Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible recap.

The last time we were in David's story, he had just won a lot of battles and brought

Mephibishev, 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 Mephibishev 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 amonites.

They get wind of it and decide to go on the offense by hiring more than 30,000 mercenaries,

including a bunch of Syrians who already hated Israel to fight Israel on their behalf.

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