Nahash is the name of the Ammonite who threatened to put out the right eyes of Jabeshgilead in Saul's first days (1 Samuel 11:1-2), and this is probably the same man, now dead after a long reign. What kindness he shewed David is not recorded; readers have supposed it was shelter or help in the years when Saul hunted him, since an enemy of Saul might befriend Saul's enemy, but the text does not say. 17:27 shows Nahash's other son Shobi bringing David supplies at Mahanaim, so the friendship between the houses was real and outlasted this war.

The word is kindness again — hesed, the word of chapter 9 — and it binds the two chapters. The same David who sought out Jonathan's son now sends to comfort a foreign prince for his father. Readers should mark that the chapter's war begins with an act of good faith, and that the narrator makes that plain before he shows how it was received. Kindness sent across a border can be read as espionage by men who would have used it so themselves; the story that follows is of a good gesture turned into a cause for war by suspicion.

The princes of Ammon (v. 3) plant the thought — hath not David rather sent his servants... to search the city, and to spy it out? — and Hanun, a new king listening to his court, acts on it. Half of their beards shaved and their garments cut off... to their buttocks: for a Hebrew man the beard was his dignity (cf. Isaiah 7:20; 15:2) and the exposure was the shame of a captive (Isaiah 20:4). This was done to ambassadors, under protection, come on an errand of condolence. The study calls it what the text shows: a calculated public humiliation of David in the persons of his servants.

Verse 5 shows the king's care: he sent to meet them, because the men were greatly ashamed, and tells them to tarry at Jericho until your beards be grown. Jericho lay on their road home from Ammon, and whatever stood there in David's day (Joshua's curse hangs over its rebuilding, Joshua 6:26; 1 Kings 16:34) it was out of sight of the capital. David spares them the walk through Jerusalem half-shaved. The verse is small and the study stops at it: before the war there is a king thinking of the faces of the men who were shamed for him.

They stank before David — the Hebrew idiom for having made oneself odious, used of Israel before Pharaoh (Exodus 5:21) and of David before Achish's lords (1 Samuel 27:12). Ammon knows what it has done and arms before it is asked to answer for it. Hired — this is a mercenary coalition: Bethrehob and Zoba, Aramean states to the north (Hadadezer's country, 8:3), the little kingdom of Maacah (Absalom's mother's people, 3:3), and Ishtob, the men of Tob, where Jephthah had once fled (Judges 11:3). Thirty-three thousand in all, by this verse's count.

1 Chronicles 19:6-7 tells it with other figures: a thousand talents of silver paid, and thirty and two thousand chariots, with the king of Maacah and his people. The study names the difference; it may reflect different ways of counting the same force, or variation in transmission, and the text does not let us decide. What is clear in both is that a small kingdom bought a great army rather than apologise, and that David sent Joab, and all the host of the mighty men (v. 7) — not himself. The king stays in Jerusalem, which will matter in the next chapter.

Ammon draws up at the entering in of the gate of Rabbah, their capital, and the Syrians were by themselves in the field (v. 8): Joab has walked between two armies and finds the front of the battle... against him before and behind. The narrator does not say whether it was a trap or Joab's misjudgment; he says what Joab did. He chose of all the choice men for himself and the harder enemy, the hired professionals, and gave the rest of the people to Abishai his brother (v. 10) for Ammon at the gate. The sons of Zeruiah, so often the book's problem, are here its soldiers.

Verse 11 is the plan, and it is the chapter's wisdom: If the Syrians be too strong for me, then thou shalt help me: but if the children of Ammon be too strong for thee, then I will come and help thee. Neither brother is to win alone; each is to watch the other's fight. Readers have taken the verse far beyond the battlefield — two are better than one... if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10) — and the study thinks that fair, so long as it is remembered that Joab said it with his back to his brother and an army in front of each of them.

Joab's finest words. Be of good courage — Moses' and Joshua's word (Deuteronomy 31:6; Joshua 1:6). Let us play the men — be strong, act as men. For our people, and for the cities of our God — the land and its towns are the LORD's, and the fight is for them, not for Joab. Then the surrender of the result: the LORD do that which seemeth him good. It is Eli's sentence when the judgment on his house was read to him (1 Samuel 3:18), and David's when he sent the ark back into Jerusalem (15:26): a man does his whole duty and leaves the outcome where it belongs.

The study does not pretend Joab was a pious man; the book has shown him in the gate at Hebron (3:27) and will show him at Absalom's oak (18:14) and with Amasa (20:10). But Scripture records the best words of flawed men as faithfully as their worst, and this is theirs. The order matters — courage, duty, then trust — and so does the fact that nothing in the speech asks God for victory. Readers who want a prayer before a hard day that promises nothing and gives everything have one here, from the mouth of the king's most dangerous servant.

The hired men break first: Joab drew nigh... unto the battle against the Syrians: and they fled before him (v. 13). Mercenaries have no city to die for, and the moment the paid army ran, Ammon fled... and entered into the city. The plan of verse 11 was never needed — neither brother had to rescue the other — which readers may take as the way of the LORD who seemeth him good: the thing prepared for did not happen, and the thing not planned did. Joab does not besiege Rabbah; the season or the means is lacking, and he came to Jerusalem.

The war is not over. Ammon is shut in its capital, and the Syrians have only been driven off, not beaten. Readers should keep this chapter's shape in mind: verses 15-19 finish the Syrians, and the siege of Rabbah waits for the time when kings go forth to battle (11:1), and is not concluded until 12:26-31. The whole of the Bathsheba story takes place inside this war, with Joab at the walls of Rabbah and the king at home. The study reads chapters 10-12 as one piece, which the narrator plainly intended.

Hadarezer (vv. 16, 19) is the Hadadezer of chapter 8 — the two spellings differ by one similar Hebrew letter, and both are found in the manuscripts; the study takes them as one king. Smarting from the loss at Rabbah, he brought out the Syrians that were beyond the river — the Euphrates — to Helam, somewhere in the north of Transjordan, under Shobach the captain of the host. This time David does not send Joab: he gathered all Israel together, and passed over Jordan (v. 17), and leads the army himself. It is the last campaign in the book that he leads in person before chapter 11.

The figures: seven hundred chariots... and forty thousand horsemen; 1 Chronicles 19:18 has seven thousand... chariots, and forty thousand footmen. As in 8:4, the study records both and lets them stand. Shobach is killed, and verse 19 gives the result: all the kings that were servants to Hadarezer... made peace with Israel, and served them — the vassals change masters — so the Syrians feared to help the children of Ammon any more. Ammon is now alone behind its walls. The chapter ends with David at the height of his power, every enemy either beaten or isolated, and the next verse of the book is 11:1.