7. to David's palace, and David asked him, “Is Joab well? How is the army doing? And how about the war?”
8. Then David told Uriah, “Go home and clean up.” Uriah left the king's palace, and David had dinner sent to Uriah's house.
9. But Uriah didn't go home. Instead, he slept outside the entrance to the royal palace, where the king's guards slept.
10. Someone told David that Uriah had not gone home. So the next morning David asked him, “Why didn't you go home? Haven't you been away for a long time?”
11. Uriah answered, “The sacred chest and the armies of Israel and Judah are camping out somewhere in the fields with our commander Joab and his officers and troops. Do you really think I would go home to eat and drink and sleep with my wife? I swear by your life that I would not!”
12. Then David said, “Stay here in Jerusalem today, and I will send you back tomorrow.”Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day. Then the next day,
13. David invited him for dinner. Uriah ate with David and drank so much that he got drunk, but he still did not go home. He went out and slept on his mat near the palace guards.
14. Early the next morning, David wrote a letter and told Uriah to deliver it to Joab.
15. The letter said: “Put Uriah on the front line where the fighting is the worst. Then pull the troops back from him, so that he will be wounded and die.”
16. Joab had been carefully watching the city of Rabbah, and he put Uriah in a place where he knew there were some of the enemy's best soldiers.
17. When the men of the city came out, they fought and killed some of David's soldiers—Uriah the Hittite was one of them.
18. Joab sent a messenger to tell David everything that was happening in the war.
19. He gave the messenger these orders:When you finish telling the king everything that has happened,
20. he may get angry and ask, “Why did you go so near the city to fight? Didn't you know they would shoot arrows from the wall?
21. Don't you know how Abimelech the son of Gideon was killed at Thebez? Didn't a woman kill him by dropping a large rock from the top of the city wall? Why did you go so close to the city walls?”Then you tell him, “One of your soldiers who was killed was Uriah the Hittite.”