The Reading
The Summary
Shemuel Bet Chapter 10
Nahash, the king of Ammon, dies and his son Hanun reigns in his stead. Hearing the news, David dispatches messengers to convey his condolences to the new king on the death of his father. Apparently, David had been the beneficiary of the kindnesses of Nahash at an early point in his career, and he wished to express his appreciation for them through this honor. However, the advisors of Hanun perceive David’s actions as somehow diabolically motivated, suggesting that his true aim is not to honor the deceased Nahash but to position spies in Ammon for nefarious reasons. Heeding the words of his advisors, Hanun humiliates the messengers of David by sending them back with their beards half-shaved and the lower half of their garments cut off. When they return, David is disturbed to observe what has happened and allows them a waiting period so that their beards can grow back before they go home.
The people of Ammon immediately realize that their king has provoked the anger of David. Expecting to be attacked, they prepare for war, joining forces with the Arameans of Sobah, the King of Maakha and the King of Tov, for a combined force of tens of thousands of soldiers. Yoav and Avishai, the sons of Tzeruyah, were in command of the army of Israel and faced the difficulty that they were being approached by the opposing troops on two different fronts.
Yoav took upon himself to direct the elite commandos in their fight with Aram while his brother led the battle against Ammon; the kingdom of Aram was clearly the more formidable opponent. The brothers agreed to support one another if the situation deteriorated for either one of them. The Arameans fled before Yoav; seeing this, the army of Ammon abandoned the battlefield as well. King Hadadezer, ruler of the Arameans, made one more attempt to call in troops to attack the Jews, but this too failed and his top general was killed. In the aftermath of this war, the kings who served Hadadezer all made peace with Israel and the Arameans never again lent their assistance to Ammon in a military context.
It is clear that the story of David wishing to repay the kindnesses of King Nahash after his death parallels his desire to honor the memory and demonstrate appreciation for the kindnesses of his friend Yonatan by supporting his son, Mefivoshet. However, there are two almost diametrically opposed ways of reading and interpreting this story and how it fits into the flow of the narrative. One way of understanding the text is that, in sending messengers of consolation to Hanun, David was acting properly and was fully consistent with his principle of justice and compassion as described in the previous chapter.
The problem was that the advisers of Hanun viewed David’s behavior through the lens of their own corrupt culture and therefore projected wicked motives onto him. They simply could not grasp the beauty of the Jewish values that David exemplified in his conduct and thus assumed his real intentions were self-serving as their own would be. The poetic justice of the story is that their decision to humiliate the messengers of David – indicative of the norms and attitudes of their primitive and ignoble society – created the friction between the kingdoms that eventuate in further military and political gains for the people of Israel. Simply stated, David did what was right and the people Ammon did what was wrong, and this led to the “good guys” triumphing over the “bad guys”.
The Sages of the Talmud, however, adopt a different approach to the story. They see here a criticism of David for displaying compassion to the nation of Ammon, which the Torah commands us not to befriend. The ensuing war – and we will see, it will be a war with far-reaching consequences – is a kind of punishment to David for being overly gracious to a wicked nation. We can add to this that Nahash, although he had apparently been kind to David personally (the text never reveals how, we can assume he must have offered David assistance or refuge during his time on the run from Shaul), Ammon, and Nahash in particular, was a ruthless and inveterate enemy of Israel. David, now King of Israel, should have set aside his personal debt of gratitude to Nahash and considered the national and political implications of his behavior.
Indeed, the very first war of King Shaul, which gained him the accolades and support of the Jewish people, was a defensive battle waged in response to grievous threats from none other than Nahash, King of Ammon. Undoubtedly, the memory of Nahash that was etched in the collective consciousness of Israel was not a positive one, and David may have even been perceived as “canceling out” his kindness to the house of Shaul by showing brotherly consideration to Shaul’s first and most famous enemy. For David to reach out in friendship to the family of such an evil opponent of his nation was viewed by the Rabbis as a serious mistake for which he deserved to suffer significant fall-out.