The Battles of David: The Battle is the Lord’s
2 Samuel 10:1–19
Samuel Lesson #185
August 27, 2019
www.deanbibleministries.org
Opening Prayer
“Father, we’re so grateful we can be here. We’re grateful we have the freedom to be here in a congregation that teaches Your Word, that we’re in a country that allows freedom and recognizes that we have these rights of freedom, not because of government but because this is part of who we are as human beings created in Your image and likeness.
“Father, we are in the midst of a difficult and often bitter, angry, hateful, political season, and we pray that we, as believers, can keep our focus on You. Our trust is not in man. Our trust is in You. Father, we pray that we might have a real peace about whichever direction the nation goes knowing that You are in control.
“Father, we also pray for us as a congregation that we might be a faithful witness and a light not only to those in our immediate community, but as the Word goes forth from this pulpit around the world, we pray that you would just continue to bless that and challenge people with their spiritual growth, with the truth of Your Word, that You might be glorified.
“We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”
Slide 2
Open your Bibles this evening to 2 Samuel 10. You might want to stick your thumb over by 2 Samuel 8. We’ll do a little bit of review, and what we’re looking at this evening in 2 Samuel 10 is just how God works in giving Israel the victory in these battles.
There’s an interesting thing about this particular situation. In 2 Samuel 10, and that is that God’s name is only mentioned one time. When you look at this and we look at chapter 8, the history of battles, and we look at what is going on in chapter 10 with the war between David and the Ammonites…
If you read it over quite a few times, you begin to think we’re not getting the whole story here. Under the ministry of God the Holy Spirit, we’re given the information we need, but there is a lot more going on here. If you take the time to study—and we’ll see the results of my study this evening—you’ll discover that there really is a lot more going on here.
We have a couple of different levels. As I pointed out the last couple of weeks in our study, one is what’s going on in terms of the way the writer is writing and presenting this information. We call that the literary development and how this is structured.
Then, on another hand, we also have the history that is taking place at this time, and the history relates to what we would call normal chronological development.
We normally read a history that is written chronologically. Most history that you and I are familiar with, that we grow up with—we pickup biographies, we pick up history books— and they’re written chronologically.
But that is not how Scripture is written. Because this, while it is about history and deals with history and reality that happened, is arranging the material in a thematic way in order to highlight the way God is working:
a) in the life and history of Israel; and
b) in the life of David.
I pointed this out last time in terms of review and in terms of overview, that we have seen in the first nine chapters how God has blessed David.
Slide 3
And we see how David is uniting and expanding the kingdom—that’s from 2 Samuel 2–9. We saw that this section comes to an end in two chapters that relate to God’s grace and faithfulness emphasized—those words are used there. We see God’s faithfulness to David—and there’s this summary of action in chapter 8, and we’ll come back to that in a minute …
2 Samuel 8 deals with the background for 2 Samuel 11, but it’s bringing that first section to a close. As I pointed out, a lot of people think the next section begins in chapter 11. It really begins, as I pointed out last time—we’ll review that in just a minute—with the beginning of chapter 10.
But the writer is writing thematically. He’s showing how God is working in David’s life and blessing David and bringing him along. And he brings it to the ultimate in David’s life, which is the Covenant with God.
But we see, even there, that it’s not arranged chronologically, for we read in 2 Samuel 7:1: “Now it came to pass when the king was dwelling in his house,—that’s his palace. He’s built that. He’s at peace, he’s at rest—and the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies all around.”
Then we have the story of how God reveals that He is going to make a covenant with David through the prophet Nathan, and David’s response to that at the end of chapter 7. We spent many months talking about that.
Then we come to chapter 8, and it starts off in 2 Samuel 8:1, “After this it came to pass that David attacked the Philistines and subdued them.”
Well wait a minute. I thought we just read at 2 Samuel 7:1, that after all these battles, those events took place.
So, clearly this is not written in chronological order, and that these conquests that occurred take place actually chronologically, before the giving of the Covenant. So, we see clearly from the text, that this is arranged in a thematic manner, and not in a chronological manner.
In the second part of the book, from 2 Samuel 10–20, this is God working in David’s life. Chapter 10 is the setup. “Forget” the verses. “Forget” the chapters. It is very clear from a number of things that everything shifts with the beginning of chapter 10.
2 Samuel 10 is really the introduction, it’s the setup, for what happens with David and Bathsheba and Uriah and the consequences, which is the focus of what takes place in 2 Samuel 11–12.
2 Samuel 11–12 cover the sin itself, and then the consequences are in 2 Samuel 13–20. This shows that David does have—like all of us—we have a sinful side, a dark side.
When our sin nature takes over, there are consequences that disrupt our lives and the lives of everybody around us because of sin. But yet God’s grace is sufficient.
So it allows the writer to first of all portray how gracious God is to David, how wonderful King David was overall. But then on the other hand, he’s not painted as the ideal king. There are sins, and there are flaws, and there are massive failures in his life.
But he’s not like Saul. It’s not a sin of rebellion against God as Saul’s sin was, so that’s the setup.
We get into chapter 10 which is where we ended last time, we just got started there.
