So far in this chapter, David has stayed back while his nation is at war with Ammon. He eyed another man's wife and took her for himself, sending her home to her absent husband pregnant. He then brought the husband back from war to sleep with his wife, to cover for the adulterous pregnancy. This plan failed twice.
In verse 14 David enacts a second plan, this one more cruel sinful. This time he made Uriah carry his own death order to Joab. Joab was to not only to send Uriah to the fiercest front line fighting; butJoab was to withdraw so that Uriah would be slaughtered. Joab followed orders and, this time, David's plan worked. Uriah died.
v18. After the battle Joab sent a report to the king of the events of the war; but he seemed to be distraught that David would judge him for the strategy he chose to murder Uriah. So he made sure the messenger left that note in there to be clear that the strategy was by David's own order. When David got the message, he was encouraging to Joab for his efforts.
v26 Bathsheba mourned for Uriah. To me, from the tidbits we have here, she wasn't a participant in this and was genuinely abused by David. It seems like he forced himself on her. She was put in a position to defy the king. She then had to deal with her own uncleanness and unrighteousness. There doesn't seem to be any interaction between them except her message to him that she was pregnant. And then he murdered her husband. That's terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. I guess we don't know that she knew how her husband died...but still...
And then David takes her in and makes her wife number whatever we're at...and she has a son.
v 27..."But the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the Lord.
He sees. He hears. He knows.