Bible Commentaries

III. David's Reign in Its Decline - 2 Samuel 10-20

In the first half of David's reign he had strengthened and fortified thekingdom of Israel, both within and without, and exalted the covenantnation into a kingdom of God, before which all its enemies were obliged tobow; but in the second half a series of heavy judgments fell upon him andhis house, which cast a deep shadow upon the glory of his reign. Davidhad brought these judgments upon himself by his grievous sin withBathsheba. The success of all his undertakings, and the strength of hisgovernment, which increased year by year, had made him feel so secure,that in the excitement of undisturbed prosperity, he allowed himself to becarried away by evil lusts, so as to stain his soul not only with adultery,but also with murder, and fell all the deeper because of the height to which his God had exalted him. This took place during the war with the Ammonites and Syrians, when Joab was besieging the capital of the Ammonites, after the defeat and subjugation of the Syrians (2 Samuel 10), and when David had remained behind in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 11:1). For this double sin, the adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah, the Lord announced as a punishment, that the sword should not depart from David's house, and that his wives should be openly violated; and notwithstanding the sincere sorrow and repentance of the king, when brought to see his sin, He not only caused the fruit of his sin, the child that was born of Bathsheba, to die (2 Samuel 12), but very soon afterwards allowed the threatened judgments to fall upon his house, inasmuch as Amnon, his first-born son, violated his half-sister Thamar, and was murdered in consequence by her own brother Absalom (2 Samuel 13), whereupon Absalom fled to his father-in-law at Geshur; and when at length the king restored him to favour (2 Samuel 14), he set on foot a rebellion, which nearly cost David his life and throne (2 Samuel 15-17:23). And even after Absalom himself was dead (2 Samuel 17:24-19:1), and David had been reinstated in his kingdom (2 Samuel 19:2-40), there arose the conspiracy set on foot by the Benjaminite Sheba, which was only stopped by the death of the chief conspirator, in the fortified city of Abel-Beth-Maachah (2 Samuel 19:41-20:26).

The period and duration of these divine visitations are not stated; and all that we are able to determine from the different data as to time, given in 2 Samuel 13:23, 2 Samuel 13:38; 2 Samuel 14:28; 2 Samuel 15:7, when taken in connection with the supposed ages of the sons of David, is that Amnon's sin in the case of Thamar did not take place earlier than the twentieth year of David's reign, and the Absalom's rebellion broke out seven or eight years later. Consequently the assumption cannot be far from the truth, that the events described in this section occupied the whole time between the twentieth and thirtieth years of David's reign. We are prevented from placing it earlier, by the fact that Amnon was not born till after David became king over Judah, and therefore was probably about twenty years old when he violated his half-sister Thamar. At the same time it cannot be placed later than this, because Solomon was not born till about two years after David's adultery; and he must have been eighteen or twenty years old when he ascended the throne on the death of his father, after a reign of forty years and a half, since, according to 1 Kings 14:21, compared with 1 Kings 11:42, 1 Kings 11:43, he had a son a year old, named Rehoboam, at the time when he began to reign.

This war, the occasion and early success of which are described in thepresent chapter and the parallel passage in 1 Chron 19, was the fierceststruggle, and, so far as the Israelitish kingdom of God was concerned, themost dangerous, that it ever had to sustain during the reign of David. Theamount of distress which fell upon Israel in consequence of this war, andstill more because the first successful battles with the Syrians of the southwere no sooner over than the Edomites invaded the land, and went aboutplundering and devastating, in the hope of destroying the people of God,is shown very clearly in the two psalms which date from this period (the44th and 60th), in which a pious Korahite and David himself pour outtheir lamentations before the Lord on account of the distress of theirnation, and pray for His assistance; and not less clearly in Ps 68, in whichDavid foretels the victory of the God of Israel over all the hostile powersof the world.

2 Samuel 10:1-2

Occasion of the war with the Ammonites. - 2 Samuel 10:1. On theexpression “it came to pass after this,” see the remarks on 2 Samuel 8:1. When Nahash, the king of the Ammonites, died, and Hanun his son reigned in his stead, David thought that he would show him the same kindness that Nahash had formerly shown to him. We are not told in what the love shown to David by Nahash consisted. He had most likely rendered him some assistance during the time of his flight from Saul. Nahash was no doubt the king of the Ammonites mentioned in 1 Samuel 11:1, whom Saul had smitten at Jabesh. David therefore sent an embassy to Hanun, “to comfort him for his father,” i.e., to show his sympathy with him on the occasion of his father's death, and at the same time to congratulate him upon his ascent of the throne.

