Blessing and Cursing

Reflections on 2 Samuel 8:2

God promised Abraham that from his descendants there would come one who would bless all nations.  In order to guarantee that promise, he resolved to bless those who blessed Abraham's descendants and curse those who cursed his descendants.  Egypt enslaved Abraham's descendants, the Israelites, and so experienced God's curse.  When Israel approached the Promised Land to enter it, the Moabites refused to give them bread or even water, and hired the prophet Balaam to curse Israel (Numbers 22:1 ff.).  In so doing, they brought God's curse on themselves.

REFUGE ABANDONED.  When David was running from Saul, he had taken his parents to Moab, the homeland of his great-grandmother Ruth, for safety (1 Samuel 22:3).  His parents stayed with the king of Moab "all the time that David was in the stronghold."  However, Moses had forbidden making any peace agreement with Moab (Deuteronomy 23:3-6), so the prophet Gad advised David to return to Judah, and David left his stronghold in Moab immediately.  David's parents apparently left Moab safely at the same time even though an old Jewish tradition says that the king of Moab murdered them (Kirkpatrick in Youngblood, 1992, p. 903).

VICTORY FORESEEN.  The text gives no clue about the immediate cause of David's war against Moab.  Perhaps the king of Moab had been offended when David had neither left his parents in Moab nor made a peace agreement with him.  He may have found that sufficient reason to attack David when he became king.  Whatever the cause of the conflict, the war was fought and Moab was crushed by a king from Judah just as God had foretold through Balaam, the prophet Moab had hired to curse Israel (Numbers 24:17).
 
SOLDIERS SPARED.  When David fought the Amalekites, he left none alive in accordance with God's command regarding the Amalekites (Deuteronomy 25:19), but when he defeated the Moabites, he spared one third of the soldiers because God had forbidden the Israelites to occupy Moab (Deuteronomy 2:9).  Killing two thirds of the soldiers probably guaranteed that Moab would not raise a formidable force against Israel in the near future, but it did not exterminate the people.  Thereafter, the Moabites became subject to David and paid tribute to Israel.