STUDIES IN SAMUEL No. 50

2 Samuel 10:1-19

December 9, 2001

Text Comment

v.2 This Nahash is presumably the same Ammonite king whom Saul defeated in 1 Sam. 11. It is perhaps likely that David was so well disposed to Nahash because the Ammonite king had helped him when he was on the run from Saul. It is not unlikely that Nahash would have thought that David, being Saul's enemy, was his friend.

The NIV's "deal loyalty with" is literally "do kindness with" or "do hesed with," as in the last chapter. David showed hesed to Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, and now he is doing the same to Hanun, the son of Nahash, who apparently also had befriended David. Again David shows hesed here; just what he will not display in the next chapter.

v.3 "Princes" may have been Hanun's military commanders. Their concern was misplaced, but it made sense. Ancient cities often were equipped with "tunnels, underground conduits, or other points of vulnerability that could provide access to the enemy in a siege." [Alter, Com., 245] Remember, that is how David captured Jerusalem.

v.4 What Hanun did, of course, was to humiliate these men, to insult their masculinity. But, the garments they wore and which Hanun cut off were official garments, the dress of envoys. In the ancient world, as today, diplomatic envoys, by custom, enjoyed certain immunities. Hanun's treatment of them, therefore, was a casus belli and led to David's adding to his empire a country he hadn't actually had any designs on. How many times has this happened in human history: a foolish, vain, and arrogant leader inviting ruin by precipitate action against a foe he could not hope to defeat if push came to shove. It may be happening in our world as we speak.

v.5 Jericho would have been their first stop in Israel after coming back from Rabbah in the Trans-Jordan.

v.6 Unable to stop David himself, Hanun now had to hire military help from some nearby Aramean states.

v.7 "The host of mighty men" probably means that David sent an elite corps of fighters against Hanun, exceptional in quality but not as large numerically as the army assembled by the enemy. But, take note, for the first time David sends an army, instead of leading it himself.

v.8 In other words, the battle was fought near Rabbah, the capital city (cf. 11:1). Rabbah is still a capital today, the present-day Amman, Jordan.

v.9 Whether Joab was boxed in as a result of rashness or poor intelligence on his part, or whether this was his strategy is not clear. Verse 12 may suggest the former and that Joab was uncertain how his force would fare now that it had to be divided in battle. At any rate, he had forces of the enemy both in front of him and behind him.

v.12 There has been a long debate as to what Joab meant by "the cities of our God." It may simply be a reference to the nation of Israel or it may be a reference to the cities in the Trans-Jordan where Yahweh was worshipped (remember, two and a half tribes settled in that territory when Israel conquered the Promised Land under Joshua).

v.14 The Arameans were apparently the more serious military threat and so Joab dealt with them first. He did not press the attack against Rabbah, at this point. A second campaign would be needed to take the city and it would during that campaign, when the army took the field, that David, having remained in Jerusalem, would commit adultery and unleash that chain of events that was to bring such disaster upon his house and nation.

v.15 The Aramean allies then committed the classic military blunder. Military strategists teach as a first rule of combat command: never reinforce failure. But they did and the result was their subjugation to David.

v.17 Against this much larger force, David musters the entire army of Israel - mostly citizen soldiers, reservists we might call them, not professional soldiers and not serving full time in the military - and, so it appears, this time David himself led the army into battle.

v.18 1 Chronicles, in the parallel text (19:18) gives "men of 7000 chariots 40,000 foot soldiers." Certainly it was 40,000 foot soldiers, not charioteers. We have already seen how easily and how often numbers were corrupted in the early copying of texts.

v.19 The vassals of Hadadezer became the vassals of David. That was life for small Ancient Near Eastern states. It was always someone else who was calling the tune.

Now, with the Aramaeans subdued, it was possible for another campaign against the Ammonites to be mounted without concern for dangers in other directions.

The chapter begins with a vague time reference, indicating that chronological sequence is not the narrator's point. In fact, David's conquest of the Aramean king Hadadezer, who enters this account later in the chapter we read, has already been reported in 8:3-7. The account of David's military conflict with the Ammonites is placed here because it is the crucial background for the account of David and Bathsheba which is given in the next chapter. In other words, the narrator returns to a campaign previously mentioned and adds greater detail to set the stage for the catastrophe and its aftermath that is going to occupy the largest part of the remainder of the book. That sordid affair began during the Ammonite war and occurred at all, in large part, because David, who should have been at the head of his troops in the field, was instead at home in Jerusalem. [Alter, Com., 244]

You will note that chapter 11 begins: "In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army…" So, while the men are out fighting, David is at home napping, lusting, and destroying the kingdom that God had so graciously granted him. Here the point is being made that David did not do what even pagan kings do. They go at the head of their armies when the campaigning season begins. But David stayed home, enjoying the privileges of his position.

