📖 2 Samuel 11: 💎 A Chapter Showing That Uriah Kept the Ark of Jehovah in Mind, While David Became Spiritually Deaf

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📖 2 Samuel 11: 💎

Uriah kept the Ark of Jehovah in mind, while David became spiritually deaf

📚 Looking Back at the Previous Chapters

In chapter 9, we saw David repay the house of Saul for the sake of Jonathan.
In chapter 10, David tried to return the kindness that Nahash had shown him by extending kindness to his son Hanun, but...

✔️ Hanun listened to his advisers and ended up turning against David.
✔️ The chapter then described the war against the Ammonites and the Arameans who came to help them.

The final verse of chapter 10, verse 19, records that the Arameans made peace with Israel, submitted to them, and no longer helped the Ammonites.

🔎 Verse 1: Reading It Backward

The first verse of chapter 11 tells us that the time had come when kings went out to war, and David sent Joab and the entire army of Israel to fight the Ammonites.

📌 Interestingly, the meaning of this verse becomes easier to understand if we rearrange its sequence backward.

(Verse 1) In the spring, at the time when kings went out to war, David sent Joab, his officers, and the entire army of Israel. They devastated the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, while David remained in Jerusalem.

⬇️ If We Reverse the Sequence

David was in Jerusalem → the entire army of Israel was besieging Rabbah → the Ammonites were on the verge of defeat → it was the season when kings went out to war...
This was the context in which the events took place.

It was evening... David saw a woman bathing, sent for her, and slept with her. Later, she became pregnant.

👉 David's Plan to Conceal His Sin — 1 (Failure)

1. After sleeping with another man's wife and getting her pregnant, David summoned Uriah, her husband. He told him to go home and wash his feet, and he even provided food from the king's table.

• Perhaps David intended to make it appear that the child had been conceived by Uriah.
• However, Uriah did not go home. He slept among the king's servants. (Verse 9)
• David asked why he had not gone home. (Verse 10)
• Uriah replied that the Ark of the Covenant and Israel were encamped in the field, and that his commander Joab and the soldiers were camping in the open country. He swore that he would not go home to eat, drink, and sleep with his wife.

👉 David's Plan to Conceal His Sin — 2 (Failure)

• David invited Uriah, gave him food and drink, and made him drunk, apparently to the point of losing control of himself.
• Even so, Uriah did not go home.

👉 David's Plan to Conceal His Sin — 3 (Success)

➡️ David devised a plan to have Uriah killed and sent a letter to Joab. (Verses 14–15)

• Joab carried out David's order, and Uriah died.
• David's words upon hearing of Uriah's death reveal his shamelessness and coldness.
• When Uriah's wife received the news of her husband's death, she mourned for him.

➡️ After the mourning period, David brought Uriah's wife to his house, made her his wife, and she gave birth to a son.

📌 The Final Verse, 27

But what David had done was displeasing to Jehovah.

Final Thoughts

Up to this point, from Genesis through 2 Samuel 11, I have wondered whether Israel's chief leader was generally present when the Ark of Jehovah's Covenant accompanied the army during a war. This is a possibility I have been considering.

In the time of Moses...
In the time of Joshua...
And in the time of Saul, the Ark was also associated with Israel's wars.

Although God had rejected Saul, Saul still had the Ark of God brought to the battlefield during the war against the Philistines. Later, however, the Philistines captured the Ark.

📌 According to Uriah's words, during the war against the Ammonites, the Ark of Jehovah's Covenant was encamped with the army. (Verse 11)

• Yet David was in the City of David, in Jerusalem.

It is not clear whether it was wrong for the king not to be there.
But one thing is clear.

✔️ Uriah understood the situation and explained to David why he had not gone home to sleep with his wife...
✔️ But David seemed unable to hear what Uriah was saying, focused only on concealing his own wrongdoing. 💎

😄 I thought there was no treasure, but while writing the conclusion, I discovered a gem related to the Ark of the Covenant. 💎

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