Psalms 119:67

¹⁸“I have surely heard Ephraim grieving thus, ‘You have chastised me, and I was chastised, as an untrained calf. Turn me, and I will be turned, for you are the LORD my God. ¹⁹Surely after that I was turned. I repented. After that I was instructed. I struck my thigh. I was ashamed, yes, even confounded, because I bore the reproach of my youth.’

⁷¹It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes.

⁷⁵LORD, I know that your judgments are righteous, that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.

¹⁷⁶I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I don’t forget your commandments.

⁵You have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as with children, “My son, don’t take lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him; ⁶for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and chastises every son whom he receives.”

⁷It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with children, for what son is there whom his father doesn’t discipline? ⁸But if you are without discipline, of which all have been made partakers, then you are illegitimate, and not children. ⁹Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? ¹⁰For they indeed for a few days disciplined us as seemed good to them, but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. ¹¹All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

⁶Therefore behold, ^[+] I will hedge up your way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, that she can’t find her way. ⁷She will follow after her lovers, but she won’t overtake them; and she will seek them, but won’t find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, for then it was better with me than now.’

¹⁰Because you kept my command to endure, I also will keep you from the hour of testing which is to come on the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.

²¹I spoke to you in your prosperity, but you said, ‘I will not listen.’ This has been your way from your youth, that you didn’t obey my voice.

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.