Digging Deeper for such a time as this: JOAB Joab the captain of the host.—1 Kings 1:19. 1. JOAB has been called the Douglas of the house of David. He was the staunch and skilful general, without whose aid the monarchy would not have been established. Had it not been for David, Joab would have climbed up into the throne of Israel. As it was, he stood on the steps of the throne and faced the king all his days. His position in the kingdom was second only to David, and even the king himself was afraid of his commander-in-chief. 2. Joab was David’s sister’s son, but was much of an age with David, and that, no doubt, helps to account for a good deal that went on between the uncle and the nephew. Joab was a stern, haughty, imperious, revengeful man—a man of strength, and a successful leader of armies. On the occasion of the conquest of the city of Jerusalem he was appointed by David to lead the army, and he displayed such bravery and such splendid gifts of leadership that he remained at the head of the armies of David for more than thirty years. He was a courageous man, and not only could fight himself, but could inspire others; and he possessed that dogged perseverance which never knows when it is beaten, but rises out of the ashes of defeat to fight once more and to conquer. 3. David’s brothers never quite forgave him for being greater than themselves. Abner and the rest could not forget that scene in the vale of Succoth, when David by one supreme act of faith and courage became the nation’s idol. Saul’s was not the only heart which felt the pang of jealousy that day. But among those who stood staunch and true to David was his nephew, Joab. He was jealous and vindictive, but he was fiercely loyal to the king, faithful always among the faithless. And David at the beginning of his reign thought much of his young kinsman, this brave, dashing soldier, who could always be depended upon to give a good account of himself. But Joab had the defects of his qualities: he was selfish, ambitious, with a nature of stone and iron; there was no light and shade in his character; he never suffered himself to be thwarted, but bore all down by the violence of his temper. 4. Joab had had unusual opportunities to become an intelligently religious man. He associated for three decades with King David, who, with all his follies and sins, was deeply religious. He was David’s counsellor. He knew all that was in David’s heart. No man could know David so intimately without being convinced of the intense sincerity of the man and of his true faith in God. Undoubtedly he often attended David in the worship of the sanctuary; but it had no influence upon him. For thirty years he lived close to David, knew of all the interposition of God’s providence on behalf of his people, and yet his heart continued to grow hard and stubborn and cruel. His spirit became more vindictive as age crept on him. He became more revengeful, and, having the power, he used it for his own advancement. He lived a godless life despite godly examples and influences all around him. JOAB AND ABNER The first mention of Joab is upon the occasion of the engagement at Gibeon between David’s men and those of Ishbosheth. Abner, who commanded the latter, was completely beaten; but in the course of his retreat he killed Asahel, who had overtaken him. At sunset Joab, at the request of Abner, recalled his men from the pursuit, and returned to David’s headquarters at Hebron. Some time afterwards Abner, having quarrelled with Ishbosheth, offered his allegiance to David. Joab was absent when Saul’s general visited Hebron for this purpose, but returned shortly after his departure. Prompted by a desire to avenge the death of his brother Asahel, and perhaps also by a jealous dread that Abner might supplant him in the favour of David, Joab sent messengers to recall him, and then treacherously murdered him. This cold-blooded deed must be branded with the deepest condemnation; Joab violated what was equivalent to a flag of truce: and though some may remind us of the old law of blood-revenge, and affirm that under the Mosaic institutions, Joab, as the next-of-kin to Asahel, had a perfect right to do as he did, there are two things which go to bar this plea: Asahel was slain in battle, and Hebron was a city of refuge, in which Abner’s life ought to have been respected, at least until he had been tried by the elders. Hence this act of Joab was not only cruelly treacherous but also a flagrant violation of the law of God. David was greatly afflicted by it, but instead of ordering Joab’s immediate arrest and commanding justice to be done, he only said: “I am this day weak, though anointed king; and these men the sons of Zeruiah be too hard for me: the Lord reward the wicked doer according to his wickedness.” David knew his duty quite well. But then Joab was the most powerful and the most necessary man in Israel, and Abner had no friends. David contented himself with pronouncing an eloquent requiem over Abner, leaving his murderer to go free in all his offices and all his honours. Joab was deep enough to understand why his life was spared. He knew that it was fear