2 Samuele 10:17 Commento

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 when it was told David,.... What preparations the Syrians were making to fight him, and where they were: he gathered all Israel together; all the fighting men in the country: and passed over Jordan, and came to Helam: which, according to Bunting (b), was twenty miles from Jerusalem. David seems to have gone himself in person to this war: and the Syrians set themselves in array against David, and fought with him; they formed themselves in a line of battle, and attacked him first, being eager to fight, and perhaps confident of victory, because of their numbers. (b) Travels, &c. p. 140, 141.

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.

David - gathered all Israel together - He thought that such a war required his own presence.

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.

David went with all Israel (all the Israelitish forces) against the foe, and smote the Aramaeans at Helam, where they had placed themselves in battle array, slaying seven hundred charioteers and forty thousand horsemen, and so smiting (or wounding) the general Shobach that he died there, i.e., that he did not survive the battle (Thenius). With regard to the different account given in the corresponding text of the Chronicles as to the number of the slain, see the remarks on Sa2 10:6. It is a fact worthy of notice, that the number of men who fell in the battle (seven hundred receb and forty thousand parashim, according to the text before us; seven thousand receb and forty thousand ragli, according to the Chronicles) agrees quite as well with the number of Aramaeans reported to be taken prisoners or slain, according to Sa2 8:4 and Ch1 18:4-5 (viz., seventeen hundred parashim or a thousand receb, and seven thousand parashim and twenty thousand ragli of Aram-Zoba, and twenty-two thousand of Aram-Damascus), as could possibly be expected considering the notorious corruption in the numbers as we possess them; so that there is scarcely any doubt that the number of Aramaeans who fell was the same in both accounts (2 Samuel 8 and 10), and that in the chapter before us we have simply a more circumstantial account of the very same war of which the result is given in 2 Samuel 8 and Ch1 13:1-14.