2 Samuel 11:3

3 So David sent and inquired about the woman, and he was told, “This is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam ^[a] and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.”

2 Samuel 11:3 Meaning and Commentary

2 Samuel 11:3

And David sent and inquired after the woman
Who she was, what her name, and whether married or unmarried; if the latter, very probably his intention was to marry her, and he might, when he first made the inquiry, design to proceed no further, or to anything that was dishonourable; but it would have been better for him not to have inquired at all, and endeavoured to stifle the motions raised in him at the sight of her:

and [one] said, [is] not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam;
who in ( 1 Chronicles 3:5 ) ; is called Bathshua, and her father Ammiel, which is the same with Eliam reversed:

the wife of Uriah the Hittite?
who either was of that nation originally, and became a proselyte; or had sojourned there for a while, and took the name or had it given him, for some exploit he had performed against that people, as Scipio Africanus, and others among the Romans; this was said by one that David inquired of, or heard him asking about her, and was sufficient to have stopped him from proceeding any further, when he was informed she was another man's wife: some say ^F8 she was the daughter of Ahithophel's son; see ( 2 Samuel 23:34 ) .

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FOOTNOTES:

F8 Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 8. 2.

2 Samuel 11:3 In-Context

1 In 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 One 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.

3 So 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.”

4 Then 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.

5 And the woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”

Footnotes

• [a]. Eliam is a variant of Ammiel; see 1 Chronicles 3:5.