and not love that had moved David to let him live. It was a diplomatic act of David to spare Joab, but David was playing with a far deeper diplomatist than himself. Joab’s impunity speedily shot up into an increased contempt for David, till in the end secret contempt became open insolence, and open insolence open and unavenged rebellion. ¶ In February 1834, Carlyle writes to his brother Alexander, “I will tell you a fault you have to guard against, and is not that the truest friendship that I can show you? Every position of man has its temptation, its evil tendency. Now yours and mine I suspect to be this: a tendency to imperiousness, to indignant self-help, and if nowise theoretical, yet practical, forgetfulness and tyrannical contempt of other men. This is wrong; this is tyranny, I say; and we ought to guard against it. Be merciful; repress much indignation; too much of it will get vent after all. Evil destiny is nothing; let it labour us and impoverish us as it will, if it only do not lame and distort us. Alas! I feel well one cannot wholly help even this; but we ought unweariedly to endeavour.” JOAB AND URIAH 1. Joab performed some splendid services, both as a soldier and as a statesman, in the extension and consolidation of David’s kingdom. At the siege of Jerusalem by David it was Joab, according to the Chronicler, who first scaled the citadel, and thus earned the reward promised by the king, that he should be chief captain of the host. After the defeat of the Edomites Joab remained in Idumæa. For six months he employed himself in the savage work of exterminating the rock population. With a grim performance of duty, he buried the corpses of the dead, as fast as they fell, in the tombs of Petra. The terror of his name was so great that long afterwards nothing but the news of his death could encourage the exiled chief who had escaped from this eastern Glencoe to return to the haunts of his fathers. 2. One of Joab’s most successful enterprises was the war against the allied forces of Syria and Ammon at Rabbath-Ammon. When at length the citadel was ready to fall, he displayed a combination of magnanimity and prudence in sending for David to deal the final blow, so that the king himself might have the credit of the victory. It was while the siege of Rabbah was still in progress that David was guilty of the most heinous sin of his life. He saw and loved Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, a Hittite soldier in his army. The lust of the eyes seized David, and, after having unsuccessfully attempted, in the meanest possible manner, to use Uriah himself for the purpose of hiding the consequences of his iniquity, David wrote that diabolical letter to Joab, which, though it was virtually Uriah’s death-warrant, he asked the victim to deliver with his own hand: “Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten and die.” It was an order which an unscrupulous man like Joab was only too ready to execute. An assault was made on Rabbath-Ammon, and Uriah was slain. Such a treacherous act put David more completely still in the power of the unscrupulous Joab. He exhibited all the characteristics of a privileged bully, he set at defiance the king’s commandment, and was master of the situation; his shadow was always behind the throne. Joab had no more pity than a tiger, and the tiger’s claws were never out of David’s flesh from the matter of Uriah down to David’s death. ¶ To many the bearing of Joab toward the authority of David may be an enigma. But that which made Joab so terrible an example of unsanctified power was his possession of the dreadful secret of Uriah’s death. He knew too much of David’s guilt; and so all his great natural abilities were concentrated in holding a firm grip on the king’s public reputation. It is true, David had found forgiveness with God, and was a new man; but he knew that Joab had him in his power in matters that came nearest to a man’s life, and Joab perfectly understood that David dared not do what otherwise he would doubtless have done. This possession of secret knowledge concerning others always gives increased power. Whoever knows of the financial weakness of a commercial firm, or the private delinquencies of individuals, or of original social inferiority of persons aiming to figure in society, if it be known that he knows, holds a power over these parties which they dread, and which, if he be unholy, he can use in most painful form. Those are to be pitied indeed who have caused their failings and sins to become the secret of unholy men. JOAB AND ABSALOM 1. David’s favourite son, Absalom, was a fugitive on account of the murder of his brother; and David mourned in his palace both the absence of his heir and the wretched circumstances which had stained the record of his family. The young man Absalom had been guilty of a crime which was condemned even by the wild justice of those early times. Three years had elapsed since the lawless prince had fled the kingdom, and day by day the old king was eating his heart out in the deserted palace at Jerusalem. No doubt he played the moral parent till life at court became a burden to all his