Slide 4
As we get into 2 Samuel 10, we see that these next chapters going into the first part of chapter 12, are tied together by the repetition of this word shalach in Hebrew. It means “to send.”
It’s used 129 times in 1 and 2 Samuel together, so in the whole book, 62 times or a little less than half of that in 2 Samuel, but twenty-three of those (or a third of those in 2 Samuel) are in these chapters. That tells you something.
In Bible study methods, one of the laws of Bible study, is to look at proportion. Another is repetition. A lot of times the writers tie certain things together by the repetition of certain words, and they’re designed to emphasize certain things.
So, we begin in 2 Samuel 10. David is going to be sending these emissaries to Hanun, who is the new king in Rabbah in Ammon. Then it ends with Yahweh sending Nathan to confront David with his sin with Bathsheba, and Uriah. So that ties it all together.
Now this is important.
Because as we go through the Word, we’re always reminded (or I’m always reminded when I think through Scripture), that we have this clear statement in 2 Timothy 3:16–17 that all Scripture is breathed out by God, and it is profitable, first of all for doctrine, for teaching, for communicating important information to us.
This isn’t here just because it’s a reporter giving interesting information about David and these battles. You can read through certain sections of Scripture and you read these battles and your eyes may glaze over.
If you’re not interested in military or military history—and really chapter 10 covers these battles … There are actually two battles that take place within the chapter, and in a very quick, superficial way.
But they’re important when you spend time looking at the whole structure of what’s happening in what’s said in other passages of Scripture, how things are being put together within David’s life, and what the whole setup is.
Slide 5
What we’re going to do first of all is just look at this literary flow in 2 Samuel 8–10—mostly chapter 8—and then the historical flow. So we see the literary flow in 8 and 10, then the historical flow, and then we’re going to examine 2 Samuel 10 in more detail as I pointed out last time.
Before we get to 2 Samuel 11, we have to take some time to look at the psalm that David wrote following the victory in chapter 10. Then we’re going to look at understanding the broad teaching for us that we find in this passage. It’s profitable for teaching, for reproof and correction, and for instruction in righteousness. [2 Timothy 3:16–17]
Now we may not find everything there in any given passage, but we do find instruction here. Sometimes we find that the message for us in terms of a theological or doctrinal implication is pretty simple. And so we will be looking at this.
God isn’t mentioned in this chapter except one time, and that’s in the mouth of Joab in 2 Samuel 10:12. That’s the only time we have seen the mention of the name of God.
In 2 Samuel 10:12, we read in the midst of the battle as he and Abishai are setting up the strategy that they’re going to take when they get into this battle, realizing that they have walked into a massive ambush, Joab says to Abishai, “Be of good courage, and let us be strong for our people and for the cities of our God. And may—Yahweh—the LORD do what is good in His sight.”
This is from the lips of Joab, and we know that Joab isn’t exactly one of the spiritual giants of the Old Testament.
I think Joab was a believer. He is David’s uncle, and he and Abishai are brothers. But he’s not known for his spiritual maturity. He is more of a “hit-man” sometimes, and sometimes he’s just taken things on, on his own, and he really becomes a problem for David later on.
David never seems to have the courage to cut Joab down to size, but on his deathbed, he tells Solomon that Solomon’s got to go ahead and execute Joab because of everything that he has done.
So, that tells us something. That tells us that God is still in control.
It’s like looking at the Book of Esther. Esther never mentions the name of God in all the chapters. It never mentions God. What you see is an earthly event that takes place, but you know that what is controlling everything is God.
That’s the same kind of thing that you see here in chapter 10. God is completely in control in all of these different circumstances, and He is pulling things together.
But when we look at these chapters, we see that there are various major characters: Hanun, who is the new king of Ammon, and David, of course, the king of Israel, and Joab who is the commanding general over the armies of Israel, and his brother Abishai.
Then there are minor players, and we look at these minor players, and you have the commanders of the army of the Ammonites. You have the commanders, as well as the soldiers, of the Syrians. You have the king of the Syrians, who is Hadadezer. And you have the commanding general, Shobach. And then, you have the Aramaic troops.
All of those people are making decisions. All of those people are involved in determining the course of events. How are they going to respond to certain circumstances and situations? What are they going to do?
Hanun is going to respond to David’s sending emissaries by cutting off their beards and chopping off their clothes so that basically they’re being sent home naked from the waist down, which is a sign of incredible disrespect and shame. And he’s making a very profound statement.
Why does he do this all of a sudden? Where does this come from? This just seems to just pop out of the blue. So, we have all of these different decisions.
Then David has to decide how he’s going to respond, and he seems to respond fairly quickly as if he’d expected something. And Joab’s at the ready. And then Joab is going to have to make decisions in the heat of battle.
All of these individual decisions remind us that we live our lives under the providential care and supervision of God, but we’re making responsible decisions and we’re responsible for their success or their failure, even though ultimately God is the one Who is in control.
It’s the emphasis on divine institution number one, and personal responsibility. So, we’re going to look at this, and structure things in this way as we move through the chapter.
One of the things I want to point out from last time … I want to clarify.
