Strange Story: II Samuel 8 David Killed Two Thirds of the Moabites Captured in Battle

II Samuel 8:2

When David defeated the Moabites, he had the captured combatants lie down on the ground (probably with hands and feet bound). Then, at David’s command, his men stretched a cord over the captives three times, and those that happened to be under the cord the first two times were killed, while those that were under the cord the third time were spared and assigned to hard labor. Then they repeated the process over and over again, sparing one third of the captives.

To us this seems brutal because we are taught that once you capture your enemies alive in battle, you should spare their lives. In ancient times they were held to no such (unwritten) rules, or those rules were often ignored. However, the Jews were not as cruel in times of war as most of their neighbors because God had standards they had to abide by. Was what David did a violation of God’s standard? It appears that it may have been. We have other indications that the Jews were not to kill those who were captured alive in battle unless God had given them specific orders to do so. When God did give such orders, there was always a specific reason involved. See my lesson on Why so much war. Was this incident the reason God later told David that he had blood on his hands – implying innocent blood? We cannot know for sure, but it may have been.

It was not long before this event that David had enjoyed an amicable (friendly) relationship with the people of Moab. His great grandmother was the Moabitess, Ruth. What’s more, when David was fleeing from Saul, he took his father and mother to Moab and asked the king of Moab to watch out for them, which he apparently said he would do, or David would not have left them there.

But something obviously changed. It is obvious that they were no longer friends. In this story David exacted extraordinary revenge on them for something. What was it?  

The candidate for best explanation comes from Jewish tradition which purports that the Moabites killed David’s father and mother. This would explain why we never hear of them again after they moved to Moab. It would also explain why David treated the Moabites so harshly.

We know from Scripture that God did not let David build the temple because David had blood on his hands, that would imply innocent blood, not the blood of battles that God had commissioned. When did David shed innocent blood? This story, and the case of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, are the only ones I have found that answer that question. Therefore, if my assumption is true, this incident was a key part of God’s refusal to let David build the temple.

If the Moabites killed David’s parents, his anger toward them seems justified. However, when someone has wronged us, we should not take matters into our own hands; we should let God be the judge; we should trust that God will do a better job of rendering judgment and assigning punishment than we could.

This incident, along with the shedding of Uriah’s blood, was also the reason that David did not feel he could punish Joab for the times he shed innocent blood. David knew Joab was guilty and wanted to do something about it, but he lacked the moral authority to do so because he was guilty of the same thing. We see repentance exhibited by David at least in the case of Uriah, and in general it is obvious he wanted to keep a right relationship with God; however, I never see repentance in Joab. When Solomon took the throne, David told him to deal with Joab; he said, “bring his gray head down to the grave with blood” (I Kings 2:9). Starting out, Solomon had the purity of conscience and the moral authority to punish in that way. And from a political point of view, he needed to remove people who would be problems for him later on.