God’s Word for You

1 Chronicles 19:1-5 David’s compassion

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, February 12, 2024

19:1 Sometime after this, King Nahash of the Ammonites died, and his son succeeded him as king. 2 David said, “I will show kindness to Hanun son of Nahash, for his father showed kindness to me.” So David sent royal officials to console him about his father. When David’s royal officials came to Hanun in the land of the Ammonites, to console him, 3 the officials of the Ammonites said to Hanun, “Do you think that David is honoring your father because he has sent men to console you? Haven’t his servants come to you to search and to spy out the land to overthrow it?” 4 So Hanun arrested David’s servants, shaved them, cut off their garments up to about the middle of their buttocks, and sent them away. 5 After they left, David was told about them, and so he sent messengers to meet them because they felt extremely humiliated. The king said, “Remain at Jericho until your beards have grown, and then return.”

David shows his compassion and wisdom twice in this rough tale. Relations with Ammon had been strained in the past. A king named Nahash tried to annex Jabesh Gilead to his north, a part of the territory of Manasseh. This was the incident that led to the people demanding a king, and the choosing of Saul (1 Samuel 11:1-15). Saul attacked and delivered the city. That was more than fifty years in the past. Was the Nahash who just died the same man who troubled Saul? It’s possible, but it’s also possible that this was a son or grandson with the same name.

The Ammonites were generally hostile to Israel (2 Samuel 8:12; 1 Chronicles 18:11), but David found that he could say that “Nahash showed kindness to me.” This must reflect some incident we’re not told about in the Scriptures. So David extended his sympathy to the King’s heir, Hanun. The gesture was genuine, but the young Ammonite prince, now a king, had suspicious advisors.

David probably wasn’t really grieving over the death of his neighbor. They had certainly been hostile to each other. But the official act was typical of diplomacy in those days. David was showing that he was really a good neighbor. Sending these royal officials—not David’s sons, but some of them may have been relatives of the king—was a formal gesture of good-will.

Hanun did not have the best advisers. “The advice of the wicked is deceitful,” Solomon later wrote (Proverbs 12:5), perhaps thinking of incidents like this one, or of this one in particular. What they did was meant to provoke David into doing something rash. What they did not expect was the David would make war against them, defeat them, take the crown right off of Hanun’s head, and enslave the whole population of Hanun’s capital city.

Hanun’s immediate response to David’s gesture was to return the “spies” in disgrace. He shaved their beards (or “half of each man’s beard,” 2 Samuel 10:4) and cut their clothes so that their hips, thighs and posteriors were partly exposed. One can only imagine the jeers and laughing that they suffered as they walked back to re-cross the Jordan River and head home. ‘Blessed is he who need not go naked and be shamefully exposed.” For “the essentials for life are water and bread and clothing and a house to cover one’s nakedness… be content with little or much.”

Some of David’s Psalms seem to echo insults like this one.

“Will evildoers never learn—
Those who devour my people the way men eat bread
and who do not call on the Lord?” (Psalm 14:4)

“Do not drag me down with the wicked,
with those who do evil,
who speak peace with their neighbors
while evil is in their hearts.
Repay them for their deeds
and the wicked things they do.
Repay them for what their hands have done.” (Psalm 28:3-4)

“Ruthless witnesses come forward,
They repay me evil for good
and leave my soul forlorn.
Yet when they were ill, I put on sackcloth
and humbled myself with fasting.” (Psalm 35:11-13)

David’s first act of compassion was toward the bitter and petty Ammonite prince. Now he was able to show another act of sincere compassion to his own men. He stopped them from re-entering Jerusalem to draw snickers and giggles from uninformed townspeople. He would not allow the sight of these men to be imprinted on anyone’s memory.

Once the shaved and embarrassed men had splashed or paddled across the Jordan and were once again out of Ammonite territory, David got word of what happened and sent them a message (the King would certainly have also sent along clothing for them). They put on their new britches, but that was the easy part. Beards were a part of a man’s dignity. Priests were forbidden from shaving (Leviticus 21:5), but almost all grown men grew beards. David told them to stay there in the ruins of Jericho where no one would see them, with the message: “Stay there in Jericho until your beards grow back.” David would allow them to regain their dignity while he considered the dignity of all Israel.

When is it time to turn the other cheek, and when is it time to pick up a glove and slap the one who slapped you? David surely sought out the counsel of the Lord. You and I are not kings who have nations to contend with. Our Savior teaches us to be shrewd and careful, but to be forgiving, too. But what about a king, who is thinking about the way his kingdom will be treated? David needed to weigh whether this new king of Ammon needed to be shown that he could not treat ambassadors—men who were sent to do nothing but console him about his father’s death—with shame and indignity.

The king of Ammon had given David a black eye. If the king of Israel walked carefully, this would lead to a great victory. But if he was not careful, even a Chronicler would not be able to wipe away the stain of his sin. A military victory is not enough to hide an indiscretion at home.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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