2 Samuel · 27 verses
2 Samuel 11
Every verse links to the people and places named in it, and to the passages readers connect it with.
The chapter
What happens here
Atlas's own reading, written from this chapter and nothing else, and published only once a person has approved it. Each scene names the verses it covers; the names inside it link to the people and places they name.
Uriah carried the letter ordering Joab to have Uriah killed—a remarkably efficient arrangement, if the courier had been anyone else.
A roof, a summons, and a pregnancyvv. 1–5
While Joab and Israel’s army besieged Rabbah, David stayed in Jerusalem. An evening stroll on the palace roof introduced Bathsheba, and David’s inquiry produced her name, her father Eliam, and her husband Uriah the Hittite. He sent messengers, she came, and afterward sent back the shortest possible report: “I am pregnant.”
The house Uriah would not entervv. 6–17
David summoned Uriah and tried to send him home with a royal gift, then with food and drink enough to make the evening wobble. Uriah nevertheless slept among the servants, because the ark, Israel, Judah, Joab, and the soldiers were all camping out. So David sent him back to Joab carrying a letter that instructed Joab to place him where the fighting was fiercest and withdraw. Uriah died there, along with some of David’s servants.
The sword, apparently, has no preferencesvv. 18–27
Joab prepared the messenger for David’s likely anger, even recalling Abimelech’s death at Thebez as a warning about fighting too close to a wall. When the report arrived, Uriah’s death was folded into the account of the battle. David answered with a brisk maxim about the sword, while Uriah’s wife mourned. After the mourning, David brought her into his house; she bore him a son, and the final sentence names the thing plainly: it was evil in the sight of the LORD.
The text
Read it
Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Names the Hebrew and Greek put in the verse link to the person, place or people they name; the address beside each verse is a link to that verse, which is what a reader copies and shares.
2 Sam 11:1In the spring, at the time when kings march out to war, David sent out Joab and his servants with the whole army of Israel. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, but David remained in Jerusalem.
2 Sam 11:2One evening David got up from his bed and strolled around on the roof of the palace. And from the roof he saw a woman bathing—a very beautiful woman.
2 Sam 11:3So David sent and inquired about the woman, and he was told, “This is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.”
2 Sam 11:4Then David sent messengers to get her, and when she came to him, he slept with her. (Now she had just purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned home.
2 Sam 11:5And the woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”
2 Sam 11:6At this, David sent orders to Joab: “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” So Joab sent him to David.
2 Sam 11:7When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the troops were doing and how the war was going.
2 Sam 11:8Then he said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king followed him.
2 Sam 11:9But Uriah slept at the door of the palace with all his master’s servants; he did not go down to his house.
2 Sam 11:10And David was told, “Uriah did not go home.” “Haven’t you just arrived from a journey?” David asked Uriah. “Why didn’t you go home?”
2 Sam 11:11Uriah answered, “The ark and Israel and Judah are dwelling in tents, and my master Joab and his soldiers are camped in the open field. How can I go to my house to eat and drink and sleep with my wife? As surely as you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing!”
2 Sam 11:12“Stay here one more day,” David said to Uriah, “and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day and the next.
2 Sam 11:13Then David invited Uriah to eat and drink with him, and he got Uriah drunk. And in the evening Uriah went out to lie down on his cot with his master’s servants, but he did not go home.
2 Sam 11:14The next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah.
2 Sam 11:15In the letter he wrote: “Put Uriah at the front of the fiercest battle; then withdraw from him, so that he may be struck down and killed.”
2 Sam 11:16So as Joab besieged the city, he assigned Uriah to a place where he knew the strongest enemy soldiers were.
2 Sam 11:17And when the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of David’s servants fell, and Uriah the Hittite also died.
2 Sam 11:18Joab sent to David a full account of the battle
2 Sam 11:19and instructed the messenger, “When you have finished giving the king a full account of the battle,
2 Sam 11:20if the king’s anger flares, he may ask you, ‘Why did you get so close to the city to fight? Did you not realize they would shoot from atop the wall?
2 Sam 11:21Who struck Abimelech son of Jerubbesheth? Was it not a woman who dropped an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebez? Why did you get so close to the wall?’ If he asks you this, then you are to say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead as well.’”
2 Sam 11:22So the messenger set out and reported to David all that Joab had sent him to say.
2 Sam 11:23The messenger said to David, “The men overpowered us and came out against us in the field, but we drove them back to the entrance of the gate.
2 Sam 11:24Then the archers shot at your servants from the wall, and some of the king’s servants were killed. And your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead as well.”
2 Sam 11:25Then David told the messenger, “Say this to Joab: ‘Do not let this matter upset you, for the sword devours one as well as another. Strengthen your attack against the city and demolish it.’ Encourage him with these words.”
2 Sam 11:26When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him.
2 Sam 11:27And when the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the LORD.
01 — Also here
Who else the chapter reaches
Names written in the English are linked in the text above. These are the ones that are not: an entity the Hebrew or Greek names under a spelling the translation does not use, or one reached only by an assertion about a verse of this chapter.
Named in the Hebrew or Greek somewhere in this chapter, under a form the English renders differently — the registry's Ludim against the translation's Ludites — so there is no word in the sentence to hang the link on.
Reached by an assertion Atlas extracted from a verse of this chapter rather than by a name written in it — a pronoun, a title, or a participant the sentence carries without naming. This layer is model-read and measured at 88.6–90.3% precision, and it is kept separate from the names above for that reason.
02 — Read alongside
Where this is echoed
Readers' own connections, from OpenBible's crowd-voted cross-references — agreement about relevance, and not scholarly confidence. 149 passages were voted onto 20 verses of this chapter; the 16 shown lead on votes, and each is listed at the verse it was voted onto most strongly.
- 11 Chronicles 20:1In the spring, at the time when kings march out to war, Joab led out the army and ravaged the land of the Ammonites. He came to Rabbah and besieged it, but David remained in Jerusalem. And Joab attacked Rabbah and demolished it.
- 2Matthew 5:28But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
- 4Leviticus 18:19You must not approach a woman to have sexual relations with her during her menstrual period.
- 4James 1:14–15But each one is tempted when by his own evil desires he is lured away and enticed.
- 11 Kings 20:26In the spring, Ben-hadad mobilized the Arameans and went up to Aphek to fight against Israel.
- 2Psalms 119:37Turn my eyes away from worthless things; revive me with Your word.
- 11 Kings 20:22Afterward, the prophet approached the king of Israel and said, “Go and strengthen your position, and take note what you must do, for in the spring the king of Aram will come up against you.”
- 32 Samuel 23:39and Uriah the Hittite. There were thirty-seven in all.
- 2Acts 10:9The next day at about the sixth hour, as the men were approaching the city on their journey, Peter went up on the roof to pray.
- 2Proverbs 6:25Do not lust in your heart for her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes.
- 2Job 31:1“I have made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I gaze with desire at a virgin?
- 21 John 2:16For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not from the Father but from the world.
- 31 Chronicles 3:5and these sons were born to him in Jerusalem: Shimea, Shobab, Nathan, and Solomon. These four were born to him by Bathsheba daughter of Ammiel.
- 5Deuteronomy 22:22If a man is found lying with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.
- 112 Samuel 7:2he said to Nathan the prophet, “Here I am, living in a house of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent.”
- 152 Samuel 12:9Why then have you despised the command of the LORD by doing evil in His sight? You put Uriah the Hittite to the sword and took his wife as your own. You have slain him with the sword of the Ammonites.
Onward