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To religious readers, I point to God Himself, who apparently thought that King David deserved to remain king, and even have the Messiah descend from him, despite a particularly ugly form of covering up his adultery (sending Bathsheba’s husband into battle where he would assuredly be killed).

David was not an adulterer. At the point he bedded her, Bathsheba was free woman, no longer married or engaged.

When King David sent Uriah back into the very front lines of battle it was for a number of reasons, none having any thing to do with wishing Uriah to die. Rather it was to determine if Uriah wished to bed Bathsheba, if she was in some state of marriage to Uriah. Uriah refused to bed her. Why? Either he was rejecting the marriage to her, or refusing to consummate the marriage to her.

David had spied Bathsheba at the bath. Under Jewish custom a bath is mandatory for a bride about to consummate her marriage, or for a wife after having completed the monthly menstrual period during which she and her husband may not have relations and ready to return to her husband for sexual coitus.

But Uriah refused to have her.

Still, David tried to heal that marriage. He ordered Uriah to be sent to the very dangerous front line of battle. If it was within the first year of marriage Uriah could, under Jewish law, have refused the order. Newlywed men are exempt from military service for the first year of marriage.

Thus King David forced Uriah to chose life or death. To live, but as the full husband of Bathsheba, or to risk almost certain death in battle. Uriah chose the great danger.

Why? We don't know. We know Uriah was a mighty warrior, but perhaps outside of the high intensity of battle, of action and danger, he was bored. Depressed. Not clear, afaik. But King David, an adept judge of men, would have known.

Like a good Doctor, King David was focused entirely on saving the case that was immediately in front of him. The marriage of Uriah and Bathsheba. And in that focus on the immediate case of one single marriage, David missed on his duty as King of a Nation.

As the prophets came to rebuke him -- APPEARANCES are critical for a King. As it was the circumstances of the story as evidenced to the public, to all but Davis, Bathsheba and Uriah, were truly problematic. It looked like what most people take it to have been.