2 Samuel 11:2-5

11:2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of his palace. 1  From the roof he saw a woman bathing. Now this woman was very attractive. 2  11:3 So David sent someone to inquire about the woman. The messenger 3  said, “Isn’t this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?”

11:4 David sent some messengers to get her. 4  She came to him and he had sexual relations with her. 5  (Now at that time she was in the process of purifying herself from her menstrual uncleanness.) 6  Then she returned to her home. 11:5 The woman conceived and then sent word to David saying, “I’m pregnant.”

1 tn Heb “on the roof of the house of the king.” So also in vv. 8, 9.

2 tn The disjunctive clause highlights this observation and builds the tension of the story.

3 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the messenger) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

4 tn Heb “and David sent messengers and he took her.”

5 tn Heb “he lay with her” (so NASB, NRSV); TEV “he made love to her”; NIV, CEV, NLT “he slept with her.”

6 tn The parenthetical disjunctive clause further heightens the tension by letting the reader know that Bathsheba, having just completed her menstrual cycle, is ripe for conception. See P. K. McCarter, II Samuel (AB), 286. Since she just had her period, it will also be obvious to those close to the scene that Uriah, who has been away fighting, cannot be the father of the child.