{"id":60312,"date":"2019-07-30T12:52:02","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T09:52:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=60312"},"modified":"2023-02-21T14:45:15","modified_gmt":"2023-02-21T12:45:15","slug":"joab-davids-fixer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/joab-davids-fixer\/","title":{"rendered":"Joab, David\u2019s Fixer"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[834,900],"acf":{"old_id":"60312","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":34891,"related_cahpter":"274","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Joab\u2019s obedience to David compromises him, with guilt, but also elevates him, with leverage","content":"

Chapter 11 begins with Joab at battle while intrigue unfolds in the King\u2019s court. In this sense, it is similar to the last time we last saw Joab, in<\/span> Chapter 3<\/span><\/a>. There, while Joab was at battle, David and Abner had been conducting high stakes negotiations over the future of Israel. Joab had meddled in affairs above his pay grade by taking his personal revenge on Abner, perhaps also with a pretense of second-guessing David for the good of the nation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Unlike in Chapter 3, however, in chapter 11 Joab is unflinchingly obedient. When David says to send Uriah back, Joab does. When David says to have Uriah killed, Joab does. Because he simply does what David says, Joab nearly recedes into the background of the chapter, like the many anonymous \u201cmessengers\u201d who carry news back and forth between David and Batsheba, and between Jerusalem and the battlefront.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But Joab is not an anonymous messenger.\u00a0 His name is mentioned 11 times in the Chapter – more than Bathsheba is mentioned (either by name or by designation as \u201cthe woman\u201d or \u201cUriah\u2019s wife\u201d). The text calls attention to the fact that Joab\u2019s obedience is a conscious choice that does not erase him as a subject.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Paradoxically, the fact that Joab could have chosen to disobey, but did not, puts him in a position of power relative to David. David needed Joab\u2019s loyalty, and it\u2019s quite possible that Joab knew why. Joab\u2019s obedience, then, at once compromises him (by implicating him in David\u2019s sins) and elevates him (by giving him leverage over David).<\/span><\/p>\n

How does Joab use this position? Although Joab never comes out and rebukes David, we can sense a hint of frustration with David\u2019s actions in Joab\u2019s charge to the (anonymous) messenger in verses 19-21. Joab instructs the messenger that David may respond to the news of Israel\u2019s battlefield losses with accusations: \u201cWhy did you come so close to the city to attack it? Didn\u2019t you know that they would shoot from the wall?\u201d Joab instructs the messenger to reply to David\u2019s imagined anger with the simple sentence, five words in the Hebrew, \u201cYour servant Uriah the Hittite was among those killed.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps Joab imagined the exchange with the messenger as a prompt that would encourage the king to recognize how far he had gone astray. Joab intended the news to work up David\u2019s indignation over the losses, and only then to have the messenger force David to face the fact that the cause of the losses was his own order to have Uriah killed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We do not know what would have happened had the conversation gone as planned, however, because the messenger front-loads the news of Uriah\u2019s death, perhaps to avoid the king\u2019s predicted anger. It falls to the prophet Nathan, in the next chapter, to use a similar strategy to bring David to a recognition of his sin.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Previous installments in this series on Joab can be found at: <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>I Sam. 26<\/span><\/a>,<\/span> II Sam. 2<\/span><\/a>, and<\/span> II Sam. 3<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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