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1Sa_8:2
The Jewish writers imagine, that the king of Moab had put the parents of David to death. But this is of no authority, being a mere conjecture devised to meet the exigencies of the case. No cause is stated. An occasion may have existed, or may not—for a real or ostensible casus belli is by no means so essential to oriental warfare as it is in the West. Every sovereign is held justified in aggrandizing his power at the expense of his neighbors, whenever a suitable opportunity offers; and if be feels strong enough, and sees that they are weak enough, to afford him a prospect of success. This was the rule on which all the neighboring powers acted towards Israel; and there is no reason why we, with our later, our western, and our christian notions, should exact from Israel alone an adequate cause of war—adequate in our view, for all its military enterprises. The silence of Scripture does not, however, prove that no justificatory cause existed. It is more than probable, that the relations of the tribes beyond the Jordan with their neighbors had become complicated, and needed the interposition of the sovereign power. If Dr. Delany is right in assigning to this period the Psalms 83, which is usually ascribed to the time of Jehoshaphat, there had been a confederacy of all the neighboring nations to put down the rising power of Israel, which the king resents, and punishes by assailing, one after another, all the states which belonged to this confederacy. Certain it is, that all the hostile powers which David reduced, even the Philistines, are named in the confederacy described in that Psalm. The campaign against Moab is very concisely related, and in words which have excited much speculation. “He smote Moab, and measured them with a line, casting them down to the ground; even with two lines measured he to put to death, and with one full line to keep alive. So the Moabites became David’s servants, and brought gifts.”
There have been many translations of, and criticisms on, this text, with the view of finding an interpretation less harsh than that generally received, and which is conveyed in the authorized version—that David put to death a large proportion of his prisoners of war. We have repeatedly examined this text with much attention, and have always been led to conclude, that the real meaning of it is conveyed by our version, and that no new translation of it is needed. There may still be some question about the form in which this judgment was executed. Some think the line marked out the sections of the country whose inhabitants were to be destroyed; but others conceive that the prisoners of war were made to lie down, and a line extended so as to mark off about two thirds of the whole mass, and these were to be devoted to destruction, and the remainder spared. This was merely a rough substitution for counting them off, which probably their great numbers would have rendered a tedious and slow operation; but, that they might not suffer by the roughness of this mode of marking them out, the line was so drawn as palpably to make the proportion marked off to be spared by much the largest of the three thirds, which is doubtless the meaning of the “full line to save alive.” Now this is undoubtedly a shocking transaction, as most of the usages of ancient warfare are, when we come to look on them closely, and as our own war usages will, we doubt not, appear when our posterity comes to look upon them through a much shorter interval of time than has elapsed since the wars of David. The question is not, whether this conduct of David to the Moabites was shocking, barbarous, and cruel—seeing that this is true of all ancient warfare, and is, although in a less degree, true of even modern warfare, and in fact of all warfare—but it is, whether this conduct of his was conformable to the war usages of the time in which we lived, and of the people with whom he had to do? and whether this measure which seems to us so terrible, was or was not shocking in the eyes of David’s contemporaries? In reference to a case in which all the prisoners except the female children were destroyed by the express order of Moses himself, Note: Twentieth Week—Monday. we have shown that the necessity existed, that unless the Israelites chose to wage war at disadvantage and with maimed hands, it was necessary that they should wage it on the principles recognized by the nations with whom they were brought into conflict, and deal out to them the same measure which they received from them.
In the first wars, the conquerors gave no quarter at all, but destroyed all their enemies, without distinction of age or sex. Prisoners were also destroyed in the same manner. This was the ancient war law. But by the law of Moses, the Israelites were forbidden to enforce it except in aggravated cases, like the one to which reference has just been made, and except as regarded the devoted nations of Canaan. In process of time, men began to perceive that they might safely gratify the natural impulse to spare helpless women and children, and even secure an advantage in so doing, by retaining them for the discharge of servile offices, or selling them to those who had need of their services. At first, this degree of mercy was limited to women and female children, as it was considered that the boys might grow up to avenge their fathers, or at least to prove troublesome; but eventually the male children also were spared. It was to this point that men land come in the time of David, of Homer, and even of Moses. It had been probably the practice of Egypt to spare the male prisoners, owing to the great demand for servile labor in that country; and Moses, in enforcing it with respect to all but the devoted nations, probably went beyond the practice of Syria and Arabia, in which the old custom still prevailed. In expeditions against all nations but these, the whole were to be spared if they submitted without fighting, and consented to tribute. But in case they resisted, and were taken in arms, the men so taken were to be put to death. Now, the Moabites were not of the devoted nations, and came therefore under the general law, as laid down by Moses, in conformity with the usages of the time. That law was certainly transgressed by David in the present case, but it was on the side of leniency, not of severity; and we are fully persuaded that it is for the very purpose of marking his humane consideration for the Moabites, contrary to all the rules of warfare in that age, the fact is mentioned, which has been fastened upon by thoughtless persons as a proof of his harsh ness. There can be no doubt, we think, that every man among the Moabitish prisoners fully expected to be put to death; and that the exemption of a large third was received as an act of unparalleled grace and mercy on the part of David.
It may indeed be asked, Why, since he had made up his mind to save one third of the prisoners, he might not as well have saved the whole? Nothing is easier than to ask, Why, if a person does one thing, he does not also do another There is no end of such questions; for they may be applied to any case in which an alternative is possible. David intended his war to produce a certain result—to be effectual not only for the present, but with reference to future undertakings. This result, he thought, might not be compromised by his sparing a portion of the prisoners, but might be so to a serious extent if, by sparing the whole, the enemies he had yet to subdue were led to presume upon his leniency, and to expect from him a degree of forbearance which was not known in that age, and which they were not themselves in the habit of showing to those whom they overcame. The war usages of this part of the world, were in ancient times notoriously barbarous, and retained their severity long after they had been considerably mollified among other nations. Thus the Carthaginians, who were of Canaanitish origin, and retained the usages of Canaan, were reprobated for their severities to prisoners by the Romans, although the latter were themselves, according to our notions, by no means the most gentle of conquerors.