How often the Bible is willing to hold up the behavior of Christians to the standard set by even pagan people. Jesus did it, remember, in the Sermon on the Mount. "If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?" [Matt. 5:46-47] In Luke 16:8 the Lord admits that often the children of the world are more shrewd than the children of light. David's behavior didn't fare well in comparison even with the pagan kings around him, who at least knew that they belonged at the front of their troops when the army moved against an enemy.

That point is emphasized by our narrator in this chapter by showing Joab fulfilling David's role, demonstrating battlefield prowess in the face of daunting odds, and even piety in his courageous summons to his brother and the troops in v. 12. Now, we can imagine very easily David saying, "Be strong and let us fight bravely for our people and the cities of our God. The Lord will do what is good in his sight." But here it is not David, but Joab. Now we know that Joab is not a pious man. We have already witnessed his injustice and cruelty, but in this chapter 10 he looks considerably better than David will look in the next chapter!

Now, it is incumbent upon us to ask what we are to take from the juxtaposition of this material, in chapter 10, with that that follows. Clearly the narrator is preparing us for the next chapter. 2 Sam. 10 is the context for chapter 11. But what are we to learn from that?

And, I think, it is very clear what lesson we are being taught. I may put it this way: The safest place for a Christian to be is surrounded by the enemy doing battle for the name of the Lord and the good of his people. We could put the same point negatively. The most dangerous place for a child of God is at home napping when there is a battle to be fought.

Think of how naturally David must have been beguiled into his spiritual indolence. He had been the beneficiary of a great deal of God's blessing. His wars had gone well. He had bested his enemies. In large part, humanly speaking, this was due to the fact that David had fighting for him a force of exceptionally brave and able soldiers who formed the core of his army. We will read later in the book about the exploits of these men. Some of them were more noteworthy for deeds of daring and for great military exploits than David himself. It certainly must have seemed for David an obvious conclusion that he no longer needed to lead the army personally. He had able commanders. Perhaps he even told himself that it was to the benefit of the army to have other men get experience leading troops in the field. He did not need to fight himself, so it seemed, and all the more it must have seemed that way when, for the first time, he sent the army out under Joab and stayed at home and a great victory was the result. Joab had acquitted himself splendidly and confirmed the wisdom of David's decision to send the army into the field without him.

And is this not often the case with us. We were fighting the good fight at one time, really doing battle for the Lord - with our own sins, with the world around us, pushing ourselves in witness and in charity, and striving on behalf of the church and the people in it. Those were days when we thought about the spiritual warfare and were deeply enmeshed in it, involved, actively participating. Our prayers were taken up with our battles and we were charting the course of our conquests.

But, we achieved some victories, we gained some ground. And now it seems, perhaps it has long seemed, that there is no longer any great need for us to fight so hard. We belong, with the other experienced soldiers, in the rear echelons, among the higher ranks whose days in the trenches and scurrying across battlefields are done. Like the American officers, of whom I read recently, who during the siege at Bastogne, during the Battle of the Bulge, who ate quite a fine Christmas dinner in the town while the young foot soldiers sat in their foxholes facing the enemy, terrified and miserable, freezing, inadequately clothed, their feet in boots soaked through with water, and with hardly anything to eat, some of them actually laying plans to shoot themselves in the hand or the foot just to escape the front lines. Just to say it is to recoil from the image, but, put it to yourself: are you not guilty? If not always, sometimes? Were you not once a young fighter, cold and hungry in your foxhole, and do you not sometimes now behave as if you were above all of that, too old for that, too experienced for that.

Well, our Savior never got to the rear echelon and we should never either! The day we can't say for sure in which direction the enemy may be found, the day we find ourselves indifferent to the battle, the day we are not conscious of being engaged in real action, combat for Christ's sake in our heart, in the world, for the church, is the day we have stayed at home in Jerusalem like David did and on that day all manner of things are possible that should never, never happen in a Christian's life.

But, there was another part of the beguiling temptation to which David succumbed, that then led to all the other temptations. David had attained to a certain measure of spiritual maturity. He had grown in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord. He was a man of spiritual experience and of a poised Christian character. We spent weeks, if you remember, particularly through the later chapters of 1 Samuel, charting David's progress from brash and foolish youthful spirituality - full of fire and zeal, to be sure, but not yet tempered by knowledge and by full submission to the will of God - to a ripe and cultivated godliness that knew how to apply the Word of God to the circumstances of life and to do so with love, grace, and courage. That was David as he assumed the throne of Israel. That was King David leading Israel in its early conquests of the Philistines and other enemies. That was King David responding to the covenant that God made with him and his house. That was King David bringing the ark to Jerusalem, showing kindness to Mephibosheth and then attempting to do the same to Hanun.

