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

Maphibiseth, 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

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