2. Samuel 10:18 Kommentar

This chapter gives us an account of a war David has with the Ammonites and the Syrians their allies, with the occasion and success of it. I. David sent a friendly embassy to Hanun king of the Ammonites (Sa2 10:1, Sa2 10:2). II. He, upon a base surmise that it was ill intended, abused David's ambassadors (Sa2 10:3, Sa2 10:4). III. David resenting it (Sa2 10:5), and the Ammonites prepared for war against him (Sa2 10:6). IV. David carried the war into their country, sent against them. Joab and Abishai, who addressed themselves to the battle with a great deal of conduct and bravery (Sa2 10:7-12). V. The Ammonites, and the Syrians their allies, were totally routed (Sa2 10:13, Sa2 10:14). VI. The forces of the Syrians, which rallied again, were a second time defeated (Sa2 10:15-19). Thus did David advance his own reputation for gratitude, in returning kindness, and for justice, in repaying injuries.

INTRODUCTION TO SECOND SAMUEL 10 This chapter gives an account of the ill treatment of David's messengers to the king of Ammon, who were sent to condole the death of his father, and were basely used by him, which David resented, Sa2 10:1; which the Ammonites perceiving prepared for war, and got the Syrians to be confederates with them; of which David being informed, sent Joab and Abishai into their country, Sa2 10:6; who divided the army between them, and attacked the Ammonites and Syrians with great courage, and routed them both, and returned to Jerusalem, Sa2 10:9; after which the Syrians gathered together again to fight with David, who went out to meet them, and got an entire conquest over them, and made them servants to him, Sa2 10:15.

And the Syrians fled before Israel,.... After an obstinate and bloody fight between them: and David slew the men of seven hundred chariots of the Syrians; the word "men" is rightly supplied, for chariots could not be said to be slain, but the men in them; in Ch1 19:17, they are said to be seven thousand, here seven hundred; which may be reconciled by observing, that here the chariots that held the men are numbered, there the number of the men that were in the chariots given, and reckoning ten men in a chariot, seven hundred chariots held just seven thousand men; though Kimchi takes another way of reconciling the two places, by observing that here only the choicest chariots are mentioned, there all of them, but the former way seems best: and forty thousand horsemen; in Ch1 19:17; it is forty thousand "footmen", and so Josephus (c); and the same may be called both horse and foot, be cause though they might come into the field of battle on horseback, yet might dismount and fight on foot; and so one historian calls them horsemen, and the other footmen; or the whole number of the slain, horse and foot mixed together, were forty thousand; Kimchi makes use of another way of removing this difficulty, and which perhaps is the best, that here only the horsemen are numbered that were slain, and there the footmen only, and both true; an equal number of each being slain, in all eighty thousand, besides the seven thousand in the chariots: and smote Shobach the captain of their host, who died there; of his wounds upon the spot. (c) Ut supra. (Antiqu. l. 7. c. 6. sect. 3.)

The king of Ammon being dead, David sends ambassadors to comfort his son Hanun, Sa2 10:1, Sa2 10:2. Hanun, misled by his courtiers, treats the messengers of David with great indignity, Sa2 10:3-5. The Ammonites, justly dreading David's resentment, send, and hire the Syrians to make war upon him, Sa2 10:6. Joab and Abishai meet them at the city of Medeba, and defeat them, Sa2 10:7-14. The Syrians collect another army, but are defeated by David with great slaughter, and make with him a separate peace, Sa2 10:15-19.

Seven Hundred chariots - and forty thousand Horsemen - In the parallel place, Ch1 19:18, it is said, David slew of the Syrians Seven Thousand men, which fought in chariots. It is difficult to ascertain the right number in this and similar places. It is very probable that, in former times, the Jews expressed, as they often do now, their numbers, not by words at full length, but by numeral letters; and, as many of the letters bear a great similarity to each other, mistakes might easily creep in when the numeral letters came to be expressed by words at full length. This alone will account for the many mistakes which we find in the numbers in these books, and renders a mistake here very probable. The letter ז zain, with a dot above, stands for seven thousand, נ nun for seven hundred: the great similarity of these letters might easily cause the one to be mistaken for the other, and so produce an error in this place.

DAVID'S MESSENGERS, SENT TO COMFORT HANUN, ARE DISGRACEFULLY TREATED. (Sa2 10:1-5) Then said David, I will show kindness unto Hanun the son of Nahash, as his father showed kindness unto me--It is probable that this was the Nahash against whom Saul waged war at Jabesh-gilead (Sa1 11:11). David, on leaving Gath, where his life was exposed to danger, found an asylum with the king of Moab; and as Nahash, king of the Ammonites, was his nearest neighbor, it may be that during the feud between Saul and David, he, through enmity to the former, was kind and hospitable to David.

III. David's Reign in Its Decline - 2 Samuel 10-20 In the first half of David's reign he had strengthened and fortified the kingdom of Israel, both within and without, and exalted the covenant nation into a kingdom of God, before which all its enemies were obliged to bow; but in the second half a series of heavy judgments fell upon him and his house, which cast a deep shadow upon the glory of his reign. David had brought these judgments upon himself by his grievous sin with Bathsheba. The success of all his undertakings, and the strength of his government, which increased year by year, had made him feel so secure, that in the excitement of undisturbed prosperity, he allowed himself to be carried 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 (Sa2 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 Sa2 13:23, Sa2 13:38; Sa2 14:28; Sa2 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 Kg1 14:21, compared with Kg1 11:42, Kg1 11:43, he had a son a year old, named Rehoboam, at the time when he began to reign.