman was very good looking.
3 David sent someone to inquire about the woman. The person
reported, "Isn't she Bath-sheba, the daughter of Eliam, the
wife of Uriah the Hittite?"
4 So David sent messengers to get her. She came to him and he
slept with her. Now she had been purified from her menstrual
uncleanness. Then she returned home.
5 The woman conceived and told David, "I'm pregnant."

6 So David sent to Joab, requesting, "Send me Uriah the Hittite."
So Joab sent Uriah to David.
7 When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab and the troops
were doing, and how the war was going.
8 Then David told Uriah, "Go down to your house, and relax washing
your feet." After Uriah left the king's house, the king sent him a gift.
9 But Uriah slept at the door of the king's palace with all the servants
of his lord, and did not go to his home.
10 When they told David, "Uriah didn't go down to his home," David
asked Uriah, "Haven't you just come from a journey? Why didn't you
go home?"
11 Uriah replied to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah are staying
in tents, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camped in
the open field. Should I go to my house, eat and drink and sleep with
my wife? As you live, I swear I will not do such a thing."
12 Then David said to Uriah, "Stay here today, and tomorrow I will send
you back." So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day and the next.
13 David invited him to eat and drink with him, and he got him drunk.
But in the evening Uriah went out to lie on his bed with the servants
of his lord, but still would not go down to his house.

14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand
of Uriah.
15 He wrote in the letter, "Set Uriah on the front lines where the battle
is the fiercest, and pull back from him, so that he may be struck down
and killed."
16 Joab kept watch over the city, he assigned Uriah to a place where he
knew that the valiant warriors were.
17 When the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, some of the
servants of David fell there, and Uriah the Hittite also died.

18 Then Joab sent and reported to David all the news concerning
the battle.
19 He instructed the messenger, "When you have finished telling the
king all the news about the battle,
20 if the king gets angry, and says to you, 'Why did you go so close to
the city to fight? Didn't you realize they would shoot from the wall?
21 Wasn't Abimelech the son of Jerubaal killed when a woman cast an
upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez?
Why did you go so close to the wall?' Then tell him, 'Your servant
Uriah the Hittite is dead too.'"

22 So the messenger went and told David all that Joab had told him
to say.
23 Then the messenger said to David, "The men prevailed against us,
and came out against us in the field. But we forced them back to the
entrance of the gate.
24 The archers shot at your servants from the wall. Some of the king's
servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead too."
25 Then David said to the messenger, "Tell Joab, 'Don't let this matter
bother you, for the sword devours one as well as another. Press your
attack more strongly against the city, and overthrow it.' Encourage
him with this message."

26 When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead,
she mourned for her husband.
27 After the period of mourning was over, David sent and brought
her home to his palace, and she became his wife and bore him a son.
But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.

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