And the Lord sent Nathan unto David
Quickly after the child was born begotten on Bathsheba, and when it was known and became the public talk of people, and the enemies of religion were full of it, and blasphemed on account of it, ( 2 Samuel 12:14 ) ; so that David was nine months or more without any true sense of his sin, his heart hardened, his graces dormant, the joys of salvation taken from him, and he without any communion with God, and having little concern about it; though perhaps he might have some pangs at times, which quickly went off; though some think he exercised repentance in a private way before; acknowledged his sin to the Lord, and had a sense of pardon, and before this time penned the thirty second and the hundred thirtieth psalms on this occasion, ( Psalms 32:1-11 ) ( 130:1-8 ) ; but Nathan is sent to awaken and arouse him, to express a sense of his sin, and repentance for it in public, which he did by penning and publishing the fifty first psalm after Nathan had been with him, ( Psalms 51:1-19 ) ; for though the Lord may leave his people to fall into sin, and suffer them to continue therein some time, yet not always; they shall rise again through the assistance of his Spirit and grace, in the acts of repentance and faith, both in private and public:
and he came unto him, and said unto him:
he came as if he had a case to lay before him, and to have justice done, and he told the story as if it was a real fact, and so David understood it:
there were two men in one city:
pointing at David and Uriah, who both lived in Jerusalem:
the one rich and the other poor;
David the rich man, king over all Israel; Uriah a subject, an officer in his army, comparatively poor.