properly · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
David
דָּוִ֛דda.Vid
H1732
David · proper noun, a man's name
wrote
וַיִּכְתֹּ֥בvai.yikh.To
H3789
to grave · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
letter
סֵ֖פֶרSe.fer
H5612
properly · noun, common masculine singular absolute
Joab
יוֹאָ֑בyo.'Av
H3097
Joab · proper noun, a man's name
sent
וַיִּשְׁלַ֖חvai.yish.Lach
H7971
to send away · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
hand
בְּיַ֥דbe.Yad
H3027
a hand (the open one (indicating power · preposition + noun, common both genders singular construct
Uriah
אוּרִיָּֽה'u.ri.Yah
H223
Urijah · proper noun, a man's name
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
1 Kings 21:8-10 So she wrote letters in Ahab’s name, and sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto the elders and to the nobles that were in his…
Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Psalms 19:13 Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from…
Psalms 52:2 Thy tongue deviseth mischiefs; like a sharp razor, working deceitfully.
Psalms 62:9 Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity.
Jeremiah 9:1-4 Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
Micah 7:3-5 That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth his mi…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 2 Samuel 11:14–end
When David's project of fathering the child upon Uriah himself failed, so that, in process of time, Uriah would certainly know the wrong that had been done him, to prevent the fruits of his revenge, the devil put it into David's heart to take him off, and then neither he nor Bath-sheba would be in any danger (what prosecution could there be when there was no prosecutor?), suggesting further that, when Uriah was out of the way, Bath-sheba might, if he pleased, be his own for ever. Adulteries have often occasioned murders, and one wickedness must be covered and secured with another. The beginnings of sin are therefore to be dreaded; for who knows where they will end? It is resolved in David's…
URIAH SLAIN. (Sa2 11:14-27)
David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah . . . Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle--The various arts and stratagems by which the king tried to cajole Uriah, till at last he resorted to the horrid crime of murder--the cold-blooded cruelty of despatching the letter by the hands of the gallant but much-wronged soldier himself, the enlistment of Joab to be a partaker of his sin, the heartless affectation of mourning, and the indecent haste of his marriage with Bath-sheba--have left an indelible stain upon the character of David, and exhibit a painfully humiliating proof of the awful lengths to which the best of men may go when th…
David wrote a letter - This was the sum of treachery and villany. He made this most noble man the carrier of letters which prescribed the mode in which he was to be murdered. This case some have likened to that of Bellerophon, son of Glaucus, king of Ephyra, who being in the court of Proetus, king of the Argives, his queen Antia, or as others Sthenoboea, fell violently in love with him; but he, refusing to gratify her criminal passions, was in revenge accused by her to Proetus her husband, as having attempted to corrupt her. Proetus not willing to violate the laws of hospitality by slaying him in his own house, wrote letters to Jobates, king of Lycia, the father of Sthenoboea, and sent them…
The Church Fathers
Thus David, who in the judgment of Him who chose him was well pleasing to Him in almost all his deeds, as soon as the weight of pressure was removed, broke out into a swelling sore, and, having been as a laxly running one in his appetite for the woman, became as a cruelly hard one in the slaughter of the man; and he who had before known pitifully how to spare the bad learnt afterwards, without impediment of hesitation, to pant even for the death of the good. For, indeed, previously he had been unwilling to smite his captured persecutor; and afterwards, with loss to his wearied army, he destroyed even his devoted soldier. And in truth his crime would have snatched him farther away from the number of the elect, had not scourges called him back to pardon.
Surely, it is better to believe that the apostle Paul wrote something untruthful than that the apostle Peter did not act uprightly. If that is so, then let us say something abhorrent, that it is better to believe that the gospel lies than that Christ was denied by Peter; and that the book of Kings [Samuel] lies than that a great prophet, so eminently chosen by the Lord God, committed adultery by coveting and seducing another man's wife and was guilty of a revolting murder by killing her husband. On the contrary, I will read the holy Scripture with complete certainty and confidence in its truth, founded as it is on the highest summit of divine authority; and I would rather learn from it that people were truly approved or corrected or condemned than allow my trust in the divine Word to be everywhere undermined because I fear to believe that the human conduct of certain excellent and praiseworthy persons is sometimes worthy of blame.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Chronicles, Books of — The two books were originally one. They bore the title in the Massoretic Hebrew Dibre hayyamim, i.e., “Acts of the Days.” This title was rendered by Jerome in his Latin version “Chronicon,” and hence…
David — Beloved, the eighth and youngest son of Jesse, a citizen of Bethlehem. His father seems to have been a man in humble life. His mother’s name is not recorded. Some think she was the Nahash of 2 Sam.…
Writing — The art of writing must have been known in the time of the early Pharaohs. Moses is commanded “to write for a memorial in a book” (Ex. 17:14) a record of the attack of Amalek. Frequent mention is…
Ingratitude · .David to Uriah — .David to Uriah
Lasciviousness · .David — .David
Letters · Written by David to Joab — Written by David to Joab
Uriah · .David compasses the — .David compasses the
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
And it came to pass in the morning,.... When David was informed that Uriah did not go to his own house, but slept with his servants, Satan put it into his head and heart to take the following wicked and cruel method:
that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah; to have him cut off by the sword of the enemy. If Uriah suspected David's criminal conversation with his wife, he was so true and trusted a servant to him, that he would not open his letter to Joab, which had he, it would have betrayed the base design. No one that knows the story of Bellerophon can read this without thinking of that, they are so much alike; and indeed that seems to be founded upon this, and ta…
David's Adultery. - David's deep fall forms a turning-point not only in the inner life of the great king, but also in the history of his reign. Hitherto David had kept free from the grosser sins, and had only exhibited such infirmities and failings as simulation, prevarication, etc., which clung to all the saints of the Old Covenant, and were hardly regarded as sins in the existing stage of religious culture at that time, although God never left them unpunished, but invariably visited them upon His servants with humiliations and chastisements of various kinds. Among the unacknowledged sins which God tolerated because of the hardness of Israel's heart was polygamy, which encouraged licentious…
in tents (Hebrew, sukkoth, the name behind Sukkot, “the Festival of Shelters,” Deut 16:13-17): These were temporary structures made of branches and foliage used by soldiers in the field, herdsmen protecting their cattle, or grape harvesters in the vineyard. • wine and dine and sleep with my wife? Uriah was willing to wine and dine with David (2 Sam 11:13), so it was not sharing the table with Bathsheba that Uriah wished to avoid but sharing the marriage bed. The Israelites considered the war camp a holy place because God was present to fight for his people. Thus, soldiers on duty avoided anything that caused impurity, such as sexual intercourse (Lev 15:18; see also 1 Sam 21:5-6).
Rashi on 2 Samuel 11:8
The king's meal. [Yonasan translates:] the king's meal.1Dovid sent men with provisions for Urioh to be eaten at his home.
