2 Samuel
The king the Bible loves most, and the worst things he ever did.
Who wrote it: Anonymous, and originally the second half of a single book with 1 Samuel. Tradition names Nathan and Gad, who appear in it. Chapters 9 to 20 are often thought to come from someone very close to David's court, because of the detail and the lack of flattery. Final editing likely happened during or after the exile.
What it is
Saul is dead, and David's first act is to write a song grieving for him and for Jonathan. It takes seven more years of civil war before all Israel accepts David as king. Then things move quickly: he takes Jerusalem and makes it his capital, brings the ark of God into the city, dancing in the street in front of everyone, and wins every war he fights. In chapter 7 he offers to build God a house, and God turns it round: I will build you a house, meaning a dynasty, and your throne will last forever. That promise is the one the rest of the Bible traces to Jesus.
Chapter 11 is the turn. David stays home from a war, sees a woman bathing from his roof, sends for her, sleeps with her, and when she is pregnant, arranges for her husband Uriah to die in battle and marries her. The last line of the chapter is that what David had done displeased the LORD. In chapter 12 the prophet Nathan tells him a story about a rich man who stole a poor man's only lamb. David, furious, says the man deserves to die. Nathan says: you are the man.
David repents and is forgiven, and the child dies, and nothing is ever the same. The rest of the book is the family coming apart in ways that mirror what he did. His son Amnon rapes his half-sister Tamar. Her brother Absalom kills Amnon, flees, comes back, and leads a revolt that drives David out of Jerusalem. Absalom dies in battle, against David's orders, and David's grief, 'my son, my son', is one of the rawest moments in scripture. The closing chapters add a famine, a plague David brings on by counting his army, and a list of his warriors.
Why it was written: to tell the truth about David. There was every reason to clean him up, and the book refuses. Look for what it does instead: it shows a man who does terrible things and, when confronted, does not hide. The book's estimate of David is not that he was good. It is that he kept coming back.
Verses worth keeping
Your house and your kingdom will be made sure forever before you. Your throne will be established forever.”’”
Gen Zsame meaning, your wordsYour house and your kingdom will be made secure forever in front of you. Your throne will be established forever.
David wanted to build God a house. God builds David a dynasty instead. 'Son of David' in the gospels points back here.
Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul.
Gen Zsame meaning, your wordsNathan said to David, 'You're the man! This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from Saul.'
The most famous confrontation in the Old Testament. Nathan told a story first so David would judge himself before he knew it.
David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” Nathan said to David, “The LORD also has put away your sin. You will not die.
Gen Zsame meaning, your wordsDavid said to Nathan, 'I've sinned against the LORD.' Nathan said to David, 'The LORD has also taken your sin away. You won't die.'
Four words of confession, no excuses, and forgiveness in the same breath. Psalm 51 is the long version.
The king was much moved, and went up to the room over the gate and wept. As he went, he said, “My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! I wish I had died instead of you, Absalom, my son, my son!”
Gen Zsame meaning, your wordsThe king was shaken. He went up to the room over the gate and cried, and as he went he said, 'My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! I wish I had died instead of you, Absalom, my son, my son!'
Absalom tried to kill him. David grieves anyway. Parents of difficult children have found themselves in this verse for three thousand years.
The king said to Araunah, “No, but I will most certainly buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God which cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.
Gen Zsame meaning, your wordsThe king said to Araunah, 'No. I'm going to buy it from you for a proper price. I won't offer the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.' So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.
The last thing David does in the book. The site he buys becomes the temple. Worship that costs nothing is not worship, in his view.
Read 2 Samuel
The full text, every chapter, from the World English Bible, a modern public-domain translation. Pick a chapter below. The highlighted verses are the place to start if you have never read it.
2 Samuel 11
1At the return of the year, at the time when kings go out, David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed at Jerusalem. 2At evening, David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king’s house. From the roof, he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to look at. 3David sent and inquired after the woman. One said, “Isn’t this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, Uriah the Hittite’s wife?”
4David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in to him, and he lay with her (for she was purified from her uncleanness); and she returned to her house. 5The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, and said, “I am with child.”
6David sent to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” Joab sent Uriah to David. 7When Uriah had come to him, David asked him how Joab did, and how the people fared, and how the war prospered. 8David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” Uriah departed out of the king’s house, and a gift from the king was sent after him. 9But Uriah slept at the door of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and didn’t go down to his house. 10When they had told David, saying, “Uriah didn’t go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “Haven’t you come from a journey? Why didn’t you go down to your house?”
11Uriah said to David, “The ark, Israel, and Judah, are staying in tents; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open field. Shall I then go into my house to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing!”
12David said to Uriah, “Stay here today also, and tomorrow I will let you depart.” So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day and the next day. 13When David had called him, he ate and drank before him; and he made him drunk. At evening, he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord, but didn’t go down to his house. 14In the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. 15He wrote in the letter, saying, “Send Uriah to the forefront of the hottest battle, and retreat from him, that he may be struck and die.”
16When Joab kept watch on the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew that valiant men were. 17The men of the city went out and fought with Joab. Some of the people fell, even of David’s servants; and Uriah the Hittite died also. 18Then Joab sent and told David all the things concerning the war; 19and he commanded the messenger, saying, “When you have finished telling all the things concerning the war to the king, 20it shall be that, if the king’s wrath arise, and he asks you, ‘Why did you go so near to the city to fight? Didn’t you know that they would shoot from the wall? 21Who struck Abimelech the son of Jerubbesheth? Didn’t a woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez? Why did you go so near the wall?’ then you shall say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is also dead.’”
22So the messenger went, and came and showed David all that Joab had sent him for. 23The messenger said to David, “The men prevailed against us, and came out to us into the field; and we were on them even to the entrance of the gate. 24The shooters shot at your servants from off the wall; and some of the king’s servants are dead, and your servant Uriah the Hittite is also dead.”
25Then David said to the messenger, “Tell Joab, ‘Don’t let this thing displease you, for the sword devours one as well as another. Make your battle stronger against the city, and overthrow it.’ Encourage him.”
26When Uriah’s wife heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband. 27When the mourning was past, David sent and took her home to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.
Questions about 2 Samuel
Was Bathsheba willing, or did David rape her?
The text does not use the word, and it does not describe her feelings or her consent. What it does describe is the power gap: a king sends for a subject, and the subject comes. Nathan's parable in chapter 12 calls her a lamb that was taken, and every ounce of blame in the story lands on David. Many readers, including many scholars, conclude that consent was not meaningfully possible and that calling this an affair misreads it. Others hold that the text is silent. What the Bible does not do is blame Bathsheba, and any reading that does is adding something the text refused to add.
Why is David called a man after God's own heart if he did all this?
The phrase comes from 1 Samuel 13, before any of it happened, and it is about God's choice more than David's character. But the books do give a reason it stuck. Confronted, David never argues. He does not blame Bathsheba, or the war, or the pressure. He says 'I have sinned' and accepts what follows, and the psalms he is credited with are full of that same reflex, turning toward God from the bottom. That is a heart the book is willing to call God's kind. It is not the same as saying he was good, and 2 Samuel is careful never to say that.
Why did God punish Israel with a plague because David took a census?
Chapter 24 is difficult and the text does not fully explain it. Counting fighting men seems to have implied trusting the army's size instead of God, and even Joab, no saint, tries to talk David out of it. The chapter says David's heart struck him afterwards and he chose plague over the other options because he would rather fall into God's hands than people's. Chronicles retells the story and attributes the prompting to Satan, which shows the writers themselves found it hard. What the chapter is building toward is the last scene: David buying the threshing floor where the temple will stand.