“Tell it not in Gath,” said David, but who jokes about Saul’s death? Bathsheba and David, however…
By their actions, the Ammonites had deliberately “made themselves repulsive to David” (2 Sam 10:6). Hostilities were certain, so they hired no fewer than four other armies to join in fighting Israel. But the saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” might have been written about Joab and his brother Abishai. Abishai focused on the Ammonites; Joab took on the hired help. All five armies fled before them (vv 14-15). So Israel returned to Jerusalem. It wasn’t long, however, until the Syrians called in additional troops for a rematch. But “David killed seven hundred charioteers and forty thousand horsemen of the Syrians” (v 18). This drove a wedge between Ammon and Syria, who determined never to come to Ammon’s aid again. Springtime came, “when kings go out to battle” (11:1). It was time to renew the fight against Ammon, and Joab rallied the troops, “but David remained at Jerusalem” (v 1). Oh, no! David at leisure, with his armor off! What all the enemy forces couldn’t do, a fifth column within his own breast would accomplish. “It happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king’s house. And from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold” (v 2). In spite of the answer to David’s inquiry as to her identity, “Is this not Bathsheba,…the wife of Uriah the Hittite?”—one of David’s mighty men—the grim facts come at us like enemy tracers: “David…took her… and he lay with her…and she returned to her house. And the woman conceived; so she sent and told David,…‘I am with child’” (vv 3-5). It’s like a case study of James 1:15. “when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin…”—but we’ll have to wait to hear the rest of the story.