I don’t know if it was just confusion on my part or that I certainly can get a little bit cloudy sometimes as I’m trying to deal with this massive detail, and all the things that I have been reading and studying on this …
But I was quoting from Eugene Merrill, and I don’t think I made it clear that Eugene Merrill in his book on the Kingdom of Priests—which I think is outstanding, and I do recommend that as a good history overview of the Old Testament—has one view of interpreting what is happening here. I don’t think that that’s the view that I’m teaching.
He thinks that this attack that comes at the end, on Edom, in the middle of 2 Samuel 8, is a summary of what happens in 2 Samuel 12.
I don’t think so. I think this actually precedes what happens in 2 Samuel 10. And as I look at this, I think one aspect of Hebrew literature that’s a narrative, that it’s important to remember is that they don’t write history like we do.
A lot of times—and you can find examples of this all the way through the historical books—is you’ll have a chapter, a sentence or paragraph, that gives you a summary and overview, and then immediately you get into the details of what happened.
So, it’s not like one chapter follows another chapter. For example, the classic illustration is Genesis 1. You have the seven days of Creation. God rests on the seventh day, and He looked at His creation. Everything was very good (actually, that goes down to Genesis 2:3).
Then you get into Genesis 2:4. And everything in Genesis 2 from verse 4 on, is a drill-down on what happened on day six when God creates man. When God creates first Adam, and then later, He creates Eve, and they are in the Garden. Chapter 2 deals with that. So, you have this a lot.
So 2 Samuel 8 is coming to the conclusion of this first literary section in 2 Samuel, and it is closing out with two episodes related to God’s grace to David and then David’s imitating that, showing grace to Mephibosheth. So there is a progression there.
Slide 6
The result of that progression is really showing how God expanded David’s kingdom. In this map [see slide], the purple area is the extent of Saul’s control over the territory that God promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So that’s the size of Saul’s kingdom compared to the green color. That’s David’s kingdom.
Then, when you add the yellow in the north, that takes us into Solomon’s kingdom that was actually, according to the thing down here [legend], the yellow is territory that was nominally controlled by David. So, this area up here is the Euphrates River. It comes over from Iraq. And this area up here is in Syria.
So remember, the border that God promised to Abraham for the land that He was giving him went from the river of Egypt … There’s a lot of debate whether it’s the Wadi El-Arish here, or whether it’s the Nile. Most people that I consult, who spend a lot more time studying this than I do, think it’s the Wadi El Arish for various reasons. And it goes from there to the River Euphrates. It extends into the desert, extends all the way over to the Euphrates and Iraq. All of that territory was what God promised to Abraham.
But this is the extent of what came under Israel’s control. And part of this, the area in the Transjordan here, the northern part of the Transjordan, went to two and a half tribes. The southern part of the Transjordan belonged to Edom in the south, then Moab and then Ammon.
Now that’s the focus of what’s happening in these battles, is David gaining control of the Transjordan.
Slide 7
You have these areas I’ve highlighted here [see slide], zeroing in a little closer. You have Jerusalem—we’re going to talk about Jerusalem in 2 Samuel 10. Across the Jordan almost due east of Jerusalem is Rabbah, which is modern Amman, Jordan. Ancient Rabbah is modern Amman, Jordan, and Rabbah was the capital of the Ammonite kingdom.
Then the next area we need to be aware of is Damascus, which is in Aram in biblical times, but it’s in Syria later on and in modern times. Then Hamath way up in the north is still in Syria, and then this area outlined is Phoenicia, the area of modern Lebanon.
So, a lot of things really haven’t changed, and as we go forward we’re going to see the importance of some these things and the parallel.
Slide 8
So when we look at this first issue, which is the literary flow, it is designed to take us through David’s conquest and to summarize how God blessed David in expanding his kingdom, and to show His blessing on David.
When we study through these, we see that David is still on the battlefield with his troops. Even when we get down to the section in 2 Samuel 8:13–14, we see that David is with his troops in Edom.
David is consistently pictured as being on the battlefield with his troops. Now that’s important.
When we drill down into chapter 10, at the beginning, it’s Joab that he has sent to Rabbah. But when we get to 2 Samuel 10:16–18, there’s another threat from the north, from the Aramaeans (or we call them Syrians today) and David takes all the host of Israel.
He takes the whole army with him. He calls up everybody. It’s a major, major threat, and he is going to defeat Hadadezer for control of that area of Syria, which includes [see slide] what then was called Bashan—that was the biblical term for it. Today, it is the Golan Heights.
Slide 7
See, geography affects your military strategy. You have to control the high ground.
The Golan Heights are high ground. If you’ve been to Israel, you get on the west side of the Sea of Galilee, and you look across the Sea of Galilee and there’s this huge ridge on the opposite side.
When the Syrians were in control of the Golan, they had their artillery battery set up there. They would just randomly lob shells across the Sea of Galilee into Tiberias and a lot of the other settlements over there. And it just wreaked havoc.
So, David needs to control Syria and the high ground on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. All of these different areas are going to come into play as we go through this particular story.
