2 Samuel 11:4

And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness: and she returned unto her house.

David sent messengers, and took her. The despotic kings of the East, when they take a fancy for a woman, send an officer to the house where she lives, who announces it to be the royal pleasure she should remove to the palace. An apartment is there assigned to her, and if she is chosen queen, the monarch orders the announcement to he made that he has taken her to be his chief wife. Many instances in modern Oriental history show the ease and despatch with which such secondary marriages are contracted, and a new beauty added to the royal seraglio. But David had to make a promise, or rather an express stipulation, to Bath-sheba, before she complied with the royal will (1 Kings 1:13; 1 Kings 1:15; 1 Kings 1:17; 1 Kings 1:28); for, in addition to her transcendent beauty, she appears to have been a woman of superior talents and address in obtaining the object of her ambition; and in her securing that her son should succeed on the throne-in her promptitude to give notice of her pregnancy-in her activity in defeating Adonijah's natural expectation of succeeding to the crown-in her dignity as king's mother-we see very strong indications of the ascendancy she gained and maintained over David, who perhaps had ample leisure and opportunity to discover the punishment of this unhappy connection in more ways than one (Taylor's 'Calmet').