1 Chronicles 19:4

19:1-19 David's wars. - The history is here repeated which we read 2Sa 10. The only safety of sinners consists in submitting to the Lord, seeking peace with him, and becoming his servants. Let us assist each other in a good cause; but let us fear lest, while made instruments of good to others, we should come short of salvation, through unbelief and sin.

Verse 4. - The classical scholar will not fail to be reminded, so far as the shaving here spoken of is concerned, of the account contained in Herodotus, 2:121. The parallel place makes the resemblance close, in that it tells us that "one-half of their beards" was shaved. To shave them was an affront to their customs, dignity, and religion: to shave them half added mockery; and to cut off half their garments completed the tale of ignominious and contemptuous insult ( Isaiah 20:4 ). The beard was held almost in reverence by Easterns. 1 Chronicles 19:4

4 . shaved them ] 2 Samuel 10:4 , shaved off the one half of iheir beards . Of course a great insult; cp. Isaiah 50:6 . cut off their garments ] Jewish ambassadors are represented on the Black Obelisk (a monument of Shalmaneser II, king of Assyria, now preserved in the British Museum) as wearing robes reaching to the feet; Hanun reduced ambassadors to the level of captives; cp. Isaiah 20:4 .

Wherefore Hanun took David's servants, and {c} shaved them, and cut off their {d} garments in the midst hard by their buttocks, and sent them away. (c) They shaved off half of their beards, 2Sa 10:4. (d) To put them to shame and villany, while the ambassadors should have been honoured: and because the Jews used to wear side garments and beards, they thus disfigured them, to make them odious to others.

4, 5. shaved them—not completely, but only the half of their face. This disrespect to the beard, and indecent exposure of their persons by their clothes being cut off from the girdle downwards, was the grossest indignity to which Jews, in common with all Orientals, could be subjected. No wonder that the men were ashamed to appear in public—that the king recommended them to remain in seclusion on the border till the mark of their disgrace had disappeared—and then they might, with propriety, return to the court.

The events recorded in these three chapters are all narrated in the second book of Samuel also, and in the same order. First, there are grouped together in our 18th chapter, and in 2 Samuel 8 , in such a manner as to afford a general view of the whole, all the wars which David carried on victoriously against all his enemies round about in the establishment of the Israelitish rule, with a short statement of the results, followed by a catalogue of David's chief public officials. In 1 Chronicles 19 and in 2 Samuel 10 we have a more detailed account of the arduous war against the Ammonites and Syrians, and in 1 Chronicles 20:1-3 and 2 Samuel 12:26-31 the conclusion of the war with the capture of Rabbah, the capital of the Ammonites; and finally, in 1 Chronicles 20:4-8 , we have a few short accounts of the victories of the Israelitish heroes over giants from the land of the Philistines, which are inserted in 2 Samuel 21:18-22 as a supplement to the last section of David's history. Apart from this last section, which is to be regarded even in the Chronicle as an appendix, we find the arrangement and succession of the events to be the same in both books, since the sections which in 2 Samuel 9:1-13 and 2 Samuel 11:1-12 , 2 Samuel 11:25 , stand between the histories of the wars, contain sketches of David's family life, which the author of the Chronicle has, in accordance with his plan, omitted.

Even as to individual details the two narratives are perfectly agreed, the divergences being inconsiderable; and even these, in so far as they are original, and are not results of careless copying, - as, for instance, the omission of the word נציבים, 1 Chronicles 18:6 , as compared with 1 Chronicles 18:13 and 2 Samuel 8:6 , and the difference in the numbers and names in 1 Chronicles 18:4 , 1 Chronicles 18:8 , as compared with 2 Samuel 4:4 , 2 Samuel 4:8 , are, - partly mere explanations of obscure expressions, partly small additions or abridgments. For the commentary, therefore, we may refer to the remarks on 2nd Samuel, where the divergences of the Chronicle from the record in Samuel are also dealt with. With 1 Chronicles 18:1-13 cf. 2 Samuel 8:1-14 ; and with the register of public officials, 2 Samuel 18:14-17 , cf. 2 Samuel 8:15-18 . Examples of paraphrastic explanation are found in 1 Chronicles 18:1, where the figurative expression, David took the bridle of the mother out of the hands of the Philistines, i.e., deprived them of the hegemony, is explained by the phrase, David took Gath and her cities out of the hands of the Philistines, i.e., took from the Philistines the capital with her daughter cities; and in 1 Chronicles 18:17, כּהנים is rendered by, the first at the king's hand.