Uriah the Hittite
A Hittite among David’s warriors and the husband of Bathsheba. When Bathsheba was pregnant by the king and Uriah would not go home, David had him placed in the front of the fighting at Rabbah, where he was killed.
Uriah’s name closes Samuel’s list of David’s warriors, the group called the Thirty (2 Samuel 23:24, 39). He was serving under Joab at the siege of Rabbah when David took his wife Bathsheba. Called back to Jerusalem, he would not go home while the ark and the army were in the field. David sent him back to Joab carrying the letter that ordered his death, and he fell under the city wall (2 Samuel 11:6–17, 24).
Nathan charged David with having killed him “with the sword of the children of Ammon” (2 Samuel 12:9). Kings names “the matter of Uriah the Hittite” as the one exception to David’s obedience (1 Kings 15:5), and Matthew’s genealogy keeps his name where it omits his wife’s (Matthew 1:6).
In the timeline
- about 995 BC, traditional dateDavid, Bathsheba and Nathan
Samuel tells how David takes Bathsheba, the wife of one of his warriors, and when she is pregnant has her husband Uriah killed in battle. The prophet Nathan confronts him. The child dies; a second son, Solomon, is born.