ministers. He longed to have his favourite back again. He was ready in his heart to excuse the young man’s sin, but felt it to be his duty sternly to condemn that sin. At this juncture the brave but unscrupulous Joab determined to persuade the king to gratify his own inclinations. Joab prepared, in Oriental fashion, a trap for the king, to shame him into a reconciliation. “A wise woman” from Tekoa was introduced into the king’s presence with a made-up story, that she was a widow with two sons. One had slain the other, and now the relations wished to kill the murderer, and so leave the mother desolate. She won from the king the promise that the life of her surviving son should be spared; and then, turning on the king, accused him of being more cruel to his own family than he had shown himself to hers. The pathetic plea of this woman made David feel that there are times when mercy has a better claim than justice, and that even God Himself did not exact vengeance to the full from His own frail creatures: “For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again; neither doth God take away life, but deviseth means, that he that is banished be not an outcast from him” (2 Sam. 14:14). The king recognized, and made the woman confess, that she was but speaking at the instigation of Joab, but he relented sufficiently to send Joab to Geshur with the message that Absalom might return, but not see his father. 2. For two years father and son lived together in Jerusalem without any intercourse. This was very disagreeable to the young man. He felt that he might just as well have stayed three hundred miles away. So as he had well served his turn before, Absalom resolved to bring Joab to his help again, and get him to intercede with the king for a full and immediate reconciliation. Joab may have been doing his best for Absalom, or he may not. In any case he did not move fast enough for the imperious young prince. He sent for Joab therefore; but Joab, having no good tidings to give him, would not come. He sent a second time, and still Joab would not come. Whereupon he sent servants into Joab’s farm to fire his standing barley, and so compel the old captain to wait on him and to act again as mediator. Joab did so, and succeeded in bringing the king and his son together—Absalom “bowed himself on his face to the ground before the king: and the king kissed Absalom.” ¶ It is difficult, at first sight, to account for the conduct of Joab here; for, after he had earnestly exerted himself to procure Absalom’s recall, it appears strange that he should have been so indifferent to the position which the young man was made by his father to occupy. But we find the explanation in the fact that in this, as in all other things, the crafty and unscrupulous warrior was seeking only to promote his own interests. He had obtained a great ascendancy over David by his complicity in the murder of Uriah, and by making the monarch believe that he was indispensable to him. Now he desired to gain a similar power over Absalom. This, however, could be done only by laying him under some great obligation. Hence he probably kept away from the young man, with the view of getting him to come humbly to him as a suppliant, asking the favour of his intercession with the king. But the burning of his field let him see that Absalom was made of sterner stuff; and so, in order that he might not provoke his vengeance, he was led to do for him, by a sort of compulsion, that which he had intended to do only when he was urgently entreated for it as for a great kindness. 3. At the critical moment when Absalom’s rebellion broke out, Joab saved the situation by siding with David and refusing to swerve from his chief. He remained true to the aged monarch, but he had his price. David had given express command to Joab that Absalom was to be spared: “Deal gently for my sake with the young man, even with Absalom.” But Joab cared little for David’s injunction. When, after the battle, the proud young prince was found hanging by his head in an oak, Joab, on learning the news, hastened not to take him prisoner but to thrust three darts into Absalom’s body, leaving his armour-bearers to finish the work. ¶ I was very much beaten and overtired yesterday, chiefly owing to a week of black fog, spent in looking over a work of days and people long since dead; and my “text” this morning was “Deal courageously, and the Lord do that which seemeth him good.” It sounds a very saintly, submissive, and useful piece of advice; but I was not quite sure who gave it; and it was evidently desirable to ascertain that. For, indeed, it chances to be given, not by a saint at all, but by quite one of the most self-filled people on record in any history—about the last in the world to let the Lord do that which seemed Him good, if he could help it, unless it seemed just as good to himself also—Joab, the son of Zeruiah. The son, to wit, of David’s elder sister; who, finding that it seemed good to the Lord to advance the son of David’s younger sister to a place of equal power with himself, unhesitatingly smites his thriving young cousin under the fifth rib, while pretending to kiss him, and leaves him wallowing in blood in the midst of the highway. But we have no record of the pious or resigned expressions he made use of on that occasion. 