Uriah the Hittite ( ʾŪrīyyā haḤītī) is a minor figure in the Hebrew Bible, mentioned in the Books of Samuel, an elite soldier in the army of David, king of Israel and Judah, and the husband of Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam. While Uriah was serving in David's army abroad, David himself, from the roof of his palace, looked down on his city and spied upon Bathsheba bathing in the privacy of her courtyard. Moved by lust at the sight of her, David called for Bathsheba to be brought to him and slept with her, impregnating her. In an effort to hide his misdeeds, David called Uriah home from war, hoping that he and Bathsheba would have relations and that he would be able to pass the child off as belonging to Uriah. But Uriah, being a disciplined soldier, refused to visit his wife. So David murdered him by proxy by ordering all of Uriah's comrades to abandon him in the midst of battle, so that he ended up getting killed by an opposing army. Following Uriah's death, David took Bathsheba as his eighth wife. Biblical account Name The name Uriah is of Hebrew origin, a theophoric name referencing Yahweh, meaning "the (Yahweh) is my light." Based on the Biblical account, Uriah was probably of the ethnic Hittite minority resident in Israel that had lived in and around the region, "the Land of Canaan", since before the time of Abraham. The Hebrews, upon their entry into Canaan, had been commanded (Deuteronomy 20:16–17) to kill "anything that breathes ... in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance," with the explanation that "otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God" (Deuteronomy 20:18). Even so, some of the earlier inhabitants were spared, in some cases for cooperating with the Hebrews (Joshua 2:12–14, 6:23, Judges 1:24–25) in other cases from failure to carry out the extermination order (Joshua 15:63, 16:10, Judges 1:19, 21, 27–36). The era of David's rule was generations after this time, a length of time so long that by his day, many residents of non-Israelite descent who followed the Israelite religion had come to be accepted as Israelites. It is likely this included Uriah, as his name in Hebrew means "Yahweh is my light". In