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

Maphibisheth, 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 now he's taken

in Maphibisheth 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 a bunch of Syrians who already hated Israel, to fight Israel on

their behalf. David sends his army, led by Joab, to the battle, and Joab demonstrates good

leadership and trust in God during all of this. In 1012, he's talking to

his brother Abashai, who's commanding another part of the army, and he says, be of good courage,

and let us be courageous for our people and for the cities of our God, and may the Lord do what

seems good to him. This is what confidence and faith in God looks like.

He's reminding his brother and himself that the cities belong to God

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