2 Samuel, Chapter 10 - Choosing Gratitude | Prophets of Israel Daily

[music] >> Hello friends, welcome back to the Prophets of Israel daily brought to you by the Land of Israel Network at the landofisrael.com. [music] This is 2 Samuel chapter 10. I'm Jeremy Gimpel here with my dear friend in Havruta, my study partner [music] Ari Abramowitz. I am on the road on a speaking tour across the United States. Ari's holding down the fort in the Judean Mountains. Ari, how's it going in the Holy Land? It's good to see you. >> The Holy Land is still holy. The mountains of Judea are still infused with sanctity and prophecy. And I don't envy the exile that you find yourself in right now, but I do envy the yearning. Because when I've left Israel, I have yearning in my heart and that yearning is is is a holy thing. So we miss you out here in the mountains of Judea, but we're grateful. I'm grateful that you're out there carrying the light of Zion to our friends across America. So you should be blessed. >> it's incredible. Everywhere I go, people come up to me and say they absolutely love the Prophets of Israel daily. I mean they say it's the best way to start their day for their whole lives. They've always learned like a verse here or a verse there or a story here and now they're getting a chapter by chapter, the full view in-depth of the Hebrew Bible from the Land of Israel. It's just really blessing people from all over the world and you should know that all of our time and our effort and for me it's a lot of effort. I mean my kids in a hotel running around, waking up, traveling, jet lagged, but it's absolutely worth it. And so let's get in. Chapter 9 kind of brought us into David's underlying loyalty to Jonathan. He takes care of his only surviving son and pretty much adopts him as his own. Chapter 10 opens with another beautiful quality about David, his hakarat tov, his ability to acknowledge the good that was done to him and to repay it in kind even years later, even to the son of the one who showed it. Watch how it begins, verses 1 and 2. Vayomer David es chesed im Hanun ben Nahash. And David said, I will show kindness on Hanun the son of Nahash as his father showed kindness unto me." So, the king of Ammon, Nahash had died. And his son Hanun has taken the throne. And David's instinct is to send a delegation of comfort of nihum to his grieving son because David says his father showed kindness to me. And so, David sends his servants to console Hanun over his father. So, the first thing I want to point out, the fact that Nahash did kindness to David in this story is about David doing a hesed to Nahash's son shows that it wasn't personal. It wasn't like you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back. It was fundamental. It was principle. It was the code that David lived by and that was David's superpower. That power to live by a code of honor was entirely rooted in David's emunah, in his faith and faithfulness to Hashem. And so, the second thing I want to point out is that the scripture never tells us exactly what Nahash did as a kindness to David. Nahash, the name literally means snake and that should already be a red flag. But if we look back, it's the same Nahash we met all the way back at the start of King Saul's reign back in 1 Samuel chapter 11 and he was a monster. I mean, he laid siege to the Israelite city of Jabesh-Gilead and when the people begged for terms of surrender, his answer was to demand that the right eye of every man in the city be gouged out. I mean, the text says it was literally to bring disgrace upon all of Israel. That atrocity is the very thing that rallied the nation behind the newly anointed Saul who mustered an army and rescued Jabesh-Gilead. So, Nahash is recorded as one of Israel's cruelest enemies. >> That's right, Jeremy. And Nahash he was is It's actually what makes David's gesture uh so remarkable because David is holding two true things at once and refusing to let one cancel the other. Cuz the text never actually tells us what Nahash did that David shows him kindness. Like you said, Jeremy, it's simply stated as a fact that David cares. And now the commentators trace it to David's years as a fugitive from Saul. And what seems to have happened was that Nahash was Saul's enemy and the enemy of your enemy, as we know, can be your friend. And therefore it was the same brutal Ammonite king who terrorized Israel that once gave the hunted David refuge from King Saul. So David knows exactly who Nahash was on a on an on the national stage. And David also remembers what Nahash did for him personally when he had nothing. Now the the most powerful king in the region, that's what David has really become, he could easily let the public record erase that sort of private debt. That's what most, if not all other kings would have done. But instead David says a kindness was done to me and I will repay it to his son. Right? That's what David does. We just saw it