David Commits Adultery with Bathsheba

11 In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.^(A)

² It happened, late one afternoon when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful.^{(B) 3} David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, “This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.”^{(C) 4} So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house.^{(D) 5} The woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”^(E)

⁶ So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. ⁷ When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the people fared and how the war was going. ⁸ Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king.^{(F) 9} But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord and did not go down to his house. ¹⁰ When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?” ¹¹ Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths,^[a] and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? As you live and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing.”^{(G) 12} Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day,^{[b] 13} David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk, and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.^(H)

David Has Uriah Killed

¹⁴ In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah.^{(I) 15} In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.”^{(J) 16} As Joab kept watch over the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant warriors. ¹⁷ The men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the servants of David among the people fell. Uriah the Hittite was killed as well.^{(K) 18} Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting, ¹⁹ and he instructed the messenger, “When you have finished telling the king all the news about the fighting, ²⁰ if the king’s anger rises and if he says to you, ‘Why did you go so near the city to fight? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall? ²¹ Who killed Abimelech son of Jerubbaal?^[c] Did not a woman throw an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez? Why did you go so near the wall?’ then you shall say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead, too.’ ”^(L)

²² So the messenger went and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell. ²³ The messenger said to David, “The men gained an advantage over us and came out against us in the field, but we drove 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 are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.” ²⁵ David said to the messenger, “Thus you shall say to Joab, ‘Do not let this matter trouble you, for the sword devours now one and now another; press your attack on the city and overthrow it.’ And encourage him.”

²⁶ When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him.^{(M) 27} When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son.

Nathan Condemns David

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord,^(N)

The Fall of Jerusalem

²¹ In the twelfth year of our exile, in the tenth month, on the fifth day of the month, someone who had escaped from Jerusalem came to me and said, “The city has fallen.”^{(A) 22} Now the hand of the Lord had been upon me the evening before the fugitive came, and he opened my mouth when the fugitive came in the morning, so my mouth was opened, and I was no longer unable to speak.^(B)

The Survivors in Judah

²³ The word of the Lord came to me: ²⁴ Mortal, the inhabitants of these waste places in the land of Israel keep saying, “Abraham was only one man, yet he got possession of the land, but we are many; the land is surely given us to possess.”^{(C) 25} Therefore say to them: Thus says the Lord God: You eat flesh with the blood and lift up your eyes to your idols and shed blood; shall you then possess the land?^{(D) 26} You depend on your swords, you commit abominations, and each of you defiles his neighbor’s wife; shall you then possess the land?^{(E) 27} Say this to them: Thus says the Lord God: As I live, surely those who are in the waste places shall fall by the sword, and those who are in the open field I will give to the wild animals to be devoured, and those who are in strongholds and in caves shall die by pestilence.^{(F) 28} I will make the land a desolation and a waste, and its proud might shall come to an end, and the mountains of Israel shall be so desolate that no one will pass through.^{(G) 29} Then they shall know that I am the Lord, when I have made the land a desolation and a waste because of all their abominations that they have committed.^(H)

³⁰ As for you, mortal, your people who talk together about you by the walls and at the doors of the houses say to one another, each to a neighbor, “Come and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord.” ³¹ They come to you as people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear your words, but they will not obey them. For flattery is on their lips, but their heart is set on their gain.^{[a](I) 32} To them you are like a singer of love songs,^[b] one who has a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument; they hear what you say, but they will not do it. ³³ When this comes—and come it will!—then they shall know that a prophet has been among them.^(J)

Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch

²⁶ Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south^[a] to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.)^{(A) 27} So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship^{(B) 28} and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. ²⁹ Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.”^{(C) 30} So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” ³¹ He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. ³² Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:

³⁴ The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” ³⁵ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.^{(E) 36} As they were going along the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”^{[b](F) 38} He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip^[c] baptized him. ³⁹ When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more and went on his way rejoicing.^(G)

Sorrow Will Turn into Joy

¹⁶ “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.”^{(A) 17} Then some of his disciples said to one another, “What does he mean by saying to us, ‘A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me,’ and ‘because I am going to the Father’?” ¹⁸ They said, “What does he mean by this ‘a little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.” ¹⁹ Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, “Are you discussing among yourselves what I meant when I said, ‘A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’? ²⁰ Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. ²¹ When a woman is in labor, she has pain because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world.^{(B) 22} So you have pain now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.^(C)