Slide 8
So we talked about the literary. We’ve seen how 2 Samuel 10 introduces the next section with the lead up as to why there’s going to be this battle in 2 Samuel 11. Chapter 11 is where we see the description of David’s sins of adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah. 2 Samuel 11:1 says, “It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent—there’s our word “sent” again—David sent Joab and his servants with him.”
Notice, David stays behind. It’s very clear, an obvious emphasis of that verse. David doesn’t go.
We’ve seen—I’ve traced this through 2 Samuel 8 and 10—David’s out on the battlefield, but David does not go out on the battlefield here in verse 1. So that’s a clear point.
So why isn’t he going to battle at Rabbah? Why is Joab going? That’s what chapter 10 is telling us.
Slide 6
So, chapter 10 sets things up. Now when we look (we go back to the map [on Slide 6]) at the map, here’s Israel. Israel today is located here.
Slide 10
One of the things we see is, here’s Israel [see slide] at the time of David. On their southwest border, they’ve got the Philistines. Today, it’s the Gaza Strip, and you have Hamas.
Then on the area across the Jordan in the ancient world you had Edom, Moab, and Ammon, and this whole area over here is the kingdom of Jordan. Then to the north, in the ancient world you have Aram. Today we have Syria.
Israel’s in a bad neighborhood today. Israel was in a bad neighborhood back then.
How are you going to take out these enemies? How are you going to protect yourself? From David’s viewpoint, it is part of his mission to expand the territory of Israel and to control the land that God has promised them.
So, when we take a look at this particular map, how would we go about this?
Well, over here we have Philistia, and they are strong. They have almost a professional military. They have iron weapons. They have a chariot corps. They have experience in warfare. This is a significant military threat on their southwest.
If David’s plan—and I believe that’s the plan—is to expand his control across the Jordan … If he’s going to attack Ammon, he’s going to have a major problem if he’s got Philistia on his back. Because if he takes his army and attacks the Ammonites, then he’s exposing his rear to the Philistines.
So part of the argument I’m setting forth here is 2 Samuel 8 does not take us through the order of events chronologically, but it sets things up for us a little bit differently. The first thing he has to do, the first thing that’s mentioned is, he’s got to defeat the Philistines because he has to be secure in his rear.
So the first thing that happens is that he subjugates the Philistines, and he makes them his vassal because otherwise they would threaten his rear. He has got to bring them into submission to him, so he is then able to move east against Edom, Moab, and Ammon … because that is exactly what he does.
Now, the way it’s presented in chapter 8 isn’t in the order that I think that it took place.
So David’s got a group back here, the Philistines … When he conquers them, one of the things that happens by making them his vassal is, that we see a parallel with what happened earlier when he makes himself a vassal to Achish, the king of Gath. He becomes a soldier, all of his mighty men become part of the army of Achish.
He’s going to go to battle when they go into battle, and if it weren’t for the grace of God, he would’ve had to have been going into that battle that occurred towards the end of 2 Samuel, up near the Valley of Jezreel.
But one thing that happens while David is a part of the Philistine army is that he’s going to get an education. He’s going to get an education in Philistine military training, in their strategy and tactics, and he’s going to become acquainted with their elite troops.
These are identified as we get into this section in 2 Samuel. There’s reference to these groups: the Cherethites, the Pelethites, the Gittites. So, we’ve got these different groups. Well, those three groups, the Cherethites, the Pelethites, the Gittites (the Gittites are from Gath). These are different groups, elite troops in the Philistine army.
They later become David’s bodyguard.
See that’s interesting … He takes his enemy, but they know who David is because of the time David spent with the Philistines. They trust him, and they shift their loyalty and swear a loyalty oath to David, and it’s built on integrity. So, they are trustworthy. They’re going to be mentioned, and they become the core soldiers, sort of the professional elite in David’s army.
Now the Philistines also had a chariot corps, and so they use the chariots very effectively, and they use them effectively against Israel, but Israel didn’t yet have or develop the use of chariots.
Chariots were sort of like the light armor there. Or, you might call them mechanized infantry that was used in battle in a very effective way.
There are two soldiers in a chariot, one’s the driver, the other one has a sword, a bow and arrow, and that chariot can move and has tremendous flexibility and maneuverability inside and around infantry troops. But David doesn’t have a chariot corps. One reason he doesn’t have a chariot corps is because it’s expensive.
You have to have iron. You have to have the people and the skills to build the chariots and to make everything work, and Israel just hasn’t developed enough to have all of that yet. So he doesn’t have a chariot corps. Furthermore, the terrain in Israel really doesn’t fit.
Slide 7
If we go back to the earlier map that we have [see slide], all this territory is mostly in the hill country of Judah and the hill country of Samaria. That’s not territory where you’re going to use chariots. It’s infantry territory, and so there’s not really a need for chariots.
Slide 6
It’s not until David expands and you can see it a little bit of it in this map [see slide], but over here towards the coast, this is the Valley of Esdraelon here, and this is a huge agricultural area. It’s not really until they have control of the Valley of Jezreel, which is the breadbasket of Israel, that they’re going to have the pasturage to feed all the horses they’re going to need for a chariot corps. You’ve got to think in terms of terrain and agriculture.