in the last chapter. And this is that it's just so powerful because gratitude is one of the first things power often destroys. Right? The The moment most people climb high enough, they quietly forget everyone who carried them on the way up. It happens between people. It happens between people and God. But David never forgets a kindness, even from a complicatedly wicked man like Nahash. The debt of hesed, of loyal kindness, stays sacred to him. That's a a window into the soul of the man that Hashem chose. >> Yeah, exactly. And we see that that soul gets tested immediately because the kindness David sends out is about to come back to him in pieces. Hanun's princes, his advisers, poison his mind. They tell him, "Don't be naive. These Jewish comforters, they're spies. David sent them to scout out the city before he conquers it. And Hanun believes him. So, instead of receiving David's delegation with honor, he humiliates them. Verse 4. So, Hanun took David's servants and shaved off half their beards, cut off their garments in half up to their buttocks, and sent them away. He shaves off half of each man's beard. Half. He cuts off the robes at their waist exposing their backside. Well, you don't need to be a trained physician to know that if you cut off a robe exposing their backside, you've exposed their front side, too. And then he sends them home in disgrace. When David hears, he tells the men to stay in Jericho until your beard grows back. And then come to Jerusalem. Ki hayuh anashim nichlamim me'od. For the men were deeply humiliated. >> Yeah, Jeremy, I don't want to get in a fight about this one, but I'm hoping that there was a way I can visualize a way just to cut off the backside, not necessarily the front side, cuz that description you just said makes it even worse. A bad situation even worse. And it was a bad situation because I mean, if friends out there around the world, I don't know if you understand Judea, but you have to understand what a beard meant in that world to feel the sting of this. Right? In in the ancient Near East, Middle East, the whole region here, a man's beard was his honor. The outward sign of his standing as a man. And to forcibly shave off half of that beard wasn't a prank. It was a calculated stripping of a man's dignity, leaving him lopsided and grotesque, an object of public mockery. And I should know because just four short years ago on Purim, I inflicted something very close to this, actually exactly this, upon myself. And you can see in this self-inflicted selfie of mine. You see this picture, Jeremy? You don't need to see the picture cuz you remember it. You can remember it. And I can testify with total sincerity the time it took to grow back that beard felt very long indeed. Right? It was pretty humiliating. [laughter] I remember looking in the mirror and saying, "No, poor him. I'm going to I have too much ego associated Whatever my thinking was, it was flawed thinking. I was not happy that I did that. Anyways, these men Well, these men were David's royal envoys, dignified men, and they were so ashamed they couldn't even show their faces in the capital. And Jeremy, I have to say, sitting here with my beard, I feel a certain solidarity with these guys. Um a beard in Israel was a serious matter then, and it's getting to be a serious matter now as well. >> So, are you would have fit right in. Me, on the other hand, I keep my beard pretty trimmed. I don't think that would have flown in King David's court. I think they would have looked at me and wondered which enemy shaved it off. I would have had to tell them, "It's my wife, Tehila. It's her fault. She doesn't like a long beard. She likes it >> I thought you were going for the feminine look, so I thought that that that works for you. But that's the thing, in that culture, your your well-groomed look might have gotten you sent to Jericho until it grew out properly. But here's the serious point underneath the humor. This was an act of war. Hanun didn't just insult some messengers, he insulted the king who sent them. And by extension, he insulted the entire nation of Israel. And notice the tragic irony that ties this chapter to its opening. David reached out with chesed, the very kindness Hanun's father once showed him to I guess in Nahash's own level that was a a demonstration of chesed on some level, or at least David received it that way, but but Hanun most likely was unable to wrap his mind around the idea that there could be a leader of chesed like David in the world. So, Hanun answered kindness with humiliation. He had every opportunity to receive grace, but not believing such a thing was really possible, he chose instead contempt. And that choice is about to cost his people nothing short of everything. >> Exactly. And if you remember in 1 Samuel chapter 11, his father had a sadistic streak, and he wanted to humiliate Israel in Saul's time. He threatened to gouge out the eyes of all of Israelites