Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on 2 Samuel 10:6
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
When the Ammonites saw that they had made themselves stinking before David, and therefore that David would avenge the insult offered to the people of Israel in the persons of their ambassadors, they looked round for help among the powerful kings of Syria. They hired as auxiliaries (with a thousand talents of silver, i.e., nearly half a million of pounds sterling, according to Ch1 19:6) twenty thousand foot from Aram-Beth-Rehob and Aram-Zoba, and one thousand men from the king of Maacah, and twelve thousand troops from the men of Tob. Aram-Beth-Rehob was the Aramaean kingdom, the capital of which was Beth-rehob. This Beth-rehob, which is simply called Rehob in v. 8, is in all probability the city of this name mentioned in Num 13:21 and Jdg 18:28, which lay to the south of Hamath, but the exact position of which has not yet been discovered: for the castle of Hunin, in the ruins of which Robinson imagines that he has found Beth-rehob Bibl. Researches, p. 370), is to the south-west of Tell el Kadi, the ancient Laish-Dan, the northern boundary of the Israelitish territory; so that the capital of this Aramaean kingdom would have been within the limits of the land of Israel, - a thing which is inconceivable. Aram-Naharaim is also mentioned in the corresponding text of the Chronicles, and for that reason many have identified Beth-Rehob with Rehoboth, on "the river" (Euphrates), mentioned in Gen 36:37. But this association is precluded by the fact, that in all probability the latter place is to be found in Rachabe, which is upon the Euphrates and not more than half a mile from the river (see Ritter, Erdk. xv. p. 128), so that from its situation it can hardly have been the capital of a separate Aramaean kingdom, as the government of the king of Zoba extended, according to Sa2 10:16, beyond the Euphrates into Mesopotamia. On Aram-Zoba, see at Sa2 8:3; and for Maacah at Deu 3:14. אישׁ־טוב is not to be taken as one word and rendered as a proper name, Ish-Tob, as it has been by most of the earlier translators; but אישׁ is a common noun used in a collective sense (as it frequently is in the expression ישׂראל אישׁ), "the men of Tob." Tob was the district between Syria and Ammonitis, where Jephthah had formerly taken refuge ( Jdg 11:5). The corresponding text of the Chronicles ( Ch1 19:6-7) is fuller, and differs in several respects from the text before us. According to the Chronicles, Hanun sent a thousand talents of silver to hire chariots and horsemen from Aram-Naharaim, Aram-maacah, and Zobah. With this the Ammonites hired thirty-two thousand receb (i.e., chariots and horsemen: see at Sa2 8:4), and the king of Maacah and his people. They came and encamped before Medeba, the present ruin of Medaba, two hours to the south-east of Heshbon, in the tribe of Reuben (see at Num 21:30, compared with Jos 13:16), and the Ammonites gathered together out of their cities, and went to the war. The Chronicles therefore mention Aram-Naharaim (i.e., Mesopotamia) as hired by the Ammonites instead of Aram-Beth-Rehob, and leave out the men of Tob. The first of these differences is not to be explained, as Bertheau suggests, on the supposition that the author of the Chronicles took Beth-rehob to be the same city as Rehoboth of the river in Gen 36:37, and therefore substituted the well-known "Aram of the two rivers" as an interpretation of the rarer name Beth-rehob, though hardly on good ground. For this conjecture does not help to explain the omission of "the men of T…
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