When you look here at the map, you have Megiddo located right there on the edge. Those of you who have been with me, we’ve stood right there and looked down over that huge, huge valley where you have all the agriculture, where you can grow the grain to feed your horses for your chariots.
Megiddo wasn’t picked as a as a fortress and the headquarters of Solomon’s chariot corps just because it was a nice place. It was located tactically because it was close to the pasturage to feed the horses for the chariots, and was also located on the crossroads where the Via Maris, the Way of the Sea, came across and cut across Galilee …
Comes up here [see slide] and right there by Megiddo, cut through there, and goes across the Sea of Galilee, and then goes on up to Damascus. So it’s astride of a major trade route.
It’s strategically significant. All of these things were important.
Slide 7
So, David still had basically an infantry army at this point. It was organized around his core group of the thirty elite soldiers that were part of his mighty men. And he formed his organization around them.
He had also these professional mercenaries from the vassal states, mostly the Philistines, the Cherethites, the Pelethites, and the Gittites. Also, as part of what the Philistines brought to him, is he had archers, he had heavy infantry, and he had well-trained experienced warriors and leaders.
The rest of the Israelite army was made up of conscripts. They were basically draftees. That was a major problem because several times in Scripture we see them change sides. They quickly changed sides when Abner was going to betray David, and they went with Abner. And then later on, when Absalom’s going to start his rebellion against David, they switch sides.
So there is not great loyalty among the conscripts, but they’re the everyday soldier.
Slide 9
What we see in 2 Samuel 8 is this order. First, the Philistines and then Moab, then Hadadezer and the Aramaeans and then Toi of Hamath brings tribute, and then last of all, you have Edom.
Slide 10
Well, if we look at this map, that doesn’t make strict geographically strategic sense. Moab is located between Edom and Ammon. So to get to Moab first after the Philistines, you’d have to go through Ammon or you’d have to go through Edom.
Slide 11
It is more likely that the first thing that David did after defeating the Philistines, was to go after the Edomites and there’s a reason for that.
Slide 12
If you look at this map [see slide] we have Bashan in the north (that’s the high country, the Golan Heights), and up here is Damascus. If Syria is going to come south, the Aramaeans, then they’re going to be blocked by the Transjordan tribes in Gilead.
So there’s a force there that you would expect—they didn’t do it—but that would’ve blocked the Syrians from coming in. So, strategically, what David would do is first of all, he would go across and defeat the Edomites. Then once he had them subjugated—and that took six months, and we read that he killed almost every man of fighting age among the Edomites.
It doesn’t really explain why, but it raises the question of why does it seem to be so cruel? Why is David killing almost all the Edomites? Well, he doesn’t want an army if he’s going to go north to Ammon, he doesn’t want this Edomite army on his rear either. He wants to take them out so that he can go forward.
The same thing happens when we read about the Moabites, that he had them all lie down, and he killed every two and kept one. He had to divide them up into thirds and he killed two thirds, and one third survived.
So what’s happening in the development of David’s expansion is, he comes south around the southern end of the Dead Sea. He takes care of Edom and captures that, then he begins to move north after six months or year and he takes out Moab.
Now if you’re sitting up here in Rabbah in Ammon and you are in a peace treaty with David, what are you beginning to think?
You’re watching David. He’s taken out the Philistines, and he’s made them vassals and strengthened his military, then he comes across and he takes out the Edomites, and then he pivots and he’s heading north, and he takes out the Moabites.
Well, who’s next? Well, you’re next.
So when you jump into 2 Samuel 10, you wonder … Why is it that this son of the king of Ammon, Hanun, is such an idiot? Why is he mistreating David’s emissaries? Where does this come from?
One explanation is this: that he already sees what’s happened and then in the midst of the battle that will ensue or just before that battle, he knows David’s come, he switches loyalty from David to the Syrians in the north and they immediately send troops.
I don’t think that happened in a vacuum. I think he’s sitting up here, probably his father is sitting there watching what’s going on and says, “Okay, I’m going to die soon, but this is what’s going to happen and if this happens, David turns against you, this is what you need to do.”
The Scripture doesn’t get into all of that, but it seems to make a tremendous amount of sense. So, we have David moving around the south, coming up from the south on the opposite side of the Jordan, and we have the Philistines that are out of the picture.
Slide 13
So we come to 2 Samuel 10:1, “It happened after this that the king of the people of Ammon died, and Hanun his son reigned in his place.” The first thing we learn is David’s response. “Then David said, ‘I will show kindness to Hanun the son of Nahash, as his father showed kindness to me.’ So David sent by the hand of his servants to comfort him concerning his father. And David’s servants came into the land of the people of Ammon.”
Now this sounds like David’s just being extremely gracious and generous, and the way it’s translated is the word, “I’m going to show kindness.” A couple of things we have to pay attention to. He’s going to show chesed.
Chesed is a key term for what? Covenant loyalty. So that immediately implies David’s not being a nice guy. David is sending these men on a mission that’s in relation to a treaty.
