Then Joab and the troops with him advanced to fight the Arameans, and they fled before him. When the Ammonites realized that the Arameans were fleeing, they fled before Abishai and went inside the city. So Joab returned from fighting the Ammonites and came to Jerusalem.

After the Arameans saw that they had been routed by Israel, they regrouped. Hadadezer had Arameans brought from beyond the Euphrates River; they went to Helam, with Shobak the commander of Hadadezer’s army leading them.

When David was told of this, he gathered all Israel, crossed the Jordan and went to Helam. The Arameans formed their battle lines to meet David and fought against him. But they fled before Israel, and David killed seven hundred of their charioteers and forty thousand of their foot soldiers. He also struck down Shobak the commander of their army, and he died there. When all the kings who were vassals of Hadadezer saw that they had been routed by Israel, they made peace with the Israelites and became subject to them.

So the Arameans were afraid to help the Ammonites anymore. (New International Version)

Outward Conflict with Ammon

You would think that showing basic human kindness to another would always end well… Yet, not always. And King David found that out, the hard way.

David, having become king of Judah and Israel, demonstrated that his reign would be characterized by extending the sort of mercy and kindness that is characteristic of God.

Whereas David’s kindness was most often accepted, when it came to King Hanun and the Ammonites, it was misunderstood and rejected. The Ammonites humiliated King David’s sent ambassadors.

The delegation wanted to express David’s condolences to Hanun in the event of his father’s death. Then, after the Ammonites saw that King David was upset about how his ambassadors were treated, they mobilized a mercenary force of Arameans with Hadadezer leading the charge.

Both the Ammonites and the Arameans underestimated the experience and skill of the Israelite army under their commander Joab. Even though Joab was outnumbered, he conceived of a strategy that evened the odds.

All of this conflict, with preparations for battle and an escalating war, came about because a king wanted to show kindness to another. Indeed, this can be a very messed-up world that we inhabit!

The result of it all is that the Ammonites and the Arameans were soundly defeated by a smaller, yet much stronger, army with King David at the head. The Arameans became subject to Israel, and the Ammonites were left slack-jawed, not knowing what hit them.

Inner Conflict with Oneself

So, here we have David, who like all of us, is a bundle of contradictions. On the one hand, King David had his heart set on showing kindness and reflecting the heart of God in his rule and reign. And on the other hand, David is a soldier and a man of blood, who does an awful lot of killing people in his lifetime.

King David is both a paragon of moral behavior, and an example of immoral living.

He did not lift a finger against his former king who was trying to kill him; and evidenced a tender spirit through musical skill and an ability to write the psalms and songs of Israel.

Yet also, King David demonstrated for us some of the worst immorality, of which is clearly seen in the next few chapters of his story in the book of 2 Samuel. Throughout David’s adult life, he took thousands of human lives in battle.

He came to fame by beheading Goliath; made his mark in Israel by killing Philistines for King Saul; survived in the wilderness while Saul was trying to kill him by killing Amalekites; and secured Israel’s borders through an enormous amount of killing.

I won’t do to simply say that the people David killed had it coming to them, or that he did all the things he did for the sake of the nation. That sort of reductionism smacks of mental laziness and purposeful ignorance.

Coming to Grips with Conflict

At the least, it seems to me that we must accept the biblical narratives as they are, and not as we want them to be, whenever there is difficulty in understanding a story.

We have the human condition in front of us every time we read a scriptural story. Either making it all good, or all bad, just won’t do – because all of us, like David, are a bundle of contradictions and paradoxes that often don’t make sense.

It turns out that, throughout Holy Scripture, we find stories of people who are no better and no worse than we ourselves. The ancient persons, like David, are those for whom a gracious God chose to use and work through – despite either their sinning or their saintliness.

We get a glimpse of how things were and how the Lord operated through the people of the time in their own political, social, economic, and religious contexts.

God comes to us, not merely from the outside by simply mandating commands and imposing control, but enters our lives on the inside, taking us as we are and graciously working with and within us to accomplish good and just purposes on this earth.

And, as it turns out, God uses whomever God wants to use, without doing some sort of divine screening interviews to find out who the most moral candidate is available for the job.

If you are looking for a bottom line in all of this mayhem, then I believe it is this: God loves us. God is with us. And God holds us – all of us, with our maddening combinations of kindness and kookiness – to establish a truly right and benevolent world characterized by humility, gentleness, mercy, purity, and peace.

It’s a rather long and messy process of bringing in such a way of life, but God is patient and will take the centuries and even the millennia needed to accomplish it.

It’s Not All About Human Conflict

Although we are a flawed and fallible people, we are nevertheless God’s people. At the end of it all, we discover that none of this was really a story about Ammonites or Israelites or David or Joab or anyone else; it is actually a story about God – because God is both the object and subject of every biblical narrative.

And what we discover about God is that there are divine initiatives happening all the time which are meant to help us and save us from ourselves. The Lord is sovereign over all creation, and brings salvation despite what we do or don’t do.

God’s kindness – shown and expressed through our own human kindness – will eventually and always win the day.

Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.