2 Samuel8chapter 8

2 Samuel 8:1-2

Metheg-ammah is Gath and its towns, the bridle that had held Israel under the Philistines since Saul's day, and its fall closes the Philistine question that opened at Goliath's own city, the Anakim remnant Joshua 11:22 left at Gath. Moab's measuring by the line is read two ways among the commentators: Adam Clarke reads two parts spared to one destroyed, while Jamieson, Fausset and Brown take Jewish tradition's account that the harsh line answered a massacre of David's parents, left in Moab's keeping during his exile at 1 Samuel 22:3-4. Wesley and Matthew Henry both read the war as Balaam's oracle landing, a sceptre out of Israel smiting the corners of Moab at Numbers 24:17.

2 Samuel 8:3-6

Zobah was the leading Aramean power north of Israel, and David's campaign to the Euphrates fulfilled the border God had named to Abraham at Genesis 15:18. He houghed the captured chariot horses rather than keep them, obedient to the king's law of Deuteronomy 17:16 against multiplying horses, and Damascus fell with Zobah when it came to Hadadezer's aid. The chapter states its own verdict twice, here and at verse 14: the Lord preserved David whithersoever he went, the summary's own theology rather than the historian's flattery.

2 Samuel 8:7-12

Every metal taken, the gold shields, the brass of Betah and Berothai, and Toi of Hamath's gifts of silver, gold and brass sent by his own son Joram, David dedicated unto the Lord rather than kept. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown call this the first instance of a practice David followed through his reign, saving the spoil of war toward the temple his son would build, the house named in 2 Samuel 7. John Gill reads the same act as David keeping the law of Deuteronomy 17:17 against a king multiplying silver and gold to himself.

2 Samuel 8:13-14

The Hebrew text names Syria here and the Septuagint names Edom, and Barnes and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown both take Edom as the true reading, since verse 14 goes on to speak only of garrisons through all Edom. The valley of salt lies south of the Dead Sea, and 1 Kings 11:15-16 remembers this same war as a longer campaign under Joab that left every male in Edom slain. The refrain closes the war record where it opened it: the Lord preserved David whithersoever he went.

2 Samuel 8:15

The war record turns here to the throne at home, and this single line is the standard the book measures every king by. David's own last words name the same phrase as the mark of a just ruler at 23:3, he that ruleth over men must be just, so the summary states first what the dying king will later say he aimed at. Matthew Henry reads the phrase as pointing beyond David himself, to the one who judges and makes war in righteousness at Revelation 19:11.

2 Samuel 8:16-18

This is the first cabinet the united kingdom is given, Joab over the army by the promise of 5:8, Jehoshaphat as recorder, two priests still standing from the two lines that had served two kings before David's throne, Seraiah as scribe, and Benaiah over the royal guard. Adam Clarke reads the Cherethites and Pelethites by the Targum's rendering, archers and slingers rather than a tribal name, drawn from the men who had followed David since his exile among the Philistines. The same list of offices, largely the same men, closes the court narrative again at 20:23-26, framing the chapters between.