Now, I think David is being a little Machiavellian here. There’s a lot going on that’s not here, and so I’m just speculating a little bit, but I think that one of the reasons David sends them over there is to see what kind of reaction he’s going to get from Hanun. He probably knows, as he’s been taking out Edom and Moab, that has generated a certain amount of concern on the part of the Ammonites.
So he sends these emissaries over there, and this is where it really gets rather interesting. It brings into play a bit of the understanding of the literary structure of this text and how things are going to develop.
Slide 14
In 2 Samuel 10:3 we read, “And the princes of the people of Ammon said to Hanun their lord, ‘Do you think that David really honors your father because he has sent comforters to you? Has David not rather sent his servants to you to search the city, to spy it out, and to overthrow it?’ ”
How do you read that? Are they like the evil counselors to Rehoboam who are trying to instigate war? Are you reading it that way, which is the way I’ve usually read this, or are these counselors men who are wise and experienced more like the wise counselors of Solomon, who were saying, “You need to pay attention to this. We’ve got this threat on our south and now David’s making nice to you, but maybe there’s some subterfuge going on here and this is all a play. He’s about to attack, and he’s about to take us out.”
So, I think that we ought to read it more that way. They’re warning him, and he takes it as a legitimate and valid warning.
Slide 15
So what happens in 2 Samuel 10:4?
“Therefore, Hanun took David’s servants, shaved off half of their beards, cut off their garments in the middle, at their buttocks, and sent them away.” He is disgracing them in the area of their masculinity and their sexuality.
Studies show that Jews at that time, the male Israelites, wore beards. It’s a sign of manhood. This was true also of the Philistines, and it was certainly true of the Assyrians, and so to shave their beards is a real insult. I mean, it is just calling them effeminate or something like that.
Then he’s cutting off their pants so that their buttocks and genitals are fully exposed. This is shameful. And then he’s going to send them back.
This is going to provoke war. But, there are other things going on in this text. It sets up what’s coming. It’s foreshadowing.
David’s men are shamed and disgraced specifically in the area of their masculinity and their sexuality. Then when we get into 2 Samuel 11, Uriah is going to be shamed and disgraced, specifically in the area of his masculinity and his sexuality as David cuckolds him.
The second thing we see is that the emissaries, when they’re sent back, show honor and solidarity. They’re going to do what David says. They go to Jericho and they stay out of the way. They don’t go back and fight until they can grow their beards back. So they’re out of the way.
In the same way, we’re going to see in 2 Samuel 12 that Uriah showed honor and solidarity with his troops. When David called him back to Jerusalem and told him to go home and sleep with his wife, he wouldn’t go sleep, even in his house. His soldiers were out on the field sleeping on the ground so he slept on the ground, and he did not go in and have relations with his wife.
Then the third parallel we see, is that both actions were unprovoked. So there is a sort of a thematic introduction here to what’s about to happen, from a literary standpoint.
We see David sending in his emissaries, and the emissaries are sent back disgraced and ashamed. Now David is going to respond. How do you react to this situation? David’s probably not surprised. There’s no sense of that here. When David found out, he sent them a message [2 Samuel 10:5], “And the king said, ‘Wait at Jericho until your beards have grown, and then return.’ ”
Slide 16
Then in 2 Samuel 10:6 we read, “When the people of Ammon saw that they had made themselves repulsive to David, the people of Ammon sent and hired—the mercenaries—they need to strengthen their defenses, so they had a plan, and they go get the professional soldiers from the Aramaeans and the Syrians up north—the Syrians of Beth Rehob and the Syrians of Zoba, twenty thousand foot soldiers; and from the king of Maacah, one thousand men, and from Ish-Tob, twelve thousand men.”
So, they get 20,000 infantry. They’re going to get the Syrians who probably have a chariot corps. He’s going to bring them down.
Now there’s no mention of chariots in this text, but the terrain around Rabbah is flat. It’s excellent terrain for maneuverability, for a chariot corps to fight especially going against the infantry. We know that the Syrians had chariots as well.
So, even though the text doesn’t mention them, it would be surprising if they didn’t bring their chariot corps down. Then they’re going to set up an ambush.
Slide 17
2 Samuel 10:7 takes us back to the scene with David. “Now when David heard of it, he sent Joab and all the army of the mighty men.” Now that tells you he sends his elite soldiers, the army of his mighty men, his gibborim. That’s interesting.
Gibborim in this context is his mighty men, but if you go to Israel, what you see written over the door of the male restroom is Gibborim. Today it just means “men,” but in biblical Hebrew, it’s referring to these mighty valiant soldiers. This is his elite corps, and so these are his “Ranger battalions” that are going to go in with Joab in order to fight against the people in Rabbah.
So the people of Rabbah have their strategy, and this is what’s going to happen. They come out—and it’s just covered so briefly—in 2 Samuel 10:8. “Then the people of Ammon came out and put themselves in battle array at the entrance of the gate.”
They come outside of the walled city … These ancient near eastern cities were walled, and they were basically a fortress. So, they’re going to try to use this fortification in a way that would strengthen them and trap Joab.
So they come out. They put all their troops out in front, all the Ammonite troops.
