1 Chronicles 20:3 And he brought out the people that were in it, and cut them with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes… All actions, both of nations and of individuals, should be judged in the light of the prevailing standards and sentiments of the age in which they are done. This is a most important principle, but it is a difficult one to apply wisely; and it is one that may be easily misrepresented. Right can never be other than right, and wrong can never be other than wrong. But custom and sentiment give a temporary character to many actions which tend to confuse our apprehension of their essential rightness or wrongness. Limited knowledge also leads to the permission of things which advancing civilization shows to be unworthy and even wrong. These points may be illustrated from slavery, truthfulness, sense of the value of life, ideas of property, and war. Another important consideration, which greatly helps to explain Old Testament narratives, is that national judgments must of necessity take national character. An old divine well says, "God can punish individuals both in this life and in the next; but he can only punish nations in this." There are distinctly personal and individual sins, and there are as distinctly national sins; wrong done by the rulers in the name of the people; or a wrong spirit pervading the people; or times when vice is permitted to run an unrestrained and ruinous course. And such national sin Jehovah ever regards, using such agencies as famine, plague, or war, for its due punishment. In this light the Old Testament ever regards war; the aggressive force is always treated as the executioner who carries out the Divine judgments. And it may be urged that this is still the deeper view to take of war, and that it is quite consistent with a clear recognition of the fact that such an aggressive force may act in mere wilfulness, or in furtherance of wicked schemes of self-aggrandizement. God makes the very "wrath of man" praise him. In treating the incidents of this chapter, it may be well to point out the distinction between what usually happens under the excitements of a siege, and the deliberate judgment that may be pronounced upon a conquered people. As may be painfully illustrated from the conduct of the British soldiers in India and in Spain, when a city is taken by storm, a scene of wild and awful rioting usually follows. Illustrate also from the Roman siege of Jerusalem. For Rabbah, the city here referred to, see the Expository portion of this Commentary, and 2 Samuel 11:1. I. ANCIENT HORRORS OF WAR. Illustrate from different kinds of war - wars of races, the young and strong pushing out the old and weak; hardy mountain races occupying the cultured plains of the over-civilized and effeminate; dynastic wars, occasioned by the rivalries of different royal houses; sacred wars, such as the Crusades, to recover possession of the Lord's tomb; and wars of revenge, undertaken to clear off supposed or real insults. Of this latter kind was the war with Ammon (see ch. 19.). Modern ideas concerning war make it impossible for us to approve of the treatment to which the conquered Ammonites were subjected. Some writers have urged that David merely condemned the captives to severe bodily labours, to hewing and sawing wood, to burning of bricks, and to working in iron-mines; but probably the more terrible translation of the language must be accepted, in view of the common war-law of that stern age. And, with its best mitigations, war must still be regarded as a dreadful thing. The whole world sighs for the day when "the nations shall learn war no more." II. CHRISTIAN MITIGATIONS OF THE HORRORS OF WAR. Illustrate from modern treatment of the dead, the wounded, the prisoner, and the conquered. Show how a prolonged period of comparative peace has influenced national sentiment concerning war. Explain, illustrate, and impress that the Christian law of the universal human brotherhood seeks to destroy all forms of war; and the day of its full triumph is surely coming. - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: And he brought out the people that were in it, and cut them with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes. Even so dealt David with all the cities of the children of Ammon. And David and all the people returned to Jerusalem. |
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