2 Samuel 8:1

A SUMMARY OF DAVID'S MILITARY SUCCESS

During the forty-year reign of King David, he founded the Empire of Israel, which reached from Dan to Beersheba and from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates River. All of the old enemies of Israel were defeated and made tributary to the king of Israel. Strong military garrisons were stationed at strategic locations throughout that vast area; and the stage was set for the magnificence and extravagant glory of the reign of Solomon.

This chapter is not a chronological report of David's victorious wars. Military operations from all parts of David's reign are included, not necessarily in any specific order of their occurrence.

There are a great many questions that arise from a comparison of this chapter with the parallel account in 1 Chronicles 18, but very few of these are of any great significance or of any particular interest to Christians. Different names for both places and persons should not be considered a problem. Many persons were known to have more than one name, and the exact location of towns, villages and other sites is, in the large picture, of no importance whatever. Besides, many places also had more than one name. This is nothing unusual. There is a town in Texas which has three names: Jake Hammond is the name of the railroad station; the Post Office is called Desdemona; and during the Oil Boom, the roughnecks for a hundred miles in all directions called it Hog Town. The place is still known by all three designations.

The problem of conflicting numbers regarding battle casualties, chariots, horses, horsemen, etc., is likewise incapable of any dogmatic solution; because, as pointed out by R. P. Smith, "Until the Arabs invented our present system of notation (numbers), the ancient methods of representing numbers were so liable to error that (in some instances) little dependence can be placed upon them."[1] It is an exercise in futility to spend much time considering such minor and unimportant discrepancies; which, in the last analysis, might have come about from damage sustained by the sacred texts which have come down through the centuries.

THE DEFEAT OF THE PHILISTINES AND THE MOABITES

"After this, David defeated the Philistines and subdued them, and David took Methegammah out of the hand of the Philistines.

And he defeated Moab, and measured them with a line, making them lie down on the ground; two lines he measured to be put to death, and one full line to be spared. And the Moabites became servants to David and brought tribute."

"After this" (2 Samuel 8:1). "This is not a temporal clause."[2] It has nothing to do with chronology. The NIV renders it, "In the course of time"; and Willis affirmed that the word "'Now' might be better."[3]

"David took Methegammah out of the hand of the Philistines" (2 Samuel 8:1). From the parallel account in 1 Chronicles 18. we learn that Methegammah (translated as, `the bridle of the mother city')[4] is actually a reference to the Philistine city of Gath and its adjacent towns. It is merely a gratuitous insult to the O.T. for any scholar to refer to that explanation in First Chronicles as only, "a brave guess."[5]

The actual meaning of Methegammah is unknown. "All of the versions are different."[6] For example, the Vulgate has, "David removed the bondage of the tribute which the Israelites paid to the Philistines."[7] Some have suggested that it might have been the name of some strategic fortress or stronghold, but, we accept the parallel explanation in First Chronicles as inspired and therefore accurate.

"Two lines to be put to death ... one line to be spared" (2 Samuel 8:2). This massacre of the Moabites by David is surprising, not only because it is so inappropriate in the conduct of one who is called, "The Man After God's Own Heart," but because David at one time had trusted the Moabites to the extent of lodging his father and mother with the king of Moab while David was a fugitive from Saul (1 Samuel 22:3-4). "Whatever the Moabites had done to provoke this action by David, must have made him very angry."[8] We do not consider it important that the parallel account does not mention this. In the total absence of any other explanation of this, we find these words from Jamieson a possible reason for what otherwise must remain a mystery: "Jewish writers assert that the cause of this particular severity against the Moabites was their having massacred David's parents and family, whom he had, during his exile, entrusted to them."[9]

The practice of killing whole armies or populations that were captured in war was widely prevalent in ancient times; but that cannot be made the justification of such a brutal and inhuman practice. "Septuagint and Vulgate versions indicate that only half the Moabites were put to death,"[10] instead of two-thirds of them as revealed in our text. Some commentators have attempted to achieve a similar percentage here by seeing a difference between the "two lines" for those executed and the "one full line" for those saved. We cannot find any such distinction. Furthermore, the text is not clear as to whether this horrible massacre was perpetrated against the whole population of Moab, or merely against their army. We cannot identify it as anything else except an example of David's rendering "evil for evil."