9. Why have you despised the Lord and done what is evil in his sight? You have cut down Uriah the Hittite with the sword; his wife you took as your own, and him you killed with the sword of the Ammonites.
10. Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.
11. Thus says the Lord: I will bring evil upon you out of your own house. I will take your wives before your very eyes, and will give them to your neighbor: he shall lie with your wives in broad daylight.
12. You have acted in secret, but I will do this in the presence of all Israel, in the presence of the sun itself.”
13. Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan answered David: “For his part, the Lord has removed your sin. You shall not die,
14. but since you have utterly spurned the Lord by this deed, the child born to you will surely die.”
15. Then Nathan returned to his house.The Lord struck the child that the wife of Uriah had borne to David, and it became desperately ill.
16. David pleaded with God on behalf of the child. He kept a total fast, and spent the night lying on the ground clothed in sackcloth.
17. The elders of his house stood beside him to get him to rise from the ground; but he would not, nor would he take food with them.
18. On the seventh day, the child died. David’s servants were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said: “When the child was alive, we spoke to him, but he would not listen to what we said. How can we tell him the child is dead? He may do some harm!”
19. But David noticed his servants whispering among themselves and realized that the child was dead. He asked his servants, “Is the child dead?” They said, “Yes.”
20. Rising from the ground, David washed and anointed himself, and changed his clothes. Then he went to the house of the Lord and worshiped. He returned to his own house and asked for food; they set it before him, and he ate.
21. His servants said to him: “What is this you are doing? While the child was living, you fasted and wept and kept vigil; now that the child is dead, you rise and take food.”
22. He replied: “While the child was living, I fasted and wept, thinking, ‘Who knows? The Lord may grant me the child’s life.’