in Jabesh-Gilead, and so Hanun knows he's crossed a line, and he panics. The Ammonites realize they've made themselves abhorrent, a repulsive to David. So, they scramble to hire an army, and they pay 20 They bring 20,000 foot soldiers from Aram, 1,000 men from the king of Maacah, 12,000 from Tob, tens of thousands of mercenaries massing for war. Verse 7. Vayishma David vayishlach et Yoav ve'et kol hatzava hagiborim. And when David heard of it, he sent Yoab and all of the army of the mighty men. David hears that the Ammonites have hired tens of thousands of mercenaries against him, and he responds without hesitation. He sends Yoab, his commander, and the full strength of Israel out to meet them. This is David's mighty men who are now battling together with the army of Israel. And Ari, this is the moment I want everyone to see, because Yoab walks into a trap, and his response is one of the great pictures of faith really in all of Tanakh in a war. The Ammonites draw up for battle at the gate of their city, and they hired enemy armies to position themselves out in the open field. So, when Yoab arrives, he suddenly realizes the enemy is in the front of him and behind him at the same time. He's caught between two forces that are surrounding him. And in that impossible moment, Yoab doesn't panic. He thinks. He splits the army in two. He takes the elite fighters himself to face the Arameans, and he gives the rest to his brother Abishai to face the Ammonites. And then he proclaims this awesome battle call to inspire his soldiers in verse 12. Be [snorts] strong and let us be strong for our people and for the cities of our God. For may the Lord do what is good in his eyes. Yeah, and then so Oh. >> Go ahead. Well, I just wanted to say that the single word Joab reaches for in that moment that feeling seemingly impossible moment is venithkazak. I think the the right way to translate that is let us strengthen one another. Not be strong like be strong standing alone each one of you be strong, but let us strengthen one another. Because look at the picture on the ground. Joab is surrounded enemies in front of him and and behind him. And the first thing he does is hand half of his army to his brother Avishai and say, "If the Arameans overpower me, you come save me. And if the Ammonites overpower you, I'll come save you." Right? Two brothers back-to-back, each one's strength becoming the other one's hope for rescue. Right? That is how Israel has always survived in a two-front war or more than that. Not as lone heroes, but as brothers who refuse to let each other fall. I felt it myself in the army. I'm sure you have as well. I felt it with you. You know, Joab prepares with everything he has and he does it shoulder-to-shoulder. The the strategy may keep you alive, right? But it's the brother beside you and the strength that he gives you that really keeps you going. Yeah. You know, that's really the perfect frame, Ari. Because the battle itself, the rest of the chapter, Joab splits his forces face the Arameans in front and the Ammonites behind him and gives one of the great insights into biblical faith that we see in Tanakh. Be strong and let us be strong for our people and for the cities of God and may Hashem do what is good in his eyes. He prepares completely, fights with everything that he has, and then he surrenders the outcome to Hashem. And Israel wins. The Arameans flee and they never come to help the Ammonites again. And here's what I want to take away from chapter 10. First, for our own lives. The chapter begins with Hesed, David's refusal to forget a kindness and show gratitude, even to a former enemy of Israel called Nahash, a snake. Gratitude is the foundation of connecting with our soul and expressing our soul in the world. I mean, the word Jew, Yehudi, comes from the same root as the word Lehodot, which means to give thanks. So, to be a Jew is to be one who is grateful. And the second is for Israel today. I mean, friends, look at the shape of this chapter. Israel extends a hand of peace and kindness, genuinely, and it's thrown back in our face, twisted into a pretext for war by those who'd rather believe the worst of us. I mean, does that sound familiar? David's generation knew it, too. And the answer then is the answer now. When war is forced upon us, we send out our mighty men. We prepare with everything we have. We declare Hazak ve'ematz Hazak ba'adenu u've'ad Eloheinu. Be strong, and let us be strong for our people and for the cities of our God. Ve'Hashem ya'aseh hatov be'einav. And Hashem will do what is good in His eyes. And then we leave the rest in the hands of Hashem. That was David's Israel, and may it be ours soon in our days. Hazak ve'ematz, my friends, but before we go, if these daily journeys through the words of the prophets mean something to you, I want to invite you to become a sponsor of the Prophets of Israel Daily. 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