He saw her. He could have walked back inside. He didn't.
📖Based on 2 Samuel 11:4
It was the time when kings go out to battle.
But David had stayed in Jerusalem.
That detail matters.
He sent his army. He kept himself.
In the evening he rose from his bed and walked on the roof.
He saw a woman bathing.
She was very beautiful.
He inquired about her.
He was told: Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?
Three descriptors. Wife was one of them.
He sent messengers and took her.
She came to him.
She returned to her house.
She sent word: I am pregnant.
Two words that changed everything.
David tried to cover it. He sent for Uriah from the battlefield.
He asked him about the war. He told him to go home to his wife.
Uriah slept at the entrance of the palace instead.
He said he could not go to the comfort of his home while the ark and Israel were in tents.
David tried again the next night. Made him drunk.
Uriah still didn't go home.
So David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by Uriah's hand.
Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting. Then draw back from him that he may be struck down and die.
Uriah carried his own death warrant.
He died in battle.
David married Bathsheba.
The thing David had done displeased the LORD.
Nathan the prophet came with a story about a lamb.
David was furious at the injustice in the story.
Nathan said: You are the man.
David knew it the moment he heard it.
The child born of that union died.
David wept and fasted while the child was sick.
When the child died, he rose, washed, ate, and said: Now he is dead, why should I fast?
He went on.
But the sword never departed from his house.
Nathan had said it would not.
It didn't.
Scripture — 2 Samuel 11:4
"And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness: and she returned unto her house."
Reflection
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Every step had an exit. The inquiry. The messenger. The door. He kept walking forward.
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The cover-up required more sin than the original act. It always does.