God’s Word for You

1 Chronicles 19:16-19 Good works

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Friday, February 16, 2024

16 But when the Arameans saw that they had been defeated by Israel, they sent messengers and brought out the Arameans who were beyond the Euphrates, with Shophach the commander of the army of Hadadezer at their head. 17 When this was reported to David, he gathered all Israel together, crossed the Jordan, came to them, and drew up his forces against them. And when David set the battle in array against the Arameans, they fought with him. 18 The Arameans fled before Israel; and David killed seven thousand Aramean charioteers and forty thousand foot soldiers. He also killed Shophach, the commander of their army. 19 When the servants of Hadadezer saw that they had been defeated by Israel, they made peace with David and became subject to him. So the Arameans were not willing to help the Ammonites any longer.

A reader might become confused about this battle and its preparations and the long march of David into the territory between Ammon and Moab. The war was against the Ammonites, but this battle did not involve the Ammonites directly at all. The Aramean mercenaries had fled from the battle lines when Joab faced them. Now, perhaps just to cover their retreat home again (Aram is far to the north, and they were down along the Dead Sea) they asked for reinforcements from beyond the Euphrates River. The top general of the Arameans came personally, Shophach.

Shophach’s name is alternately spelled Shobach, and there are various legends about him in the Jewish Talmud and other books of the Jews and the Samaritans that are not part of God’s word, nor are they helpful or remotely believable. One legend, for example, tries to involve Joshua, Noah (!) and the Armenians (not the Arameans) in the story. The murkiness and baldfaced lies of these accounts actually shed light on the New Testament. When Jesus spoke about the Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees, and the chief priests, he was especially insistent that his followers beware their yeast; the false teaching constantly mixed in with everything that they said. Judging from the remnants of folklore in the Talmud and from other ancient Jewish writings, we get the impression that among the rabbis and other teachers of Israel, only Jesus Christ took the Old Testament seriously and at face value, and that he and his apostles were therefore a mystery that the first century Jews saw clearly: Jesus taught in such a way that the ordinary people would believe, and so that the so-called scholars would be confused and fail to understand at all. When he was asked about the parables he used, Jesus said: “It has been given to you to know the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables, so that ‘they may always be seeing but never perceiving, and always hearing but never understanding. Otherwise they might turn back and be forgiven’” (Mark 4:11-12, quoting Isaiah 6:9-10). Those were hard words, a stern condemnation, but also an invitation to everyone to throw away their resistance to God and to embrace Jesus and everything he said.

Returning to our text, the battle did not take place because David was vindictive, but because he was protecting his border. The Aramean mercenaries could simply have walked home and he would have done nothing to stop them. But since another army lined up against him, he went out and lined up against them—not against the Ammonites, but against the mercenaries and their (apparently famous) general. He may have had a reputation like Goliath, but like Goliath, he was going up against the very same David.

The battle was bloody, and costly. The northerners lost forty thousand men on foot and another seven thousand warriors who were shot from their chariots (the author of Samuel also adds that David hamstrung the surviving chariot horses). The famous commander was killed. Since David was personally in command, the credit for Shophach’s death was given to David, but we don’t know that the king actually got out his old slingshot and struck the famous Shophach in the noggin with one of the rocks left over from his fight with Goliath.

Bleeding, beaten, and virtually leaderless, the remnant of the mercenaries did not get to go home after all. They surrendered and became subjects of King David, either entering into Israel as slaves, or swearing oaths of loyalty to David and peace with Israel for the rest of their lives. What the Lord said about paid soldiers in the Egyptian ranks applies also here to the Arameans: “The mercenaries in her ranks are like fattened calves. They will turn and flee together. They will not stand, for the day of disaster has come upon them, the time for their punishment” (Jeremiah 46:21).

The final line of the chapter does not only mean that the Arameans didn’t want to help Ammon any longer; it means that they couldn’t. They were bound by David to remain at peace with him. On penalty of death, perhaps including the deaths of those warriors and their families who were kept behind in Israel, they could no longer fight against David and the Israelites, in anyone’s cause, whether Aramean, Ammonite, Moabite, or anybody else. David put an end to the mercenary threat of Aram for the rest of his reign, and the reign of his son Solomon as well. Two hundred years would go by before the Arameans threatened Israel once again, and even then the Lord himself would be the one to raise them up on account of the sins of his people, to chastise and punish them.

What lesson do we learn from the wars in the Old Testament? Do the Scriptures contradict themselves by quoting Jesus who told us to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39) and by reporting the blood that Joshua, the Judges, and David spilled for God’s holy people? No, not at all. Let us remember that Jesus was speaking to us as individuals, and the great majority of Christians are, after all, private citizens, including those who are retired soldiers. Jesus shows us that God’s will is that we would be loving and forgiving toward one another. But a government has a duty to protect its people. Therefore our Lutheran Confession states correctly that “David’s labors in waging war and governing the state are holy works, true sacrifices, battles of God to defend the people who had God’s Word against the devil, that the knowledge of God might not perish from the earth” (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, AP IV:191). We should also apply this to everything we do in the service of God. We do not wage private wars or take up a personal banner against anyone we feel is an enemy of the state—this is the role of the government, and not of the individual. But the Christian’s daily good work is everything he does, for he does it from faith. Our good works might seem so humble as to be unworthy of being called good works at all, but to practice one’s piano lesson, to wash the dishes, to change a diaper, to wash and fold the laundry, to do our daily work to feed and clothe our families, and even to restrain ourselves from sinful impulses and temptations, are all good works in God’s holy sight. “Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good” (3 John 1:11). For everything that is good is from God, and our heavenly Father wants nothing but what is good, from us, in us, and for us.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

Browse Devotion Archive