But maturity in godliness - such is the sinfulness of the human heart - can be itself a great temptation. One can think that he or she has arrived - oh, we never put it that way to ourselves but we are too self-confident and no longer seem to be aspiring for higher things for God as we once did. The result is that we lower our guard. Thinking we have arrived, we stop moving forward. Our minds and hearts are not taken up with the work that we must do. We are not so earnestly at prayer because we are not in the thick of struggle like we once were, life and death issues seem more distant, we are more relaxed, more comfortable.

I guarantee you: if you had suggested to David that he was going to do what he did a week before he did it, he would have laughed at you. The David of 2 Samuel 7 and the covenant that God made with him would not imagine himself doing what he did in chapter 11.

Our Savior told us, "Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation." But, when we imagine that we have reached a certain spiritual stature, we stop watching and stop praying. We are not as desperate, not as wary. We forget that the Devil will not stop watching us, even if we stop watching for him.

The juxtaposition of chapters 10 and 11 teaches us this lesson perhaps more powerfully and unmistakably than any other text of Holy Scripture: the price of godliness and of continuance in it is not only vigilance, surely that is important, but more important still is faithfulness at one's post. Had David left Jerusalem at the head of his army when the campaigning season began, he would never have seen Bathsheba and how things would have been different not only for him but for so many others.

Then, when the Devil tempted him, he could have said what every Christian ought to be able to say to the Devil when under his temptation. He could have said what Nehemiah said when his enemies sought to draw him away from Jerusalem: "I am carrying on a great work and cannot go down to you." [6:3] The safest place for a Christian is in the field and he is never more impervious to temptation than when he is fighting the Lord's battles in his own heart and in the church and in the world.

Dr. Nielson, the new president of Covenant College is married to Kathleen Buswell. Kathleen's grandfather, J.O. Buswell Jr., was a great man and a great theologian. He was the youngest chaplain to serve in the U.S. Army in World War I. He was the president who put Wheaton College on the map. He was the founding dean and first theologian at our own Covenant Theological Seminary. He died at Quarryville, the Presbyterian Retirement Home in Pennsylvania. The late Dr. Cornelius van Til, the professor for so many years at Westminster Theological Seminary and one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the 20th century, recollected his last visit to Dr. Buswell, who then had had a second stroke and was in the nursing facility, in a hospital bed. He remembered that he found old Dr. Buswell drilling himself on Hebrew vocabulary, working through his vocabulary cards one after another.

In his damp prison cell, before he was to be led out to be burned at the stake, William Tyndale pleaded with his jailers that he might be given his Hebrew Bible, grammar, and dictionary, so that he could continue his study.

We might ask, what is the point of studying Hebrew when one is to be burned in a day or two. But these men were only doing what they had always done, what they had trained themselves to do, the work God had called them to. And so the divine summons reached them in the field, where every Christian ought to want it to reach him or her.

There is a great text, a text that sums up a very large measure of biblical truth, in the Lord's teaching in Matthew 11:25: "…the kingdom of God has been forcefully advancing and forceful men lay hold of it." This was the text upon which Thomas Watson, the 17th century Puritan, built his great work, Heaven Taken by Storm. The way to heaven is not for loitering, but for running, the spiritual warfare required is not the labor of the training ground but of the actual battlefield, strewn with the bodies of the dead. The true Christian is a forceful person, a determined person, a person who knows what he or she is about, a person who is doing something and going somewhere, and will not be deterred. We are given two pictures side by side: one of David fighting and one of him napping. We see him as a Christian fighting; we see him as less than one napping. He is safe and he prospers together with his house when he is fighting and his entire life and kingdom unravel when he naps. And there is the Christian life and calling in a nutshell! There should be nothing apathetic in our Christian lives. If you can't think of something to do, something that is important and will be worthy of your maximum effort, if you can't think of how to join the battle, come to me and I will tell you. I will tell you in an instant what to do. And if you really do what I tell you - whatever I tell you - you will find it exhausting and you will find it transforming. And so long as you do it, you will of necessity stay close to the Lord and ride on the heights of the land.

Why do so many who are Christians loiter and nap? Because it is difficult and dangerous and draining to be in battle every day. But, it is better to be exhausted and safe than to be comfortable and betraying the Lord. It is better to fall finally exhausted into the arms of the Lord Jesus and hear him say "Well done, faithful servant," than to stroll to the end, enjoying our comforts, self-satisfied but have no scars to show that we have fought our master's battles.