4. The passionate grief of David over Absalom changed the glory of victory into gloom, and so affected his troops as they returned to Mahanaim that “they gat them by stealth that day into the city, as people being ashamed steal away when they flee in battle.” Joab roughly aroused his master from his despondency in words which reveal both the sound policy and the unsympathetic nature of this great captain: “Now therefore arise, go forth, and speak comfortably unto thy servants: for I swear by the Lord, if thou go not forth, there will not tarry a man with thee this night: and that will be worse unto thee than all the evil that hath befallen thee from thy youth until now.” Something like this needed to be said; but perhaps Joab was not the man to say it in the most tender and considerate manner. For Joab could touch nothing with a velvet hand. Rough, violent, and callous himself, he could not understand the sensitiveness of another; hence, while doing a very proper thing, he did it in so harsh and dictatorial a manner that the king, even while yielding to his entreaty, chafed more than ever under the yoke of Zeruiah’s sons, and registered a resolution to free himself from their domination as soon as it might be practicable. He could not forgive Joab for the murder of Absalom; he proceeded to depose him from his office of “captain of the host,” and actually appointed Amasa, his nephew, Absalom’s own commander, to take Joab’s place. JOAB AND AMASA Scarcely had Absalom’s rebellion against his father, King David, been quelled, when another and more serious defection broke out. The occasion was the loyal emulation of the northern and southern tribes in the great assembly gathered at Gilgal for the return of the king. The spark of rebellion was kindled by a Benjamite, Sheba, the son of Bichri, described as a “man of Belial” (a person of worthless character). He blew a trumpet, and raised the cry, “We have no part in David, neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse.” The ten tribes followed the new rebel, and the first work of David, when he arrived at Jerusalem, was to send his own bodyguard and the picked men of his army, under Amasa’s command, in pursuit of Sheba. But whether that officer, so recently in rebellion against David, had not yet gained the confidence of the king’s forces, or whether he was secretly in sympathy with Sheba’s revolt, does not appear. In any case, he tarried longer than the time appointed; and David, fearing that the rebellion might become even more formidable than Absalom’s, commissioned Abishai to head his troops, and pursue Sheba before he could intrench himself within a walled city. It is observable that all through this affair there is a studied slight of Joab; yet that able if unscrupulous leader saw his opportunity; for, taking rank under his brother, he went out along with the king’s troops. At the “great stone” in Gibeon the cousins met. Amasa rushed into the treacherous embrace to which Joab invited him, and Joab, with the same sudden stroke as had dealt the death-wound of Abner, plunged his sword, which, whether by design or accident, fell out of its sheath, deep into Amasa’s bowels. Amasa fell; Joab and Abishai hurried on in the pursuit of the rebels. The dead body lay soaking in a pool of blood by the roadside. As the army came up, every one halted at the ghastly sight, till the attendant whom Joab had left dragged it aside, and threw a cloth over it. Then, as if the spell were broken, they followed Joab, now once more captain of the host. He prosecuted the campaign with vigour, and speedily brought it to a successful issue. Sheba having taken refuge at Abel-beth-maacah, Joab laid siege to the town, and only desisted when the head of the rebel was cast to him over the wall. ¶ I have repeatedly ridden round Abel of Beth-Maacah, and stood on the top of the long oval mound on which the town is situated, trying to realize the scene of its siege by Joab and his army. Taking advantage of an oblong knoll of natural rock that rises above the surrounding plain, the original inhabitants raised a high mound sufficiently large for their city. With a deep “trench” and strong wall, it must have been impregnable. The country on every side is most lovely, well watered, and very fertile. The Derdâra, from Ijon, falls from that plain by a succession of cataracts, and glides swiftly along the western declivity of the mound, and from the neighbouring mountain gushes out the powerful stream of Ruahiny. Such fountains and brooks would convert any part of this country into a paradise of fruits and flowers; and such, no doubt, was Abel, when it was called “a mother in Israel.” But the hoof of war tramples all in the dust. Abel itself is a sad example of the utter decay and ruin that has “swallowed up the inheritance of the Lord.” The present village, far from being a mother in Israel, occupies only a small portion of the mound; and wisdom and counsel will be sought in vain at the