Commenting on the exchange in 2 Sam 11:6-11 between David who just recently impregnated Bathsheba, and her husband, Uriah the Hittite (whom David is urging to have sex with his wife to cover up his misdeed), one scholar noted the following:
David demands that Uriah cross the boundary from public front to the private domain, from soldier to husband, in conformity to military and domestic norms, just as the king had done inversely and illicitly in violating those norms when he lay with Bathsheba. The order is veiled with innuendo: ‘Go down to your house and bathe your feet’ (2 Sam 11.8). The king does not speak of going to his wife but his house [beitekha], not of lying [shkb] with his wife but of washing [rḥtz] his feet. The latter expression may be a euphemism for sexual relations, and resonates with the bathing beauty [‘ishah roḥetzet] that the king had spied from the rooftop (v. 2). When Uriah leaves the palace, the king’s provisions follow, the eating of which may lead to further comestibles. Dissimulation compels the king to prevaricate; he cannot be direct, lest he arouse suspicion. Only by hints and innuendo may suspicion be stymied, the winds of gossip waylaid. The return of Uriah to his house is all that matters.
But . . .
Uriah slept at the entrance of the royal palace [beit ha-melekh], along with the other officers of his lord, and did not go down to his house [beito]. When David was told that Uriah had not gone down to his house [beito], he said to Uriah, ‘You just came from a journey; why didn’t you go down to your house [beitekha]?’ Uriah answered David, ‘The Ark and Israel and Judah are dwelling in Sukkot 9or huts), and my lord Joab and my lord’s men are camped in the open; how can I go home and eat and drink and lie with my wife? As you live, by your very life [ḥayekha ḥay nafshekha], I will not do such a thing!’ (2 Sam. 11.9-11)
In his explanation for why he did not go down to his home to lie with her, Uriah swears on oath that he would not sleep with his wife but with the troops. The question is: Does Uriah know about the adultery and is he provoking the king by refusing to comply? Is he daring fate? Or, in his naïve fealty to the men, does he inadvertently become a foil to the king? Given the opaque nature of the biblical text, we cannot be certain what Uriah knows and what he intends. In not sleeping with his wife, he may be observing a tradition, lost to the contemporary reader, of maintaining ritual purity during ‘holy war’. As Rosenberg notes, Uriah plays the role of ‘orthodox Israelite, quietly observing the wartime soldier’s ban against conjugal relations (cf. 1 Sam. 21.4-7). The significance is double; it compounds the enormity of David’s crime (a violation of a marriage is bad enough; a violation of a marriage under sacred conjugal suspension is a particularly cruel and nasty offence)’. Further, Uriah’s statement may mean more than he intends as the second agent of dramatic irony in the narrative. When he identifies Joab as ‘my lord’, Uriah suggests that authority lies not with the king but elsewhere. Whether he intends the barb or not, the narrative sides with the solider, for ‘lordship’, as ascribed to David, is undermined the moment the king does not sally forth in battle with his troops. Lordship is further lost when David commits adultery with the wife of one of his most loyal soldiers and then has him slain in battle. The trait associated with the king as ‘lord’ is contingent upon military mastery of the battle at the front, as well as ethical mastery of the boundary between the public and private man in the palace and home. Through Bathsheba and Uriah, David violates both domains. (Rachel E. Adelman, The Female Ruse: Women’s Deception and Divine Sanction in the Hebrew Bible [Hebrew Bible Monographs 74; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2017], 174-76; italics in original; emphasis in bold added)
