David Sins with Bathsheba

11 In the spring, when the kings normally went out to war, David sent out Joab, his servants, and all the Israelites. They destroyed the Ammonites and attacked the city of Rabbah. But David stayed in Jerusalem. ² One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof^[a] of his palace. While he was on the roof, he saw a woman bathing. She was very beautiful. ³ So David sent his servants to find out who she was. A servant answered, “That woman is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam. She is the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” ⁴ So David sent messengers to bring Bathsheba to him. When she came to him, he had sexual relations with her. (Now Bathsheba had purified herself from her monthly period.) Then she went back to her house. ⁵ But Bathsheba became pregnant and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”

⁶ So David sent a message to Joab: “Send Uriah the Hittite to me.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. ⁷ When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were, and how the war was going. ⁸ Then David said to Uriah, “Go home and rest.”

So Uriah left the palace, and the king sent a gift to him. ⁹ But Uriah did not go home. Instead, he slept outside the door of the palace as all the king’s officers did.

¹⁰ The officers told David, “Uriah did not go home.”

Then David said to Uriah, “You came from a long trip. Why didn’t you go home?”

¹¹ Uriah said to him, “The Ark and the soldiers of Israel and Judah are staying in tents. My master Joab and his officers are camping out in the fields. It isn’t right for me to go home to eat and drink and have sexual relations with my wife!”

¹² David said to Uriah, “Stay here today. Tomorrow I’ll send you back to the battle.” So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day and the next. ¹³ Then David called Uriah to come to see him, so Uriah ate and drank with David. David made Uriah drunk, but he still did not go home. That evening Uriah again slept with the king’s officers.

¹⁴ The next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by Uriah. ¹⁵ In the letter David wrote, “Put Uriah on the front lines where the fighting is worst and leave him there alone. Let him be killed in battle.”

¹⁶ Joab watched the city and saw where its strongest defenders were and put Uriah there. ¹⁷ When the men of the city came out to fight against Joab, some of David’s men were killed. And Uriah the Hittite was one of them.

¹⁸ Then Joab sent David a complete account of the war. ¹⁹ Joab told the messenger, “Tell King David what happened in the war. ²⁰ After you finish, the king may be angry and ask, ‘Why did you go so near the city to fight? Didn’t you know they would shoot arrows from the city wall? ²¹ Do you remember who killed Abimelech son of Jerub-Besheth?^[b] It was a woman on the city wall. She threw a large stone for grinding grain on Abimelech and killed him there in Thebez. Why did you go so near the wall?’ If King David asks that, tell him, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite also died.’”

²² The messenger left and went to David and told him everything Joab had told him to say. ²³ The messenger told David, “The men of Ammon were winning. They came out and attacked us in the field, but we fought them back to the city gate. ²⁴ The archers on the city wall shot at your servants, and some of your men were killed. Your servant Uriah the Hittite also died.”

²⁵ David said to the messenger, “Say this to Joab: ‘Don’t be upset about this. The sword kills everyone the same. Make a stronger attack against the city and capture it.’ Encourage Joab with these words.”

²⁶ When Bathsheba heard that her husband was dead, she cried for him. ²⁷ After she finished her time of sadness, David sent servants to bring her to his house. She became David’s wife and gave birth to his son, but the Lord did not like what David had done.

David’s Son Dies

12 The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to David, he said, “There were two men in a city. One was rich, but the other was poor. ² The rich man had many sheep and cattle. ³ But the poor man had nothing except one little female lamb he had bought. The poor man fed the lamb, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food and drank from his cup and slept in his arms. The lamb was like a daughter to him.

⁴ “Then a traveler stopped to visit the rich man. The rich man wanted to feed the traveler, but he didn’t want to take one of his own sheep or cattle. Instead, he took the lamb from the poor man and cooked it for his visitor.”

⁵ David became very angry at the rich man. He said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this should die! ⁶ He must pay for the lamb four times for doing such a thing. He had no mercy!”

⁷ Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I appointed you king of Israel and saved you from Saul. ⁸ I gave you his kingdom and his wives. And I made you king of Israel and Judah. And if that had not been enough, I would have given you even more. ⁹ So why did you ignore the Lord’s command? Why did you do what he says is wrong? You killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword of the Ammonites and took his wife to be your wife! ¹⁰ Now there will always be people in your family who will die by a sword, because you did not respect me; you took the wife of Uriah the Hittite for yourself!’

¹¹ “This is what the Lord says: ‘I am bringing trouble to you from your own family. While you watch, I will take your wives from you and give them to someone who is very close to you. He will have sexual relations with your wives, and everyone will know it. ¹² You had sexual relations with Bathsheba in secret, but I will do this so all the people of Israel can see it.’”

¹³ Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

Nathan answered, “The Lord has taken away your sin. You will not die. ¹⁴ But what you did caused the Lord’s enemies to lose all respect for him. For this reason the son who was born to you will die.”

¹⁵ Then Nathan went home. And the Lord caused the son of David and Bathsheba, Uriah’s widow, to be very sick. ¹⁶ David prayed to God for the baby. David fasted and went into his house and stayed there, lying on the ground all night. ¹⁷ The elders of David’s family came to him and tried to pull him up from the ground, but he refused to get up or to eat food with them.

¹⁸ On the seventh day the baby died. David’s servants were afraid to tell him that the baby was dead. They said, “Look, we tried to talk to David while the baby was alive, but he refused to listen to us. If we tell him the baby is dead, he may do something awful.”

¹⁹ When David saw his servants whispering, he knew that the baby was dead. So he asked them, “Is the baby dead?”

They answered, “Yes, he is dead.”

²⁰ Then David got up from the floor, washed himself, put lotions on, and changed his clothes. Then he went into the Lord’s house to worship. After that, he went home and asked for something to eat. His servants gave him some food, and he ate.

²¹ David’s servants said to him, “Why are you doing this? When the baby was still alive, you fasted and you cried. Now that the baby is dead, you get up and eat food.”

²² David said, “While the baby was still alive, I fasted, and I cried. I thought, ‘Who knows? Maybe the Lord will feel sorry for me and let the baby live.’ ²³ But now that the baby is dead, why should I fast? I can’t bring him back to life. Someday I will go to him, but he cannot come back to me.”

The Beginning of Sin

3 Now the snake was the most clever of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day the snake said to the woman, “Did God really say that you must not eat fruit from any tree in the garden?”

² The woman answered the snake, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden. ³ But God told us, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden. You must not even touch it, or you will die.’”

⁴ But the snake said to the woman, “You will not die. ⁵ God knows that if you eat the fruit from that tree, you will learn about good and evil and you will be like God!”

⁶ The woman saw that the tree was beautiful, that its fruit was good to eat, and that it would make her wise. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some of the fruit to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

⁷ Then, it was as if their eyes were opened. They realized they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made something to cover themselves.

⁸ Then they heard the Lord God walking in the garden during the cool part of the day, and the man and his wife hid from the Lord God among the trees in the garden.

⁹ But if we confess our sins, he will forgive our sins, because we can trust God to do what is right. He will cleanse us from all the wrongs we have done.