hands of the peasants who lounge in rags and filth upon the dunghills which barricade their streets and doors. JOAB AND SOLOMON 1. When Adonijah, in David’s extreme old age, took steps to have himself proclaimed king, Joab attached himself to his party. The old age of David is not a lovely spectacle, and Solomon inherited some of his father’s least admirable traits. Joab, in the last phase or dotage of David, can hardly have found much to command his hero-worship, and this may explain in part his unaccountable lapse from loyalty. He had been steadily drifting away from David for years. His fierce temper could not brook the king’s displeasure on account of the murders of Abner and Amasa, and his slaying of Absalom had made the breach irreparable. No doubt David had made him feel that he loved and trusted him no longer; and his old comrade in many a fight, Benaiah, had stepped into the place which he himself had once filled. Joab had more than one deep resentment brooding in his breast, and there is something mournful in the sigh that the sacred historian heaves over the events which, at the close of his long life, at last broke the unshaken loyalty of the venerable soldier. “For Joab had turned after Adonijah, though he turned not after Absalom.” ¶ Great masses, who knew Napoleon only in his public capacity, chiefly as a general, adored him to the last. The private soldiers who marched from France to Waterloo were inspired with an enthusiasm for him which at least equalled that of the soldiers at Marengo or Austerlitz. But that enthusiasm diminished in proportion to remoteness from the rank and file. Officers felt it less in an ascending scale, and when the summit was reached it was no longer perceptible. Berthier, his lifelong comrade, the messmate of his campaigns, his confidant, deserted him without a word, and did not blush to become captain of Louis XVIII.’s bodyguard. His marshals, the companions of his victories, all left him at Fountainbleau, some with contumely. Ney insulted him in 1814, Davoust in 1815. Marmont, the petted child of his favour, conspicuously betrayed him. The loyal Caulaincourt found a limit to his devotion at last. Even his body attendants, Constant and Rustan, the valet who always tended him, and the Mameluke who slept against his door, abandoned him. It was difficult to collect a handful of officers to accompany him to Elba, much more difficult to find a few for St. Helena. 2. Solomon, upon his accession to the throne, considered it prudent to rid himself of Joab, whose influence with the army might have constituted a serious danger to the new monarch. No doubt a desire to wipe away from his house the stain of the unavenged blood of Abner and Amasa partly influenced Solomon, but State reasons must have predominated. Joab, on hearing that Adonijah had been put to death and Abiathar deposed, needed no further intimation that his own life was in danger, and he fled to the asylum of the altar. It was the hour of his desperation; the pressure of destiny was upon his heart, the hand of retribution had laid hold upon him; and rather than die like Judas, he would lay hold upon the horns of the altar as his only means of salvation. But he had no right to do so. He was one of those expressly forbidden by the law of Moses (Deut. 19:12) to enter the tabernacle, or to lay hold upon the horns of the altar. As a murderer—as a murderer “with guile,” as a murderer with deliberate purpose—he had no right to take refuge in God’s sanctuary, or to lay hold upon the altar with his defiled hands. As far as we can judge, he had shown little respect to religion during his lifetime. He was a rough man of war, and cared little about God, or the tabernacle, or the priests, or the altar; but when he was in danger, he fled to that which he had avoided, and sought to make a refuge of that which he had neglected. ¶ Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, like the gods; and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is visible, but the victim totters under the dire clutch. 3. The same disregard of ceremonial sanctity as Solomon had shown in deposing the venerable Abiathar he now showed by deciding that even the sacredness of the altar was not to protect the man who had reeked with the blood of Abner and Amasa; and accordingly the white-headed warrior of a hundred fights, with his hands still clasping the consecrated structure, was slain by the hands of his ancient comrade Benaiah, whose readiness to act as executioner was doubtless all the greater because he thus secured the reversion of the office of commander-in-chief for himself. The body was buried in funeral state at Joab’s own property in the hills overhanging the Jordan valley. ¶ According to 1 Kings 2:1–12, Solomon, in the execution of Joab, acted in obedience to the dying injunction of David. Wellhausen and Stade hold, however, that this passage is an unhistorical interpolation. The hand of the Deuteronomic redactor is certainly evident in ver. 3, but Budde, following Kuenen, defends the antiquity (without committing himself to the historicity) of at least vv. 5–9. 