Image Details

Nimatallah/Art Resource, NY

A demure Bathsheba unwittingly reveals her ankle to the harp-playing King David, who spies on the bathing maid from his balcony in this painting by W. Krodel. Enamored with her beauty, David sent for Bathsheba, Uriah the Hittite’s wife, and slept with her. When Bathsheba became pregnant, David arranged to have Uriah positioned in battle so that he would be killed. David then married Bathsheba. The Israelite God Yahweh warned David that because he murdered Uriah and then took his wife, he would “make a calamity rise against you from within your own house; I will take your wives and give them to another man before your very eyes and he shall sleep with your wives under this very sun” (2 Samuel 12:11). Absalom later fulfilled this prophecy.