David and Bathsheba
This is one of the Bible stories about temptation. For a story in which someone refuses a similar invitation, see Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. For verses on Forgiveness, see that topic page. Text: World English Bible (public domain).
In 2 Samuel 11–12, King David sees Bathsheba bathing, sends for her though she is married to Uriah, and then arranges Uriah’s death to hide the pregnancy. The prophet Nathan confronts him, and David confesses. The story begins with a private look and becomes an abuse of power.
The story
It was the time of year when kings went out to war. David sent Joab and the army to fight the Ammonites, but he stayed in Jerusalem. One evening he rose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king’s house. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. She was very beautiful.
He sent and asked who she was. The answer should have stopped him: “Isn’t this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, Uriah the Hittite’s wife?” David sent messengers and took her. She came to him, he lay with her, and she went home. Later she sent word that she was pregnant.
David tried to cover it. He called Uriah back from the battle and urged him to go down to his own house. Uriah would not. The ark and the army were in the field, he said; he would not go home to eat and drink and lie with his wife. David kept him another day and made him drunk. Still Uriah slept at the door of the king’s house with the servants and did not go home.
The next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by Uriah’s own hand. It said to place Uriah at the front of the hardest fighting and then withdraw, so that he would be struck and die. Uriah died. After Bathsheba’s time of mourning, David brought her to his house and she became his wife and bore him a son. “But the thing that David had done displeased Yahweh.”
God sent the prophet Nathan, who told David a story about a rich man who took a poor man’s only lamb. David burned with anger and said the man deserved to die. Nathan said, “You are the man!” He named the taking of Uriah’s wife and Uriah’s death. David answered, “I have sinned against Yahweh.” Nathan said the Lord had put away his sin and he would not die, but the child would die, and the sword would not depart from David’s house. David confesses, and what follows is both mercy and a lasting cost.
Key verses
2 Samuel 11:2. At evening, David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king’s house. From the roof, he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to look at.
2 Samuel 12:7. Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what Yahweh, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul.
2 Samuel 12:13. David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against Yahweh.” Nathan said to David, “Yahweh also has put away your sin. You will not die.
Today
David’s first step was a look from a private rooftop. Today that rooftop is often a phone — an image, a profile, a video that can be opened in secret and then pursued. The story does not stop at desire. David used royal power to inquire, to send for Bathsheba, and then to use the army to erase her husband. That is abuse of power, not only a private moral lapse.
Nathan’s parable still works because it is easy to be outraged at someone else’s theft and slow to recognize our own. David’s confession is real, and so are the wounds that followed. The modern warning is double: notice the look before it becomes a plan, and notice when power — at work, in a family, or in a relationship — is being used to take what is not yours and to hide it.