2 Samuel 10:3

On the arrival of David's ambassadors, however, the chiefs of the Ammonites said to Hanun their lord, “Doth David indeed honour thy father in thine eyes (i.e., dost thou really suppose that David intends to do honour to thy father), because he has sent comforters to thee? Has David not sent his servants to thee with the intention of exploring and spying out the town, and (then) destroying it?” The first question is introduced with ה, because a negative answer is expected; the second with הלוא, because it requires an affirmative reply. העיר is the capital Rabbah, a strongly fortified city (see at 2 Samuel 11:1). The suspicion expressed by the chiefs was founded upon national hatred and enmity, which had probably been increased by David's treatment of Moab, as the subjugation and severe punishment of the Moabites (2 Samuel 8:2) had certainly taken place a short time before. King Hanun therefore gave credence to the suspicions expressed as to David's honourable intentions, and had his ambassadors treated in the most insulting manner.

2 Samuel 10:4

He had the half of their beard shaved off, and their clothes cut off up to the seat, and in this state he sent them away. “The half of the beard,” i.e., the beard on one side. With the value universally set upon the beard by the Hebrews and other oriental nations, as being a man's greatest ornament,

(Note: “Cutting off a persons' beard is regarded by the Arabs as an indignity quite equal to flogging and branding among ourselves. Many would rather die than have their beard shaved off” (Arvieux, Sitten der Beduinen-araber). Niebuhr relates a similar occurrence as having taken place in modern times. In the years 1764, a pretender to the Persian throne, named Kerim Khan, sent ambassadors to Mir Mahenna, the prince of Bendervigk, on the Persian Gulf, to demand tribute from him; but he in return cut off the ambassadors' beards. Kerim Khan was so enraged at this, that he went the next year with a large army to make war upon this prince, and took the city, and almost the whole of his territory, to avenge the insult.)

the cutting off of one-half of it was the greatest insult that could have been offered to the ambassadors, and through them to David their king. The insult was still further increased by cutting off the long dress which covered the body; so that as the ancient Israelites wore no trousers, the lower half of the body was quite exposed. מדויהם .deso, from מדוּ or מדוה, the long robe reaching down to the feet, from the root מדה = מדד, to stretch, spread out, or measure.

2 Samuel 10:5

When David received information of the insults that had been heaped upon his ambassadors, he sent messengers to meet them, and direct them to remain in Jericho until their beard had grown again, that he might not have to set his eyes upon the insult they had received.