Then the second sentence [2 Samuel 10:8b], “And the Syrians of Zoba, Beth Rehob, Ish-Tob, and Maacah were by themselves in the field.” What that means is, that they sent them out of sight. This is what’s called a “hammer and anvil” tactic. The anvil is going to be the wall of the city. They’re going to set their troops out in front, and as soon as the battle gets hot, they’re just going to fold back inside the walls of the city. And that’s the signal to the Syrians [the hammer] to come in from the rear and to decimate the Israelite army.
So, they’ll be trapped between the professional soldiers of the Syrians—probably their chariots—and the walls. This is really a trap that’s been set up, and they are just about to spring this on Joab.
The interesting thing is, Joab seems to immediately realize what’s going on here.
Slide 18
What I want to do at this point is go to the map here, and review what’s happening. This is the big view of this map and it’s a little too difficult for you see all the little lines of action here, but this summarizes what’s happening.
Slide 19
You have an orange line showing David’s emissaries going to Rabbah. That’s the top line. Then, you have a green line coming back. That’s the route of David’s men coming back to Jericho. (Jericho is just across the Jordan.)
Then you have the route of Joab and the Israelites. It’s a tan line which you can’t see really well unless you go here [indicating distance between Jerusalem and Jericho and then between Jericho and Rabbah], and that’s this middle tan line, of Joab going to Rabbah.
Slide 18
Then later what happens after the battle at Rabbah, Joab’s going to retire to Jerusalem. Then there’s going to be another assault which comes at the end, when Hadadezer comes down from the north with all of his army. And they’re going to come down to attack.
So David comes up and meets them at this place called Helam, which is where he absolutely decimates Hadadezer’s army.
Now what do you recognize about the name Hadadezer? Ezer.
Who’s Hadad? Hadad was the Aramaean name for Baal. He’s the storm god. So, instead of “God is our helper,” it is “Hadad is our helper.” (I just thought I would throw that in at no extra charge tonight.)
Slide 20
So we have had this great battle, and we have to move through both of these battles. What happens is Joab has this consult in the middle of the battle, realizing … He’s gotten intel that there is this Syrian chariot corps (or infantry, whatever it was) off site where you can’t see them and that he’s walked into an ambush.
So he calls up Abishai, and he divides his troops.
A lot of times, this isn’t a good idea tactically in a battle because it creates a lot of command-and-control problems. But he divides the troops, and he takes his mighty men. He’s going to be in the middle of the battle up against the wall. [2 Samuel 10:10], “And the rest of the people he put under the command of Abishai his brother, that he might set them in battle array against the people of Ammon.”
So, he’s setting up Abishai against the people of Ammon, and he’s going to stand with his mighty men, to guard the back, the rear, as they’re attacked by the Syrians. This is what he tells Abishai.
Now you might have read this a number of times and not quite caught what’s happening here. Typically, what would happen …
If you’re in a battle and the tide turns and you’re winning the battle, what do you do? You pursue the enemy. You chase them and completely decimate them and destroy their ability to fight.
What Joab is telling Abishai is don’t do that. You defeat them and if they start to fold and run away, then you turn around and help us. If the battle is not going well with us.
In the same way … If we are engaged in a battle with the Syrians and we’re defeating the Syrians and they are folding, we’re not going to pursue them. We’re going to turn around and help you with the Ammonites … Because he’s in a tight situation.
This was not a great victory for Israel. They would’ve probably lost a lot of men in this battle.
So then he encourages Abishai and tells him: [2 Samuel 10:12], “Be of good courage, and let us be strong for our people and for the cities of our God. And may the LORD do what is good in His sight.”
So Joab is trusting in the Lord to give them the victory.
But up to this point, all the way through this, they’re just making the kinds of decisions you and I make every day at work and home. We are in a framework where we’re trusting God.
But we have decisions we have to make right and left. We may not have time to sit down, claim a promise, prayer, whatever. We’re just trusting in God’s providential care. So this is what has taken place.
Slide 21
Now I want us to go to the next verses. We’ve come down through chapter 10, and we’ve come down to 2 Samuel 10:13, “So Joab and the people who were with him drew near for the battle against the Syrians, and they fled before him.” So Joab has a victory. He turns back this professional corps, and they flee.
[2 Samuel 10:14], “When the people of Ammon—who are outside the walls of the city—saw that the Syrians were fleeing, they also fled before Abishai, and entered the city. So, Joab returned from the people of Ammon and went to Jerusalem.”
See it doesn’t tell you a whole lot. You’ve got to read between the lines, in terms of this battle. They don’t stay there for great victory party, which hints that it wasn’t a great victory. They survived.
God allowed them to survive, and to turn back both armies, but it wasn’t a huge victory.
Joab takes his army, he leaves the field of battle, and he goes back to Jerusalem. What happens next is in 2 Samuel 10:15, “When the Syrians saw that they had been defeated by Israel, they gathered together.” So, they’re going to re-organize and get ready for the next stage.
Then we have another episode, starting in 2 Samuel 10:16, “Then Hadadezer—he’s the king up in Hamath, up in Syria—sent and brought out the Syrians who were beyond the River and they came to Helam.”
