Far from the Madding Crowd thank him, he asks if she needs a shepherd. She uncovers her face and reveals herself to be none other than Bathsheba. She has recently inherited her uncle's estate and is now wealthy. Though somewhat uncomfortable, she employs him. Meanwhile, Bathsheba has a new admirer: the lonely and repressed William Boldwood. Boldwood is a prosperous farmer of about forty, whose ardour Bathsheba unwittingly awakens when – her curiosity piqued because he has never bestowed on her the customary admiring glance – she playfully sends him a valentine sealed with red wax on which she has embossed the words, "Marry me".
Uriah the Hittite status as one of David's mighty men, British rabbi Jonathan Magonet observes that Uriah refers to Joab, not David, as 'my lord (or commander)' (2 Samuel 11:11). Joab is, Magonet notes, a kingmaker who dispatches ruthlessly his own military rivals, Abner and Amasa. He is sufficiently powerful that David, on his deathbed, advises Solomon to arrange his death (1 Kings 2:5–6). This prompts Magonet to speculate that David saw some deeper political threat from Joab through his entanglement with Uriah's wife. The prophet Nathan soon after confronted David about this murder, by first telling him a story of a rich