2 Samuel 12:11

This is what the LORD says: ‘I will raise up adversity against you from your own house. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to another, and he will lie with them in broad daylight.

Berean Standard Bible

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Study note

Setting — The LORD addresses David, pronouncing judgment immediately following the confrontation over his treatment of Uriah’s wife. This declaration marks the transition from David’s hidden transgression to its public reckoning.

The words — The Hebrew phrase מֵקִים רָעָה (me.Kim ra.'Ah) literally translates to "[I am] about to raise up calamity." This verbal form emphasizes God’s direct initiation of the coming disaster rather than passive allowance.

The thread — The pattern of a man’s spouse being taken and given to another appears in Deuteronomy 28:30 as a covenant warning. The theme of royal household adversity resurfaces in 2 Samuel 16:21, where Ahithophel advises sleeping with David’s left-behind concubines.

Why it lands — The text demands recognition that hidden actions produce public consequences that cannot be contained. It requires the reader to accept that divine justice operates openly and directly within the spaces where sin was concealed.

Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.

The Hebrew words

King James Version

Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun.

Cross-references

2 Samuel 16:21 Ahithophel replied, “Sleep with your father’s concubines, whom he has left to take care of the palace. When all Israel hears that you have become a stench to your father, then the hands of all who are with you will be strengthened.”
Deuteronomy 28:30 You will be pledged in marriage to a woman, but another man will violate her. You will build a house but will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but will not enjoy its fruit.
2 Samuel 13:1 After some time, David’s son Amnon fell in love with Tamar, the beautiful sister of David’s son Absalom.
2 Samuel 13:28 Now Absalom had ordered his young men, “Watch Amnon until his heart is merry with wine, and when I order you to strike Amnon down, you are to kill him. Do not be afraid. Have I not commanded you? Be courageous and valiant!”
2 Samuel 15:6 Absalom did this to all the Israelites who came to the king for justice. In this way he stole the hearts of the men of Israel.
2 Samuel 15:10 Then Absalom sent spies throughout the tribes of Israel with this message: “When you hear the sound of the horn, you are to say, ‘Absalom reigns in Hebron!’”
Ezekiel 14:9 But if the prophet is enticed to speak a message, then it was I the LORD who enticed him, and I will stretch out My hand against him and destroy him from among My people Israel.
Ezekiel 20:25 I also gave them over to statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live.
Hosea 4:13 They sacrifice on the mountaintops and burn offerings on the hills, under oak, poplar, and terebinth, because their shade is pleasant. And so your daughters turn to prostitution and your daughters-in-law to adultery.