After this — the chapter is a summary of David's wars, not a diary; it gathers campaigns that 1 Chronicles 18 repeats almost word for word and that other chapters (10; 12:26-31; 21:15-22) tell in more detail. The Philistines come first, as they must: they had killed Saul and held the land to the Jezreel (1 Samuel 31:7), and David had beaten them twice in the valley of Rephaim (5:17-25). Now he subdued them — the word is of bringing low — and takes the fight into their country.

Methegammah — the KJV keeps the Hebrew as a place-name; its margin offers the bridle of Ammah, and the phrase can be read as the bridle of the mother-city, that is, control of the chief town. 1 Chronicles 18:1 has Gath and her towns at this point, and many take the two as the same thing said two ways: David took Gath, Goliath's city, where he had once feigned madness at Achish's gate (1 Samuel 21:13). The word is obscure, and the study offers the readings without choosing.

The verse must be read as it stands. Moabite prisoners are made to lie down to the ground and are measured... with a line: two lengths of the cord are put to death, one full line kept alive — two-thirds killed, by a method chosen for its coldness. The study does not gloss it. This is the warfare of the ancient Near East, practised by Israel's neighbours on Israel and here by David on Moab, and the narrator reports it without approval or excuse, as he reported the hands and feet over the pool at Hebron (4:12).

What makes it harder is the history. David's great-grandmother was a Moabitess (Ruth 4:13-17), and when Saul hunted him he left his father and mother in the keeping of the king of Moab (1 Samuel 22:3-4). Nothing in the text says what changed; later Jewish tradition supplied a story, and the study does not. What the text does say is the outcome — the Moabites became David's servants, and brought gifts, that is, tribute — and that Balaam's old word, out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion... Moab (Numbers 24:17-19), has been kept, at a terrible cost.

Hadadezer, the son of Rehob, king of Zobah (v. 3) ruled an Aramean kingdom north of Damascus, and was going to recover his border at the river Euphrates — or, as some read, David was; the Hebrew leaves the subject open. The numbers here — a thousand chariots, and seven hundred horsemen, and twenty thousand footmen — appear in 1 Chronicles 18:4 as a thousand chariots, seven thousand horsemen, and twenty thousand footmen. The study names the difference and does not decide it; such variations in transmitted numbers occur elsewhere in these books.

David houghed all the chariot horses — cut the hamstrings — but reserved of them for an hundred chariots. Joshua did the same at Merom at the LORD's command (Joshua 11:6, 9), and the Law had told Israel's king not to multiply horses to himself (Deuteronomy 17:16). Readers have seen in the hundred kept a small beginning of what Solomon would make vast (1 Kings 10:26); the text records only the act. David fights with a hill-army and does not want to become the thing he beat.

The Syrians of Damascus — Aram, the Hebrew says — came to succour Hadadezer (v. 5), and lost two and twenty thousand men; David garrisons Damascus itself and takes tribute. The kingdom now reaches, by vassals, toward the Euphrates — as far as the promise to Abraham had stretched (Genesis 15:18), though the text here does not say so. Damascus will be Israel's enemy for centuries after; for this one reign it became servants to David.

And the LORD preserved David whithersoever he went. The sentence is said twice in the chapter (vv. 6, 14), and it is the chapter's theology — the only comment the narrator makes on the whole catalogue of victories. It is the oracle of 7:9 fulfilled: I was with thee whithersoever thou wentest. Readers should hold the refrain against the measuring-line of verse 2 and not try to make the two agree easily. God kept David; David did what kings did; Scripture records both and lets the reader carry the weight.

Toi king of Hamath (v. 9), on the Orontes far to the north, had wars with Hadadezer and sends his son Joram — Hadoram in 1 Chronicles 18:10 — to salute him, and to bless him, with vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, and vessels of brass. A king who was never conquered pays homage because an enemy has been. David takes it, and the shields of gold of Hadadezer's servants (v. 7), and the exceeding much brass of Betah and Berothai (v. 8), and did dedicate unto the LORD. 1 Chronicles 18:8 adds that from this brass Solomon made the sea and the pillars.

The dedication is the chapter's answer to chapter 7. David was told he would not build the house; he spends the rest of his reign stocking it (1 Chronicles 22:14). Verse 12's list — Syria... Moab... Ammon... the Philistines... Amalek... Hadadezer — includes Ammon, whose war is not told until chapters 10-12; the summary runs ahead of the story. Readers should also notice that no spoil is said to go to David's own house. The gold of the nations goes unto the LORD.

A tangle the study must name. The verse says Syrians — Aram — in the valley of salt, south of the Dead Sea, which is Edomite country; verse 14 then has David garrison Edom. 1 Chronicles 18:12 says Abishai... slew of the Edomites in the valley of salt eighteen thousand; the heading of Psalm 60 says Joab... smote of Edom in the valley of salt twelve thousand. In Hebrew Aram and Edom differ by one similar letter, and many take Edom as the original here. The three figures of who struck and how many are left side by side; a king, his commander and his commander's brother may all be said to have won the same battle.

David gat him a name — the oracle again (7:9, I have made thee a great name), told from the human side. Edom became David's servants (v. 14), which readers have set beside the word to Rebekah that the elder shall serve the younger (Genesis 25:23) and Balaam's Edom shall be a possession (Numbers 24:18). The second the LORD preserved David whithersoever he went closes the war-list. Psalm 60, if its heading is followed, shows that the Edomite campaign was not all triumph — thou hast cast us off — and the study notes the heading as the heading.

After the wars, the work: David reigned over all Israel; and David executed judgment and justice unto all his people. The pair of words is what Israel wanted a king for and what the prophets would measure kings by — a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth (Jeremiah 23:5); give the king thy judgments, O God (Psalm 72:1-2). Unto all his people — the whole land, north and south, Jabesh and Hebron alike. This is the best sentence said of David's rule, and it is said before chapter 11.

The study notes what the book will later show: Absalom standing in the gate telling every man there is no man deputed of the king to hear thee (15:3), and a people who believed him. Whether David's justice failed or Absalom lied, the narrator does not say; he says here that David executed judgment and justice, and leaves 15:1-6 to be read after chapters 11-14. A reign is judged as a whole, and this verse is the summary the narrator chose for its best years.

The cabinet (vv. 16-18): Joab... over the host; Jehoshaphat... recorder — a remembrancer, keeper of the record or herald; Zadok... and Ahimelech the son of Abiathar... the priests — a puzzle, since Abiathar was the son of Ahimelech (1 Samuel 22:20) and serves as priest beside Zadok through the reign (15:35); some read the names reversed, some a grandson named for the grandfather; Seraiah the scribe; Benaiah... over the Cherethites and the Pelethites, the foreign guard — Cretan and Philistine by most accounts — who will stand by David in Absalom's revolt (15:18) and set Solomon on the throne (1 Kings 1:38). Benaiah's own deeds are in 23:20-23.

David's sons were chief rulers. The Hebrew word is kohanim, elsewhere priests; the KJV, with 1 Chronicles 18:17 (chief about the king) in view, renders it as an office of state, and the same word is used of Ira the Jairite in 20:26. How the king's sons could be called priests is debated — a court title, a priestly-type honour, or an older usage of the word — and the study says so rather than settling it. What the list as a whole shows is a kingdom becoming a state: army, archive, altar, scribe, guard, and princes. The next chapter will show what the king did with the state he had built.