Bible Commentaries

2 Samuel 10:3). Again and again in history we come upon such narrow-minded and rash advisers. We shall come upon them again in the second book of Kings in the instance of Rehoboam, who was brought to ruin by the suspicious counsels of foolish men. There are always persons who are ready to credit others with bad motives. According to our interpretation of the motives of others do we often reveal the true quality of our own hearts. Suspicion is more to be dreaded than simplicity. When Christian education is completed in the heart there will be a readiness to assign the best possible motives to all human action, at least in the absence of the clearest evidence to the contrary. Many men are ruined by their 2 Samuel 10:4). Noted travellers have told us that the cutting off of a person's beard is regarded by the Arabs as an indignity equal to flogging and branding amongst ourselves. It has also been made clear by travellers that the loss of their long garments, so essential to Oriental dignity, was no less insulting than that of their beards. Hanun was not one of the men who could adopt a middle course. Without receiving the comforting words of David in the sense in which they were intended, he need not have gone to the extreme which he adopted. But some men are incapable of seeing the middle course, which is one of proverbial safety, and they imagine that they display their ingenuity and teach a useful lesson to others by adopting a policy of complete rigour. The men might have been sent back with a coldly polite reply, which would have discouraged further approach on the part of the king of Israel, or they might have been received with gladness, and thus reflex honour might have been shed upon the throne of David. But no such course opened itself before the vision of the counsellors of Hanun. They would show their greatness by humbling the messengers of David to the uttermost depths. It is little to the honour of human nature that there are not only insults which men can hurl at one another in moments of passion and defiance, but there are studied insults which are elaborated in cold blood and inflicted with a sense of enjoyment by the cruel men who have fashioned new modes of social humiliation. No doubt that night there was joy in the palace of Hanun and in the houses of his triumphant princes. They had adopted a spirited foreign policy. They were not going to receive any messages from outlying peoples which might be construed into obligations, but were going to teach the nations that whatever Nahash might have done in his effusive old age, they were determined to be known as men of rigour and men of dignity.

The insult inflicted upon Israel was not only personal, it was deeply religious. Not only was David dishonoured, but God himself was defied. In Leviticus 19:27, we see how stringent was the law regarding this matter of shaving the head. "Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard." It is not for us to enter into the value of any such ordinances: suffice it to say that they were the distinct ordinances of the people of Israel, and as such had religious value and significance. There is a cruelty in our own day which seeks to injure men through the medium of their religious convictions. The history of Christian persecution runs wholly along this line of offence; Men have been nick-named, taunted with the peculiarity of their faith, mocked as to the manner of their prayers, laughed at by the ruffianism of their age. To-day men are kept out of pecuniary positions because of their religious faith. Social advancement is barred to not a few persons on account of their religious convictions. Were such men without conviction, light-headed, and light-hearted, ready to adopt any form or ceremony as they might adopt a change of garments, their course in life would be much smoother; but because they are earnest, even to agony, their convictions are made into so many stumbling-blocks by which their progress is hindered.

The counsellors of Hanun the son of Nahash were too blinded by their own passion to foresee the results of their foolish policy. What was a practical jest to them was an occasion of just anger to the king whom they had insulted. It is well to take some account of the resources of the enemy before being too defiant or adopting a course of lofty superciliousness. But folly seldom sees both sides of a question. Suppose the counsellors of Hanun had asked themselves how David would regard this method of reply, possibly they might have slackened their speed in their evil course. But passion never pauses to consider the full issue of its rage. The men who carried a message to Hanun could also carry a message to David. When David was told of the event he showed once more the noble quality of his nature by delicately sending to meet the men and advising them to tarry at Jericho until their beards were grown, and then they could return ( 2 Samuel 10:5). The verse reads as if David were inclined to follow the impulse of his better feeling. Dealing with his own men, his action is conspicuous for considerateness and gentleness. Not one word of anger is introduced into this portion of the history. David would seem rather to have been ashamed with the shame of the afflicted men, and to have been so overborne by his sympathy with them as to forget the indignity which had been heaped upon him by the son of Nahash. But David's mind quickly turned to the shocking reality of the case with which he had to deal. He "sent Joab, and all the host of the mighty men," and thus inaugurated his policy of revenge. It is easy for us in the midst of our Christian civilisation to point out what other course David might have adopted, but judging events by the time and atmosphere in which they occurred, it would be hard to say that David did not adopt the only policy which could be understood by the heathen aggressor. It is a notable characteristic of the genius of history that it is always faithful to its own time. As the action of David would now be out of place as between Christian nations, so any other course than that which he adopted would have been out of place in relation to his particular injury. Read history in its own light. It is essential to adopt this canon of interpretation in reading many portions of the Old Testament; otherwise the mind will be thrown often into a state of moral bewilderment, and be ready almost to cry out against the Spirit of God.

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"Let us play the men for our people."— 2 Samuel 10:12.

The Old Testament continually calls men to courage.—The Bible would seem to be the enemy of all timidity, all moral cowardice, all bodily shrinking from danger and loss.—Read the exhortations of God to Joshua; read passages related to this verse: their whole tone is identical, being a tone of urging men to put on their strength, to arouse their courage to its highest fashion, and to go forward with steadfastness and zeal and hopefulness in all difficult service.—"Let us play the men,"—let us be strong, noble, energetic, alive in every point, putting away from us all that is feeble and emasculating in sentiment.—There is always another manhood deeper than the one we have yet realised: a larger self, an in-tenser force; let us call up all that is deepest and strongest within us, and as danger thickens let us rise in courage.—Courage would seem to be but another word for faith.—Courage is the Old Testament word, faith is the New Testament word.—The courageous man does not fail if his cause be good; though he fall he shall rise again, though many enemies spring upon him he shall be enabled to throw them all off, and carry forward his processes to their fullest fruition.—We should say, "Lord, increase our faith: Lord, increase our courage;" we should accept the exhortation of the prophet, "Put on thy strength."