God’s Word for You
1 Chronicles 19:6-9 Enemies around us
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, February 13, 2024
6 When the Ammonites saw that they had made themselves a stench to David, Hanun and the Ammonites sent a thousand talents of silver to hire chariots and charioteers from Aram Naharaim, from Aram Maacah, and from Zobah. 7 They hired thirty-two thousand chariots and charioteers and also the king of Maacah with his army, who came and camped before Medeba. The Ammonites were mustered from their towns, and they came out for battle. 8 When David heard about this, he sent Joab and the whole army of fighting men. 9 The Ammonites came out and drew up their line of battle at the entrance of the city, but the kings came out in a separate group in the open country.
The Ammonites needed an army, fast. The fastest way to get an army is to rent one, and there were mercenaries among the Arameans to the north who were itching to get back at David for the defeat of their countrymen (Tebah, Cun, and Damascus had fallen to David a year or couple of years before, 1 Chronicles 18:3-9).
The mercenaries were assembled. Five thousand from here, ten thousand from there, another five from that place over there, and so thirty, even thirty-two thousand chariots and drivers were on the payroll.
The Aramean mercenaries did not assemble at Rabbah (the capital of Ammon) but at Medeba. Twenty miles separate Rabbah to the north and Medeba in the south of Ammon, on the border between Ammon and Moab. Medeba is just a mile or so south of the slopes of Mount Nebo, where the Lord buried Moses with his own hands (Deuteronomy 34:6).
Medeba is a small city about five miles east of the northern edge of the Dead Sea. According to an 1871 report: “The ruins (of the ancient city) are extensive but poor… broken columns, long lines of foundations.” With at least three large reservoirs, it was a good choice to muster a large army with horses.
Between Rabbah (modern Amman, Jordan) and Medeba, at least four important gulches slope down towards the Jordan River. If the Ammonites mustered at Rabbah and the mercenaries at Medeba, this presented Joab’s army with a problem and the Ammonites with a definite advantage. The Ammonites had the high ground, and with their armies separated but controlled from a central location, they could attack Israel from two or even up to four directions at once. Between the cities of Rabbah and Medeba there are several ideal spots where signalmen with banners or even smoke signals could communicate with the armies assembled on the mountaintops to the north and to the south. One of these is the modern village of Adassiyah (not to be confused with Al-Adassiyah east of Galilee). The kings “in a separate group in the open country” could surely see signals from the two parts of the army from there.
What did the reports from Joab about all this sound like to David? “The enemies who surround” me is a refrain in the Psalms (17:9, 27:6). But God had said, “I will give you rest from all your enemies around you so that you will live in safety” (Deuteronomy 12:10). How do we feel when the whole world seems lined up against us? We see attacks today especially from unbelievers and other fools who try to corner us by quoting Scripture and challenging us to say we believe it. What about this passage? What about that passage? they holler in their video pulpits, safe from any real answers because they do nothing but corner unsuspecting weak people who are not prepared to answer their “out of the blue” theological questions. If any of them understood the law and the gospel and could even begin to fathom the difference, they would fall to their knees and repent. They think that because God permitted wars like the one we’re reading about here in this chapter, that he must be a murderer and a bloodthirsty devil of a God. The world can’t stand a true and faithful preacher. It only wants idiots like the present leaders of liberal churches who want to fling open the gates of heaven to the immoral and the unrepentant, or else it loves the leaders of so-called conservative churches who don’t understand the gospel at all and who preach a salvation by works rather than the blood of Christ. We must never forget to rightly divide the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15) and remember that the law and gospel are both the gifts of God for us for comfort and for defense. “The devil turns the Word upside down. If one sticks to the law, one is lost. A good conscience won’t set one free, but the distinction [between law and gospel] will. So you should say, ‘The Word is twofold, on the one hand terrifying and on the other hand comforting.’ Here Satan objects, ‘But God says you are damned because you don’t keep the law.’ I respond, ‘God also says that I shall live.’ His mercy is greater than sin, and life is stronger than death. Hence if I have left this or that undone, our Lord God will tread it under foot with his grace” (Luther, Table Talk, LW 54:106-107).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.