When the Ammonites saw that they had made themselves stinking beforeDavid, and therefore that David would avenge the insult offered to thepeople of Israel in the persons of their ambassadors, they looked round forhelp among the powerful kings of Syria. They hired as auxiliaries (with athousand talents of silver, i.e., nearly half a million of pounds sterling,according to 1 Chronicles 19:6) twenty thousand foot from Aram-Beth-Rehoband Aram-Zoba, and one thousand men from the king of Maacah, andtwelve thousand troops from the men of Tob. Aram-Beth-Rehob was theAramaean kingdom, the capital of which was Beth-rehob. This Beth-rehob, which is simply called Rehob in v. 8, is in all probability the city ofthis name mentioned in Numbers 13:21 and Judges 18:28, which lay to the southof Hamath, but the exact position of which has not yet been discovered:for the castle of Hunin, in the ruins of which Robinson imagines that hehas found Beth-rehob Bibl. Researches, p. 370), is to the south-west ofTell el Kadi, the ancient Laish-Dan, the northern boundary of theIsraelitish territory; so that the capital of this Aramaean kingdom wouldhave been within the limits of the land of Israel, - a thing which isinconceivable. Aram-Naharaim is also mentioned in the corresponding text of the Chronicles, and for that reason many have identified Beth-Rehob with Rehoboth, on “the river” (Euphrates), mentioned in Genesis 36:37. But this association is precluded by the fact, that in all probability the latter place is to be found in Rachabe, which is upon the Euphrates and not more than half a mile from the river (see Ritter, Erdk. xv. p. 128), so that from its situation it can hardly have been the capital of a separate Aramaean kingdom, as the government of the king of Zoba extended, according to 2 Samuel 10:16, beyond the Euphrates into Mesopotamia. On Aram-Zoba, see at 2 Samuel 8:3; and for Maacah at Deuteronomy 3:14. אישׁ־טוב is not to be taken as one word and rendered as a proper name, Ish-Tob, as it has been by most of the earlier translators; but אישׁ is a common noun used in a collective sense (as it frequently is in the expression ישׂראל אישׁ), “the men of Tob.” Tob was the district between Syria and Ammonitis, where Jephthah had formerly taken refuge (Judges 11:5). The corresponding text of the Chronicles (1 Chronicles 19:6-7) is fuller, and differs in several respects from the text before us. According to the Chronicles, Hanun sent a thousand talents of silver to hire chariots and horsemen from Aram-Naharaim, Aram-maacah, and Zobah. With this the Ammonites hired thirty-two thousand (receb) (i.e., chariots and horsemen: see at 2 Samuel 8:4), and the king of Maacah and his people. They came and encamped before Medeba, the present ruin of Medaba, two hours to the south-east of Heshbon, in the tribe of Reuben (see at Numbers 21:30, compared with Joshua 13:16), and the Ammonites gathered together out of their cities, and went to the war. The Chronicles therefore mention Aram-Naharaim (i.e., Mesopotamia) as hired by the Ammonites instead of Aram-Beth-Rehob, and leave out the men of Tob. The first of these differences is not to be explained, as Bertheau suggests, on the supposition that the author of the Chronicles took Beth-rehob to be the same city as Rehoboth of the river in Genesis 36:37, and therefore substituted the well-known “Aram of the two rivers” as an interpretation of the rarer name Beth-rehob, though hardly on good ground. For this conjecture does not help to explain the omission of “the men of Tob.” It is a much simpler explanation, that the writer of the Chronicles omitted Beth-rehob and Tob as being names that were less known, this being the only place in the Old Testament in which they occur as separate kingdoms, and simply mentioned the kingdoms of Maacah and Zoba, which frequently occur; and that he included “Aram of the two rivers,” and placed it at the head, because the Syrians obtained succour from Mesopotamia after their first defeat. The account in the Chronicles agrees with the one before us, so far as the number of auxiliary troops is concerned. For twenty thousand men of Zoba and twelve thousand of Tob amount to thirty-two thousand, besides the people of the king of Maacah, who sent a thousand men according to the text of Samuel. But according to that of the Chronicles, the auxiliary troops consisted of chariots and horsemen, whereas only foot-soldiers are mentioned in our text, which appears all the more remarkable, because according to 2 Samuel 8:4, and 1 Chronicles 18:4, the king of Zoba fought against David with a considerable force of chariots and horsemen. It is very evident, therefore, that there are copyists' errors in both texts; for the troops of the Syrians did not consist of infantry only, nor of chariots and horsemen alone, but of foot-soldiers, cavalry, and war-chariots, as we may see very clearly not only from the passages already quoted in 2 Samuel 8:4 and 1 Chronicles 18:4, but also from the conclusion to the account before us. According to 2 Samuel 10:18 of this chapter, when Hadarezer had reinforced his army with auxiliaries from Mesopotamia, after losing the first battle, David smote seven hundred receb and forty thousand (parashim) of Aram, whilst according to the parallel text (1 Chronicles 19:18) he smote seven thousand (receb) and forty thousand foot. Now, apart from the difference between seven thousand and seven hundred in the case of the (receb), which is to be interpreted in the same way as a similar difference in 2 Samuel 8:4, the Chronicles do not mention any (parashim) at all in 2 Samuel 10:18, but foot-soldiers only, whereas in 2 Samuel 10:7 they mention only (receb) and (parashim); and, on the other hand, there are no foot-soldiers given in 2 Samuel 10:18 of the text before us, but riders only, whereas in 2 Samuel 10:6 there are none but foot-soldiers mentioned, without any riders at all. It is evident that in both engagements the Syrians fought with all three (infantry, cavalry, and chariots), so that in both of them David smote chariots, horsemen, and foot.

When David heard of these preparations and the advance of the Syrians into the land, he sent Joab and his brave army against the foe. הגּבּורים (the mighty men) is in apposition to כּל־הצּבא (all the host): the whole army, namely the heroes or mighty men, i.e., the brave troops that were well used to war. It is quite arbitrary on the part of Thenius to supply vav before הגּבּורים; for, as Bertheau has observed, as never find a distinction drawn between the (gibborim) and the whole army.

2 Samuel 10:8