2 Samuel10chapter 10

A stench is the Hebrew figure for a people made hateful, the figure of Genesis 34:30, as Adam Clarke notes. Tob was the land where Jephthah fled. Albert Barnes reads the thousand men of Maacah as the mark of a small state.

2 Samuel 10:7-8

he sent Joab, and all the host of the mighty men: David answers with the whole standing army rather than more diplomacy, sending Joab and all the host of the mighty men south toward Rabbah. Ammon draws up at the entrance of the city while the hired Syrians take the open field apart from them, and Joab arrives to find one army in front of him and another beside it. Barnes locates the Syrian camp near Medeba, some twenty miles off, which shows how far the war had already spread before a blow fell.

Clarke takes the city here as Medeba, from 1 Chronicles 19:7. Barnes says Medeba passed from Sihon to Reuben, and he places the open country on the plain below the hill of the city, where the Arameans stood by themselves.

2 Samuel 10:9-11

the front of the battle was against him before and behind: Caught between two fronts, Joab divides the army rather than choosing one enemy: he takes the chosen men against the Syrians himself and gives the rest to his brother Abishai against Ammon. His instruction binds the two forces into one plan, whichever side breaks first, the other comes to help, so neither brother fights alone. Henry draws the line forward into the church: the soldiers of Christ owe each other the same standing pact, to strengthen one another's hands when the pressure falls harder on one than the other.

John Gill calls Abishai a very valiant man, second in command under his brother. Abishai drew his half of the army up in line, rank and file, to face the Ammonites at the gate. Each brother now led one army.

Gill says the need would show when troops gave way before the Arameans or the Ammonites, or by a signal the brothers agreed. The one holding his ground was to send part of his army to the rescue. Each army guarded the back of the other.

Be of good courage: Joab's charge holds courage and surrender in one breath, be of good courage, and let us play the men for our people, and the LORD do that which seemeth him good. He commands the fight and hands the outcome to God in the same sentence, owing nothing to fatalism, since he has just finished arraying his troops with care. The same surrender in nearly the same words is spoken by Eli at the ark's loss in 1 Samuel 3:18, it is the LORD, let him do what seemeth him good, and later by David fleeing his own son in 2 Samuel 15:26, let him do to me as seemeth good unto him.

2 Samuel 10:13-14

Joab drew nigh, and the people that were with him: Joab routs the Syrians outright, and the moment Ammon sees their hired strength break, they retreat into the city without a fight of their own. Gill notes Joab does not press a siege of Rabbah because winter is drawing near, so he brings the army home rather than camp before its walls. That same seasonal marker opens the next chapter, at the return of the year, when kings go forth to battle, and Joab returns to besiege the very city while David stays behind in Jerusalem, where the matter of chapter eleven begins.

Matthew Henry notes that the Ammonites fled into the city without a blow, a temptation for any army with walls at its back. Albert Barnes explains Joab's return by the strength of Rabbah. He adds that the Arameans were still too strong to risk a long siege.

2 Samuel 10:15-16

they gathered themselves together: One defeat does not end the war. The Syrians, smitten before Israel, gather themselves again, and Hadarezer draws in reinforcements from beyond the Euphrates, forces he had not needed against Israel before this campaign widened. Gill and Clarke both note this is the same Hadarezer David had already struck at 2 Samuel 8:3, so the second muster is a defeated king trying to reverse an old defeat rather than a new enemy rising.

Albert Barnes calls Helam a place now unknown. The Latin Vulgate reads the word as their army came, and Josephus made Helam a king beyond the Euphrates. John Gill takes it as the place where the Aramean forces gathered.

2 Samuel 10:17-19

passed over Jordan, and came to Helam: This time David takes the field himself, gathers all Israel, crosses the Jordan, and meets the Syrians at Helam, where they break before Israel a second time and their commander Shobach dies in the rout. Every king who had served Hadarezer now makes peace with Israel and serves David instead, and the coalition that hired itself out to Ammon at the chapter's opening will not help them again. Wesley reads the outcome as the promise of the Euphrates border made to Abraham and repeated to Joshua reaching further than it had before, so a war that began over a shaved beard ends with Israel's border pressed toward where the covenant had said it would stand.

1 Chronicles 19:18 gives seven thousand charioteers where this verse gives seven hundred. Barnes prefers seven hundred and traces the difference to numbers written as letters. Henry joins the two, seven thousand men for seven hundred chariots.

they made peace with Israel: Clarke says each king made peace alone and paid tribute. Barnes measures the strength of Israel by the kings who had been subject to Hadadezer. Clarke counts eight wars David had won, and here the book turns toward his fall.