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The DEEP

Evil

in the LORD's eyes.

2 Samuel 11:18–27

Then Joab sent and told David all the things concerning the war, and charged the messenger, saying, “When you have finished telling the matters of the war to the king, if it happens that the king’s wrath rises, and he says to you: ‘Why did you approach so near to the city when you fought? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall? Who struck Abimelech the son of Jerubbesheth? Was it not a woman who cast a piece of a millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebez? Why did you go near the wall?’—then you shall say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.’ ”

So the messenger went, and came and told David all that Joab had sent by him. And the messenger said to David, “Surely the men prevailed against us and came out to us in the field; then we drove them back as far as the entrance of the gate. The archers shot from the wall at your servants; and some of the king’s servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.”

Then David said to the messenger, “Thus you shall say to Joab: ‘Do not let this thing displease you, for the sword devours one as well as another. Strengthen your attack against the city, and overthrow it.’ So encourage him.”

When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband. And when her mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.

So, with Uriah dead and David now Bathsheba’s husband, the child isn’t quite so suspicious. David does lose another week though while Bathsheba goes through the traditional mourning period. The child will seem to be that much more premature.

Still, it looks like David got away with it—to an atheist! The Hebrew words in verse 31 translated as, “displeased the LORD,” are literally, “was evil in the LORD’s eyes.”

David is about to get lit.


The conversations between Joab, David, and the messenger are cryptic. They involve Hebrew idioms and “spin doctoring” that could only be understood in the light of detailed historical context that we don’t have access to.

But one thing is obvious. No one is telling it straight because the truth is simply too ugly to talk about. What has happened is deeply, deeply evil and everyone knows it (well, maybe not the messenger, but he probably knows it too).

The result is the word salad that is 2 Samuel 11:18–25.

Uriah the Hittite is dead, and no one seems to care except Bathsheba.


These weekday DEEPs are written by Mike Slay. The Saturday ones are written by Matt Richardson. To subscribe click here:  https://www.ailbe.org/resources/community

The weekly study guides, which include questions for discussion or meditation, can be downloaded here: https://www.ailbe.org/resources/itemlist/category/91-deep-studies

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Mike Slay

As a mathematician, inventor, and ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in America, Mike Slay brings an analytical, conversational, and even whimsical approach to the daily study of God's Word.

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