²⁴ He went to the king and said, “My sheep-shearers are now at work. Would the king and his servants please come to celebrate the occasion with me?”

⁶ Ishmael left Mizpah to meet them, weeping as he went. When he reached them, he said, “Oh, come and see what has happened to Gedaliah!”

⁷ But as soon as they were all inside the town, Ishmael and his men killed all but ten of them and threw their bodies into a cistern.

⁸ Then he told Uriah, “Go on home and relax.^[a]” David even sent a gift to Uriah after he had left the palace. ⁹ But Uriah didn’t go home. He slept that night at the palace entrance with the king’s palace guard.

¹⁰ When David heard that Uriah had not gone home, he summoned him and asked, “What’s the matter? Why didn’t you go home last night after being away for so long?”

¹¹ Uriah replied, “The Ark and the armies of Israel and Judah are living in tents,^[b] and Joab and my master’s men are camping in the open fields. How could I go home to wine and dine and sleep with my wife? I swear that I would never do such a thing.”

¹² “Well, stay here today,” David told him, “and tomorrow you may return to the army.” So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day and the next. ¹³ Then David invited him to dinner and got him drunk. But even then he couldn’t get Uriah to go home to his wife. Again he slept at the palace entrance with the king’s palace guard.

David Arranges for Uriah’s Death

¹⁴ So the next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and gave it to Uriah to deliver. ¹⁵ The letter instructed Joab, “Station Uriah on the front lines where the battle is fiercest. Then pull back so that he will be killed.”