2 Samuel 10:6

PREPARATIONS FOR WAR

"When the Ammonites saw that they had become odious to David, the Ammonites sent and hired the Syrians of Bethrehob, and the Syrians of Zobah, twenty thousand foot soldiers, and the king of Maacah with a thousand men, and the men of Tob, twelve thousand men. And when David heard of it, he sent Joab and all the host of the mighty men. And the Ammonites came out in battle array at the entrance of the gate; and the Syrians of Zobah and of Rehob, and the men of Tob and Maacah, were by themselves in the open country."

The deployment of the hostile forces here presented a superlative challenge to Joab. Rabbah, presently Amman, the capital city of Jordan and a modern city of over half a million people, is the same place called Philadelphia in the N.T. It was a strongly fortified city; and David's capture of it was no easy undertaking.[10] In addition to the Ammonites and their tremendous stronghold, there was also the presence of those 33,000 Syrian mercenaries "in the open country."

Keil tells us that the cost to the Ammonites of hiring those 33,000 Syrians amounted to "Half a million pounds sterling,"[11] a sum of many millions of dollars in modern terms.

"Maacah ... Tob" (2 Samuel 10:6). "Maacah was located southwest of Mount Hermon, and Tob was a place east of the Jordan River some ten miles or more eastward from Ramoth-gilead."[12]

"When David heard of it" (2 Samuel 10:7). Evidently, "David prepared for war only after the Ammonites mustered that great army."[13]

"David sent Joab and all the host of the mighty men" (2 Samuel 10:7). Evidently, the "host" here is a reference to a great army of the Israelites, because the "mighty men" are understood to be that special group of six hundred who had continued with David during that period when Saul hunted him. They were a hard cadre of powerful and skilled veterans who made David's armies invincible.

"The Syrians ... were by themselves in the open country" (2 Samuel 10:7). From 1 Chronicles 19:7 we learn that the name of the place where these mercenaries were encamped was Medeba, "Located four geographical miles in a straight line to the southwest of Rabbah."[14] It was this separation of the two main bodies of defenders that prompted the strategy that Joab followed in his attack as revealed in the next paragraph.