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Uriah the Hittite

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biblical character

Wikidata facts

Gender
male
Citizenship
Hatti
Spouse
Bathsheba
Image
Rembrandt - Haman Recognizes his Fate - detail 01.jpg
Show 6 more facts
ethnic group
Biblical Hittites
Commons category
Uriah (Biblical figure)
present in work
Matthew 1
name in native language
אוּרִיָּה הַחִיתִּי
different from
Urija
Sources (2)

via Wikidata · CC0

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Encyclopedic overview

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Pieter Lastman, David handing over a letter to Uriah, 1619. Uriah the Hittite (Hebrew: אוּרִיָּה הַחִתִּי‎ ʾŪrīyyā haḤīttī) is a minor figure in the Hebrew Bible, mentioned in the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings, an elite soldier in the army of David, king of Israel and Judah, and the husband of Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam. While Uriah was serving in David's army abroad, David, from the roof of his palace, looked down on his city and spied upon Bathsheba bathing in the privacy of her courtyard. Moved by lust at the sight of her, David called for Bathsheba to be brought to him and slept with her, impregnating her. In an effort to hide his misdeeds, David called Uriah home from war, hoping that he and Bathsheba would sleep with each other and that he would be able to pass the child off as belonging to Uriah. However, Uriah, being a disciplined soldier, refused to visit his wife. So David murdered him by proxy by ordering all of Uriah's comrades to abandon him in the midst of battle, so that he ended up getting killed by an opposing army. Following Uriah's death, David took Bathsheba as his eighth wife.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Uriah the Hittite” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.