Biblion Bible Commentary
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Rabbah Taken, and the Giants Fall
1 Chronicles 20:1-8
1 At the time of the return of the year, at the time when kings go out, Joab led out the army and wasted the country of the children of Ammon, and came and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed at Jerusalem. Joab struck Rabbah, and overthrew it. · WEB
The siege of Rabbah is reported with the detail that David stayed home, and the giants fall to men whose names are recorded.
The chapter opens on a date and a fact. It is the time when kings go out, Joab takes the army to Rabbah — but David stayed at Jerusalem 1 Chronicles 20:1.
The clause is unmistakable, and it is the same clause the other account uses to introduce what happened in the city while the army was away 2 Samuel 11:1. This telling keeps the note and goes straight to the siege. The reader who knows the rest is left holding it; the reader who does not is told only that a king was at home in campaign season.
That is the book's method throughout, and it is not concealment. The sources are named at the end 1 Chronicles 29:29 and the story was available. This work is about a house and a throne, and it takes from the reign what bears on those.
The crown is then set on David's head, a talent of gold with stones in it 1 Chronicles 20:2 — a weight nobody wears for long, so the act is ceremony rather than headgear. Ammon's kingship is transferred in a gesture.
Verse 3 is difficult, and the difficulty is in the verb. The English translations divide over whether the captives were cut with the saws, picks and axes or set to work with them. Both readings are available from the same consonants, and nothing else in the passage settles it.
Then three short reports of Philistine wars, and all three are about giants. Sibbecai kills Sippai at Gezer . Elhanan kills the brother of the champion of Gath, whose spear staff was like a weaver's beam 1 Chronicles 20:5 — a phrase used four chapters earlier of the Egyptian Benaiah killed. And a man of great stature with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot defies Israel, and is killed by David's nephew 1 Chronicles 20:6–7.
The parallel account of the second of these names the man killed differently, and the English translations divide over how to read that verse. The difference concerns which member of one family fell to which soldier, and no claim in either account rests on it.
What the section is for is stated in its last line. These men fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants 1 Chronicles 20:8. The famous single combat of David's youth is not retold anywhere in this book. What is recorded instead is that the giants kept coming and kept being killed, by men whose names are given, and the credit is shared between a king who was not present and the servants who were.
settled What this mark means