Theological Commentary: Click Here
In our
chapter for today, we have two unique stories.
I’m going to focus on Joab’s story.
Joab does one thing quite well: he puts down a revolt. Joab does one thing poorly: he takes matters
into his own hand rather than let David deal with the situation with Amasa.
Speaking of
Amasa, let’s start there. Joab kills
Amasa. This story is rather confusing.
After all, aren’t Amasa and Joab on the same side? Aren’t they both leading men loyal to David?
They
are. Joab kills Amasa because he delays
in rallying the soldiers for David. In
the ancient world, few places had standing armies. Most armies were made up of a handful or
trained warriors who would be joined by regular people in the summer when they
could leave their farms because they weren’t really needed. What this means,
then, is that Amasa is demonstrating that he is a poor leader. He is having
trouble convincing the regular person to leave their farm and come out to war
as is their duty to the king. For this
reason, Joab kills Amasa. Joab gets rid
of Amasa because he is ineffective.
Having explained
this, please don’t think that I am justifying Joab’s action. Murder is murder, and we’ll see in a bit that
Joab gets to deal with the consequences of the sin. Joab should have let David deal with his
generals. Instead, Joab takes matters
into his own hands and kills his competition for being inept.
What Joab
does well in this chapter is in the siege.
Joab makes plans to take the city hiding the rebel Sheba. He makes plans to go through the drudgery of
a siege. However, an opportunity
presents itself. The people of the town make
an offer to kill Sheba for Joab if he will leave the city alone. In this, Joab is shrewd. Why fight a long battle of attrition when an
effective solution presents itself? Here, Joab counts his resources
effectively. Joab let the town alone
when they kill Sheba and hand over his head.
Joab’s shrewd leadership keeps himself and his men from person
risk. Joab gets the job accomplished as
easily and effectively as possible.
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