12. “Well, stay here today,” David told him, “and tomorrow you may return to the army.” So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day and the next.
13. Then David invited him to dinner and got him drunk. But even then he couldn’t get Uriah to go home to his wife. Again he slept at the palace entrance with the king’s palace guard.
14. So the next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and gave it to Uriah to deliver.
15. The letter instructed Joab, “Station Uriah on the front lines where the battle is fiercest. Then pull back so that he will be killed.”
16. So Joab assigned Uriah to a spot close to the city wall where he knew the enemy’s strongest men were fighting.
17. And when the enemy soldiers came out of the city to fight, Uriah the Hittite was killed along with several other Israelite soldiers.
18. Then Joab sent a battle report to David.
19. He told his messenger, “Report all the news of the battle to the king.
20. But he might get angry and ask, ‘Why did the troops go so close to the city? Didn’t they know there would be shooting from the walls?
21. Wasn’t Abimelech son of Gideon killed at Thebez by a woman who threw a millstone down on him from the wall? Why would you get so close to the wall?’ Then tell him, ‘Uriah the Hittite was killed, too.’”
22. So the messenger went to Jerusalem and gave a complete report to David.