Matthew Henry on 2 Samuel 11:6-13
Uriah, we may suppose, had now been absent from his wife some weeks, making the campaign in the country of the Ammonites, and not intending to return till the end of it. The situation of his wife would bring to light the hidden works of darkness; and when Uriah, at his return, should find how he had been abused, and by whom, it might well be expected, 1. That he would prosecute his wife, according to law, and have her stoned to death; for jealousy is the rage of a man, especially a man of honour, and he that is thus injured will not spare in the day of vengeance, Pro 6:34. This Bath-sheba was apprehensive of when she sent to let David know she was with child, intimating that he was concerned…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on 2 Samuel 11:5
the woman conceived, and sent and told David--Some immediate measures of concealing their sin were necessary, as well for the king's honor as for her safety, for death was the punishment of an adulteress (Lev 20:10).
Adam Clarke on 2 Samuel 11:5
And the woman conceived - A proof of the observation on Sa2 11:4; as that is the time in which women are most apt to conceive.
John Gill on 2 Samuel 11:6
And David sent to Joab,.... Who was with the army besieging Rabbah, which, according to Bunting (k), was sixty four miles from Jerusalem:
saying, send me Uriah the Hittite; the scheme David had contrived in his mind was to get Uriah home to his wife for a few days, that it might be thought the child she had conceived was his, whereby the sin of David, and her own, might be concealed:
and Joab sent Uriah to David; not knowing his business, and besides it was his duty to obey his command.
(k) Travels, &c. p. 146.
Keil & Delitzsch on 2 Samuel 11:2–end
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…
