hose that are in it. Accordingly the messenger carried the
king's message with which he was charged, and made haste to Joab. But
Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, when she was informed of the death of
her husband, mourned for his death many days; and when her mourning was
over, and the tears which she shed for Uriah were dried up, the king
took her to wife presently; and a son was born to him by her.

3. With this marriage God was not well pleased, but was thereupon
angry at David; and he appeared to Nathan the prophet in his sleep,
and complained of the king. Now Nathan was a fair and prudent man; and
considering that kings, when they fall into a passion, are guided more
by that passion than they are by justice, he resolved to conceal the
threatenings that proceeded from God, and made a good-natured discourse
to him, and this after the manner following:--He desired that the king
would give him his opinion in the following case:--"There were," said he,
"two men inhabiting the same city, the one of them was rich, and [the
other poor]. The rich man had a great many flocks of cattle, of sheep,
and of kine; but the poor man had but one ewe lamb. This he brought up
with his children, and let her eat her food with them; and he had the
same natural affection for her which any one might have for a daughter.
Now upon the coming of a stranger to the rich man, he would not
vouchsafe to kill any of his own flocks, and thence feast his friend;
but he sent for the poor man's lamb, and took her away from him,
and made her ready for food, and thence feasted the stranger." This
discourse troubled the king exceedingly; and he denounced to Nathan,
that "this man was a wicked man who could dare to do such a thing; and
that it was but just that he should restore the lamb fourfold, and be
punished with death for it also." Upon this Nathan immediately said that
he was himself the man who ought to suffer those punishments, and that
by his own sentence; and that it was he who had perpetrated this 'great
and horrid crime.' He also revealed to him, and laid before him, the
anger of God against him, who had made him king over the army of the
Hebrews, and lord of all the nations, and those many and great nations
round about him; who had formerly delivered him out of the hands of
Saul, and had given him such wives as he had justly and legally married;
and now this God was despised by him, and affronted by his impiety, when
he had married, and now had, an