4. Joab died hated because he was a cruel, relentless man, and knew not what mercy was until he called for it himself—in vain. He never knew the greatness of gentleness, the hallowedness of failure; his life was an almost uninterrupted success, which is perhaps the worst thing that can happen to any man. And he did not mellow with the years, as some do, and as all should, but continued self-opinionated, dogmatic, and overbearing to the last; the hot, fierce noon of life had no soft gloaming, full of half-lights and shadows, but the sun was suddenly blotted out by midnight darkness. The land trembles as Joab rises on the stepping-stones of murdered men to the shining top of power and honour, only to fall under the sword of a too slow justice, an outlaw from the love and the pity of all men. When the curtain fell, there was no eye to pity, no tears were shed; there was only a sigh of relief that there was one tyrant less; for the world can get on better without its Joabs than with them. ¶ Viewed as a strictly judicial proceeding, the trial of Strafford was as hollow as the yet more memorable trial in the same historic hall eight years later. Oliver St. John, in arguing the attainder before the Lords, put the real point. “Why should he have law himself who would not that others should have any? We indeed give laws to hares and deer, because they are beasts of chase; but we give none to wolves and foxes, but knock them on the head wherever they are found, because they are beasts of prey.” This was the whole issue—not law, but My head or thy head. “Put not your trust in princes,” exclaimed Strafford when he learned the facts. “I dare look death in the face,” he said stoically, as he passed out of the Tower gate to the block; “I thank God I am not afraid of death, but do as cheerfully put off my doublet at this time as ever I did when I went to my bed.” “His mishaps,” said his confederate, Laud, “were that he groaned under the public envy of the nobles, and served a mild and gracious prince who knew not how to be nor to be made great.” 5. Great as were his crimes, Joab had been a faithful friend to David. He had evidently made the Judæan monarchy secure, and had saved David’s throne in two great emergencies. There is no doubt that his character has often been unfairly estimated, either from lack of a due regard to the spirit of the age in which he lived, or from prejudice in favour of David and Solomon. The least that can be said is that he was a man of far-seeing, statesmanlike views, a brave soldier, a skilful commander, and a loyal subject. The Oriental is not usually distinguished for generosity to his enemies or scrupulousness in his methods of revenge, and Joab was no exception to this rule; but, taking everything into account, we feel that this great man deserved a better fate, and it leaves a painful impression upon us when we learn that, after he had served his king and his country so faithfully, his grey hairs were not suffered to go down to the grave in peace. ¶ No one can confidently say whether an early death is a misfortune, for no one can really know what calamities would have befallen the dead man if his life had been prolonged. How often does it happen that the children of a dead parent do things or suffer things which would have broken his heart if he had lived to see them! How often do painful diseases lurk in germ in the body which would have produced unspeakable misery, if an early and perhaps a painless death had not anticipated their development! How often do mistakes and misfortunes cloud the evening and mar the beauty of a noble life, or mortal infirmities, unperceived in youth or early manhood break out before the day is over! Who is there who has not often said to himself as he looked back on a completed life, how much happier it would have been had it ended sooner? “Give us timely death” is in truth one of the best prayers that man can pray. ¶ Seneca says that death ought not to be considered an evil when it has been preceded by a good life. What makes death so formidable is that which follows upon it. We have, however, the shield of a most blessed hope to protect us against the terrors that arise from fear of the Divine judgments. This hope makes us put our trust, not in our own virtue, but solely in the mercy of God, and assures us that those who trust in His goodness are never confounded. But you say, “I have committed many faults.” True, but who is so foolish as to think that he can commit more sins than God can pardon? Who would dare to compare the greatness of his guilt with the immensity of that infinite mercy which drowns his sins in the depths of the sea of oblivion each time we repent of them for love of Him? It belongs only to those who despair like Cain to say that their sin is so great that there is no pardon for them, for with God there is mercy and plentiful redemption, and He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. Hastings, J. (Ed.). (1914).The greater men and women of the Bible: Ruth–Naaman. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. - via Logos 5
Posted on: Sun, 07 Jul 2013 20:48:21 +0000
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