Greater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 311. Joab and Uriah

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Greater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 311. Joab and Uriah

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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.^{1 [Note: C. Chapman.]}