So, here’s our map [see slide]. He’s up here in Hamath. He’s got control of this area of Aram, which today is Syria, and he’s got troops guarding the border up here on the Euphrates. He knows he’s got a major fight with the Israelites, and he pulls back his border guards to be with the rest of his army, and they’re going to march south in order to take on David.
So they’re headed south, and David gets the news. His scouts come back, and [2 Samuel 10:17], “When it was told David, he gathered all Israel,—that’s important. This is a major, major battle. This is an existential crisis for Israel. So they’ve got this massive Syrian army coming south, and he calls out all of Israel, and they head toward the Syrians—crossed over the Jordan and came to Helam.”
I like this map because I think they drew it correctly. When Joab went … Let me go back to the other map.
Slide 19
When Joab went, he went directly across. (Today this is where they have the King Hussein bridge, which is the main bridge crossing over into Jordan. You have one [bridge] up in the north and one further south down near Eilat. But this is the King Hussein bridge [indicating just east of Jericho]).
So Joab crossed there and went to Rabbah. But this time, they’ve got this tracked out this way, where David stays on the west side of the Jordan [indicating between Jericho and Jerusalem]. Why does he do that?
You have to think about military strategy here. You can’t just cross it either way because he’s got an enemy over here [indicating toward the northeast of Jericho on the other side of the red line]. If he stays on his side of the Jordan, then the Jordan River protects his right flank, and so he can’t be attacked by Ammonites.
So he’s going to head further north until he gets to about the Sea of Galilee, and that’s where he crossed over the Jordan.
Slide 21
He heads to this place called Helam.
Now this is a significant, significant battle site that has quite a history to it. What happens here is that he is going to meet the Syrians in a place called Edrei. Hadadezer has assembled all of his forces with reinforcements, and he is going to meet David.
Slide 22
I have a quote here related to this and this location Edrei, and this is quoted in two sources. It’s quoted in a book by R. A. Gabriel, who is quite a well-respected military historian who has written a book called Military History of Ancient Israel, and he—I think there’s a typo here because it talks about fighting the Muslim armies in 334–336. That’s probably 734 and 736 because there were no Muslims in 334—but it’s also quoted in one of the more recent commentaries on 2 Samuel by Harry Hochner.
He quotes Gabriel along with his typo-ed dates, so he describes this location: “[It is] some twelve miles of traversable ground between the deep gorge of the Yarmuk River and the natural barrier of the Trachona (Ledja, in present-day Arabic), a vast area of petrified lava blocks. Here the Byzantines withstood the Muslim armies between AD 334 and 336 [sic]—I think it’s probably 734 and 736—and it was through this area (or it may even be later) that the British moved against the Vichy French in 1941.”
I was doing some research trying to get those dates right, never did, but this seems to be a place where there have been a number of major battles over the years. David picked his location because you can’t bring any chariots in there. It is an extremely rugged area, petrified rock, and so it limits it to an infantry battle.
Actually, the longer quote comes from Herzog and Gichon who are Israeli military historians. They have written about this, and say that they get the same dates. I think this is one of those cases where you’ve got somebody who had a typo and then somebody quotes them, and then somebody else quotes them and you just get this perpetuation of the wrong date.
But in their book Battles of the Bible: A Military History of Ancient Israel, they say he engages in a place called the Edrei gap, which was twelve miles of rugged terrain between the deep gorge of the Yarmuk River, the natural barrier of the Trachona, a field of petrified rocks. This, they argue, is the only reasonable location for a battle this size.
Then, it goes on and mentions the Arabs and the fact that it would keep them from fighting with chariots. So this is a great location for this battle, and David absolutely decimates the Syrians.
Slide 23
This is what we read at the end of the chapter [2 Samuel 10:18–19], “Then the Syrians fled before Israel; and David killed seven hundred charioteers and forty thousand horsemen of the Syrians, and struck Shobach the commander of their army, who died there—and there’s a suggestion there that if the commander was killed, that it was a high casualty battle. And in verse 19—And when all the kings who were servants to Hadadezer saw that they were defeated by Israel, they made peace with Israel and served them.”
So now these other groups that had been vassals to Hadadezer, now became vassals to David. So David is expanding out his control throughout that area of Syria. [2 Samuel 10:19b], “So the Syrians were afraid to help the people of Ammon anymore.”
They had been defeated by the Israelites twice.
Now when you realize there’s no chapter break, the very next statement takes us from the end of the fall into the spring when the troops will go out to do battle … So it’s a natural flow.
This 10th chapter has set the stage for the next battle going back to Rabbah, and David not going there.
But the basic message here is, God is protecting Israel and giving them the military skill and the information they need in order to win their battles. So they are expanding their territory all through the Transjordan and up into Syria. And they keep winning battle after battle.
1 Samuel 17:47, “The battle is the Lord’s.”
Closing Prayer
“Father, thank You for this opportunity to walk our way through this chapter, to put things together. We are thankful for the scholarship of many who have studied all of this and laid the groundwork for it.
“And Father we pray that we might remember that our battles are Your battles. And that You go before us, and You’re the one who fights for us, and that we have to relax and trust in You because You are going to do that which is right for us according to Your plan.
“Father, we pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”