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<\/a> <\/p>(2 Samuel 8)\uff1a
\nThis happened after David became king of Israel.<\/p>\n
By this time, David was already very powerful. When the nations around him saw this, they thought: \u201cOh man, this David is not someone to mess with!\u201d<\/p>\n
But David wanted to prevent trouble before it happened. He defeated the enemies around Israel who had continued to threaten them, one by one.<\/p>\n
First, David led his men to deal with the Philistines. After this battle, the Philistines were completely subdued by David, and he even took their capital.<\/p>\n
Next, he went to fight the Moabites.<\/p>\n
The Moabites could not hold out either. In the end, they had no choice but to submit to David and pay tribute to him. It was basically:<\/p>\n
\u201cAlright, alright, King David, you win. We surrender. From now on, we\u2019ll give you what we owe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then David faced an even stronger opponent\u2014the king of Zobah, Hadadezer.<\/p>\n
Hadadezer had quite a large army under his command, with chariots, horsemen, and foot soldiers. He was probably thinking:<\/p>\n
\u201cDavid? I want to see what you\u2019re really made of!\u201d<\/p>\n
But when the battle was over, David completely stunned him.<\/p>\n
David captured more than a thousand chariots, seven hundred horsemen, and twenty thousand foot soldiers from him.<\/p>\n
But David was also pretty interesting. He did not keep all the chariots. Instead, he cut the horses used to pull the chariots, keeping only enough for one hundred chariots.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t think that David was so good at war because he relied on equipment.<\/p>\n
Because what truly allowed him to keep winning was this sentence repeatedly mentioned in the Bible:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe LORD gave David victory wherever he went.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is the key to this whole story.<\/p>\n
Later, the Arameans from Damascus came to help Hadadezer.<\/p>\n
But after they arrived, they found:<\/p>\n
\u201cHuh? How come we still can\u2019t beat him?\u201d<\/p>\n
David defeated them just the same, killing twenty-two thousand of them.<\/p>\n
David then established garrisons in the territory of the Arameans, and the Arameans also submitted and began paying tribute to David.<\/p>\n
At this point, the nations around him began to realize one by one:<\/p>\n
\u201cThis David is no ordinary man. He has God backing him.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was also a king of Hamath named Toi.<\/p>\n
When he heard that David had defeated Hadadezer, he was extremely happy.<\/p>\n
Why?<\/p>\n
Because Hadadezer had fought against him before. As the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.<\/p>\n
So Toi quickly sent his son Joram to meet David, and he brought a large amount of gold, silver, and bronze.<\/p>\n
Basically, he was saying:<\/p>\n
\u201cKing David, my brother, congratulations! You fought a great battle! Keep these things, and let\u2019s live in peace from now on.\u201d<\/p>\n
After David received these things, he did not say:<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my goodness, so many good things! They\u2019re all mine now!\u201d<\/p>\n
No.<\/p>\n
David set these things apart as holy and dedicated them to the LORD.<\/p>\n
In other words:<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t because I\u2019m so great. These victories were given to me by God. What belongs to God must be given to God.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later, David also defeated the Edomites in the Valley of Salt and established garrisons throughout Edom.<\/p>\n
The Edomites also submitted.<\/p>\n
Look at what happened all around him\u2014the Philistines, Moabites, Arameans, Edomites, and other hostile nations, one after another, were subdued by David.<\/p>\n
So the Bible emphasizes again:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe LORD gave David victory wherever he went.\u201d<\/p>\n
But if you think that after David became powerful, he only knew how to fight, then you would be mistaken.<\/p>\n
David eventually became the king of all Israel.<\/p>\n
And the Bible specifically says something very important:<\/p>\n
\u201cDavid administered justice and righteousness for all his people.\u201d<\/p>\n
What does that mean?<\/p>\n
It means David not only knew how to fight, but he also had to know how to govern the nation.<\/p>\n
He could not say:<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m the king now. Whatever I say goes!\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, he had to act fairly and govern the people according to righteousness.<\/p>\n
So this chapter is not just about David \u201cwinning battles.\u201d<\/p>\n
What it really wants to tell us is:<\/p>\n
David had ability, but he knew where his ability came from; David had the spoils of war, but he knew who deserved the glory; David had the throne, but he knew how to treat the people fairly.<\/p>\n
Finally, the Bible lists the important people who served under David one by one:<\/p>\n
Joab was the commander of the army;<\/p>\n
Jehoshaphat was the recorder;<\/p>\n
Zadok and Ahimelech served as priests;<\/p>\n
Seraiah was the secretary;<\/p>\n
Benaiah commanded the Kerethites and Pelethites;<\/p>\n
David\u2019s sons also served as leaders.<\/p>\n
This shows that David\u2019s kingdom was gradually becoming established.<\/p>\n
But the truly great thing was not that David himself thought:<\/p>\n
\u201cI, David, am really something!\u201d<\/p>\n
Rather, he knew:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not because I\u2019m so capable. It is because the LORD is with me.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sarah (2 Samuel 8)\uff1a This happened after David became king of Israel. By this time, David was already very powerful. When the nations around him saw this, they thought: \u201cOh man, this David is not someone to mess with!\u201d But David wanted to prevent trouble before it happened. He defeated the enemies around Israel who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible-reflection"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faithloop.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faithloop.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faithloop.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faithloop.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faithloop.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/faithloop.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10231,"href":"https:\/\/faithloop.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10230\/revisions\/10231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faithloop.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faithloop.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faithloop.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faithloop.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}