Day 131 (2 Samuel 10, 1 Chronicles 19, Psalm 20) - Year 8

Tara-Leigh Cobble· Host0:00

[intro music] Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara-Leigh Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. [upbeat music] The last time we were in David's story, he had just won a lot of battles and brought Mephibosheth, Jonathan's one surviving son, to live in his home. Today, the king of the Ammonites dies, and he had been amicable toward David. So David decides to treat his son Hanun kindly in return. Hanun is the likely heir to the throne, and it's a wise diplomatic move on David's part to keep peace with his neighbors. But Hanun's advisors are suspicious. They mistrust David's motives because they don't know him. They haven't seen how he's taken in Mephibosheth or how he's mourned the death of his enemies, or even how he refused to kill Saul twice when he had the chance. They feel unnecessarily threatened by him. So they take David's servants who were sent to comfort Hanun and degrade them by shaving off half their beards and cutting their clothes in half. Both of these moves are emasculating for David's servants. The beard is considered a mark of manhood, and to cut their garments in half is symbolic of castration. It's something they do to prisoners of war to shame them. These men who came to Hanun to serve him are left half-naked and humiliated. David doesn't retaliate, but he's not happy with the Ammonites. They get wind of it and decide to go on the offensive by hiring more than 30,000 mercenaries, including