2Sa 12:26-31 | KD | STEP | Conquest of Rabbah, and Punishment of the Ammonites (comp. ). - “Joab fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and took the king’s city.” המּלוּכה עיר, the capital of the kingdom, is the city with the exception of the acropolis, as clearly shows, where the captured city is called “the water-city.” Rabbah was situated, as the ruins of Ammân show, on both banks of the river ( Moiet ) Ammân (the upper Jabbok), in a valley which is shut in upon the north and south by two bare ranges of hills of moderate height, and is not more than 200 paces in breadth. “The northern height is crowned by the castle, the ancient acropolis, which stands on the north-western side of the city, and commands the whole city” (see Burckhardt, Syria ii. pp. 612ff., and Ritter, Erdkunde xv. pp. 1145ff.). After taking the water-city, Joab sent messengers to David, to inform him of the result of the siege, and say to him, “Gather the rest of the people together, and besiege the city (i.e., the acropolis, which may have been peculiarly strong), and take it, that I may not take the city (also), and my name be named upon it,” i.e., the glory of the conquest be ascribed to me. Luther adopts this explanation in his free rendering, “and I have a name from it.”

‏ 2 Samuel 12:26-31

Conquest of Rabbah, and Punishment of the Ammonites (comp. 1Ch 20:1-3). - “Joab fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and took the king’s city.” המּלוּכה עיר, the capital of the kingdom, is the city with the exception of the acropolis, as 2Sa 12:27 clearly shows, where the captured city is called “the water-city.” Rabbah was situated, as the ruins of Ammân show, on both banks of the river (Moiet) Ammân (the upper Jabbok), in a valley which is shut in upon the north and south by two bare ranges of hills of moderate height, and is not more than 200 paces in breadth. “The northern height is crowned by the castle, the ancient acropolis, which stands on the north-western side of the city, and commands the whole city” (see Burckhardt, Syria ii. pp. 612ff., and Ritter, Erdkunde xv. pp. 1145ff.). After taking the water-city, Joab sent messengers to David, to inform him of the result of the siege, and say to him, “Gather the rest of the people together, and besiege the city (i.e., the acropolis, which may have been peculiarly strong), and take it, that I may not take the city (also),and my name be named upon it,” i.e., the glory of the conquest be ascribed to me. Luther adopts this explanation in his free rendering, “and I have a name from it.” 2Sa 12:29

Accordingly David “gathered together all the people,” - i.e., all the men of war who had remained behind in the land; from which we may see that Joab’s besieging army had been considerably weakened during the long siege, and at the capture of the water-city, - “and fought against the acropolis, and took it.” 2Sa 12:30

He then took their king’s crown (“their king,” viz., the king of the Ammonites) from off his (the king’s) head; so that he had either been taken prisoner or slain at the capture of the city. The weight of the crown was “a talent of gold, and precious stones” (sc., were upon it): as the writer of the Chronicles has correctly explained it by supplying בּהּ. The Hebrew talent (equal to 3000 shekels) was 83 1/2 Dresden pounds. But the strongest man could hardly have borne a crown of this weight upon his head for however short a time; and David could scarcely have placed it upon his own head. We must therefore assume that the account of the weight is not founded upon actual weighing, but simply upon an approximative estimate, which is somewhat too high. David also took a great quantity of booty out of the city. 1 Sa 12:31

He also had the inhabitants executed, and that with cruel tortures. “He sawed them in pieces with the saw and with iron harrows.” בּמּגרה ויּשׂם, “he put them into the saw,” does not give any appropriate sense; and there can be no doubt, that instead of וישׂם we should read ויּשׂר (from שׂוּר): “he cut (sawed) them in pieces.” הבּרזל וּבמגזרות, “and with iron cutting tools.” The meaning of the ἁπ. λεγ. מגזרות cannot be more precisely determined. The current rendering, “axes or hatchets,” is simply founded upon the circumstance that גּזר, to cut, is applied in 2Ki 6:4 to the felling of trees. The reading in the Chronicles, וּבמּגרות, is evidently a copyist’s error, as we have already had בּמּגרה, “with the saw.” The meaning of the next clause is a disputed point, as the reading itself varies, and the Masoretes read בּמּלבּן instead of the Chethibh במלכן, “he made them go through brick-kilns,” i.e., burnt them in brick-kilns, as the lxx and Vulgate render it. On the other hand, Thenius takes the Chethibh under his protection, and adopts Kimchi’s explanation: “he led them through Malchan, i.e., through the place where the Ammonites burned their children in honour of their idol.” Thenius would therefore alter בּמלכּם into בּמלכּם or בּמּלכּם: “he offered them as sacrifices in their image of Moloch. ” But this explanation cannot be even grammatically sustained, to say nothing of the arbitrary character of the alteration proposed; for the technical expression למּלך בּאשׁ חעביר, “to cause to go through the fire for Moloch” (Lev 18:21), is essentially different from בּמּלך חעביר, to cause to pass through Moloch, an expression that we never meet with. Moreover, it is impossible to see how burning the Ammonites in the image of Moloch could possibly be “an obvious mode of punishing idolatry,” since the idolatry itself consisted in the fact that the Ammonites burned their children to Moloch. So far as the circumstances themselves are concerned, the cruelties inflicted upon the prisoners are not to be softened down, as Daaz and others propose, by an arbitrary perversion of the words into a mere sentence to hard labour, such as sawing wood, burning bricks, etc. At the same time, the words of the text do not affirm that all the inhabitants of Rabbah were put to death in this cruel manner. בּהּ אשׁר העם (without כּל) refers no doubt simply to the fighting men that were taken prisoners, or at the most to the male population of the acropolis of Rabbah, who probably consisted of fighting men only. In doing this, David merely retaliated upon the Ammonites the cruelties with which they had treated their foes; since according to Amo 1:13 they ripped up women who were with child, and according to 1Sa 11:2 their king Nahash would only make peace with the inhabitants of Jabesh upon the condition that the right eye of every one of them should be put out. It is sufficiently evident from this, that the Ammonites had aimed at the most shameful extermination of the Israelites. “Thus did he unto all the cities of the Ammonites,” i.e., to all the fortified cities that resisted the Israelites. After the close of this war, David returned to Jerusalem with all the men of war. The war with the Syrians and Ammonites, including as it did the Edomitish war as well, was the fiercest in which David was ever engaged, and was also the last great war of his life.