Uriah the Hittite: The Soldier Who Slept at the King's Door

Who Uriah Was, and When

Uriah the Hittite belongs to the era of the united kingdom, placed around 1095 BC to 975 BC on Ussher's chronology (1650). Scripture introduces him by his marriage rather than his ancestry: when David inquires about a woman, the answer comes back, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, Uriah the Hittite's wife?" (2 Samuel 11:3). That is the whole of his introduction. He appears in about twenty-two verses across four books: 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 1 Chronicles and Matthew. Nearly everything we are told about him is told while he is being wronged.

Summoned From the Front

The first scene of any length begins with a message from the king to his commander. "David sent to Joab, 'Send me Uriah the Hittite.' Joab sent Uriah to David" (2 Samuel 11:6). What follows is a conversation with two layers. David "asked him how Joab did, and how the people fared, and how the war prospered" (2 Samuel 11:7), the ordinary questions of a king to a returning soldier. Then comes the instruction that is not ordinary at all: "Go down to your house and wash your feet" (2 Samuel 11:8). Uriah leaves, "and a gift from the king was sent after him" (2 Samuel 11:8).

He does not go home. "But 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" (2 Samuel 11:9). David is told, and presses him: "Haven't you come from a journey? Why didn't you go down to your house?" (2 Samuel 11:10-12). The scene runs through verse 12 and Uriah stays where he is, on the threshold, among the servants. Whatever he knew or did not know, his choice was to keep the discipline of a man still at war.

The Letter He Carried

The second scene is brief and terrible. "In the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah" (2 Samuel 11:14). The letter said: "Send Uriah to the forefront of the hottest battle, and retreat from him, that he may be struck, and die" (2 Samuel 11:15). Joab obeyed with a soldier's precision: "When Joab kept watch on the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew that valiant men were" (2 Samuel 11:16). The result is recorded without drama. "The 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" (2 Samuel 11:17). Others died with him. His name surfaces again in the reporting of that battle and its aftermath at 2 Samuel 11:21, 11:24 and 11:26, and once more at 2 Samuel 12:15, though the wording of those verses is not before us here.

Named in the Indictment

Uriah's name does not disappear when he dies. It becomes the charge. The word of judgment to David runs: "You have struck Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. Now therefore the sword will never depart from your house, because you have despised me, and have taken Uriah the Hittite's wife to be your wife'" (2 Samuel 12:9-10). Generations later the summary of David's reign carries the same name as its one exception: David "didn't turn away from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, except only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite" (1 Kings 15:5).

He also stands in a list of names: "Uriah the Hittite, Zabad the son of Ahlai" (1 Chronicles 11:41), and his name closes a comparable listing at 2 Samuel 23:39.

The Failure Recorded Here

Scripture is candid about sin, and the sin in Uriah's story is not his. The record of his appearances names no wrong done by Uriah. The failure named, twice and pointedly, is David's: adultery and killing by another man's hand, with Joab as the willing instrument (2 Samuel 11:14-17; 2 Samuel 12:9-10; 1 Kings 15:5). The text does not soften it and neither should we. A man was summoned, honoured with a gift, and then handed the letter that arranged his death.

What We Are Not Told

Scripture does not name his parents. No children of his are named. No tribe or people is given for him beyond the description "the Hittite" that accompanies his name (2 Samuel 11:3). We are not told what he suspected when he slept at the door rather than going down to his house, and the text refuses to explain him further (2 Samuel 11:9).

The Line to Christ

One New Testament verse carries his name: Matthew 1:6. In the opening chapter of the first Gospel, the genealogy does not step around him. The man David wronged is written into that record by name, remembered there as the husband whose wife was taken.