1 Chronicles 19:6-9 meaning
1 Chronicles 19:6-9 shows Ammon turning an insult into a war of its own choosing: When the sons of Ammon saw that they had made themselves odious to David, Hanun and the sons of Ammon sent 1,000 talents of silver to hire for themselves chariots and horsemen from Mesopotamia, from Aram-maacah and from Zobah (v 6). The word rendered odious, comes from the Hebrew "ba'ash," meaning to stink. Scripture uses it when Israel becomes a stench to the Philistines under Saul (1 Samuel 13:4) and of David's supposed standing with his own people in the eyes of Achish (1 Samuel 27:12). Ammon knew it had made itself a stench. The Ammonites responded by preparing for the war they assumed was coming, and the preparation then made it certain. They could have turned and repented, but they didn't.
The scale of the military might they hired, shows their fear. 1,000 talents of silver (v 6) was a royal treasury; two and a half centuries later the same sum bought off the king of Assyria when he threatened Israel (2 Kings 15:19). Ammon spent it to recruit the Aramean states to the north: Mesopotamia (in Hebrew "Aram-naharaim"), meaning "Aram of the two rivers," the region between the upper Euphrates and the Tigris; Aram-maacah, a small kingdom near Mount Hermon whose people Israel had failed to dispossess (Joshua 13:13); and Zobah, Hadadezer's kingdom, which David had just defeated (1 Chronicles 18:3-8).
Ammon had done this before. Moses reminded Israel that Moab and Ammon had "hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia" (Deuteronomy 23:4), and that hired help failed as this one would. The title of Psalm 60 records David's struggle "with Aram-naharaim and with Aram-zobah," most likely the same alliance.
The money bought an army: So they hired for themselves 32,000 chariots, and the king of Maacah and his people, who came and camped before Medeba. And the sons of Ammon gathered together from their cities and came to battle (v 7). 2 Samuel 10:6 counts the hired force as 20,000 foot soldiers from Beth-rehob and Zobah plus 12,000 men of Tob, with the king of Maacah's 1,000 listed separately. The chronicler's 32,000 equals the two larger figures combined. The Hebrew word for chariots can stand for a chariot corps with its crews. The figure describes a force larger than anything Israel had fielded.
Medeba sat on the plateau east of the Dead Sea, in land assigned to Reuben (Joshua 13:9, 16), roughly twenty miles southwest of Rabbah; the Arameans took up position there while Ammon mustered at home. Ammon had shamed the envoys, hired the armies, and now marched out. David's war against Ammon began as a defense against Ammon's attack.
David's answer is measured and full: When David heard of it, he sent Joab and all the army, the mighty men (v 8). "Joab the son of Zeruiah was over the army" (1 Chronicles 18:15), and the mighty men were the elite force whose names the chronicler recorded in chapter 11 (1 Chronicles 11:10-47). David sent all the army (v 8); he understood that Ammon had bought a real threat. The king stays in Jerusalem here, as he will in the next campaign (1 Chronicles 20:1), and he will take the field himself once the Arameans return in force (1 Chronicles 19:17).
The battlefield takes shape: The sons of Ammon came out and drew up in battle array at the entrance of the city, and the kings who had come were by themselves in the field (v 9). The city is most likely Medeba, named in the previous verse, though some readers take it to be Rabbah; either way the enemy held two positions. Ammon stood at the entrance of the city (v 9), with walls at its back and a gate to retreat through, and the kings who had come, the hired Aramean rulers, stood apart in the field, where chariots could move. 2 Samuel 10:8 lists them as the men of Zobah, Rehob, Tob, and Maacah. The arrangement meant that any attack on one force exposed the attacker's rear to the other. Joab had marched into a trap, and the next section shows what he did about it.
The event in 1 Chronicles 19:6-9 offers a plain lesson about guilt and stubbornness. Ammon knew they had done wrong, and the knowledge produced fear, and the fear produced a war. Confession was the other road, as Scripture teaches: "He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion" (Proverbs 28:13). David's embassy of comfort had been that compassion offered in advance, and Ammon spent a fortune to fight it.