Adam Clarke Bible Commentary

Made peace with Israel - They made this peace separately, and were obliged to pay tribute to the Israelites. Some copies of the Vulgate add here after the word Israel, Expaverunt et fugerunt quinquaginta et octo millia coram Israel; "and they were panic-struck, and fled fifty-eight thousand of them before Israel." This reading is nowhere else to be found. "Thus," observes Dr. Delaney, "the arms of David were blessed; and God accomplished the promises which he had made to Abraham, Gen 15:18, and renewed to Joshua, Jos 1:2, Jos 1:4." And thus, in the space of nineteen or twenty years, David had the good fortune to finish gloriously eight wars, all righteously undertaken, and all honourably terminated; viz. 1. The civil war with Ish-bosheth. 2. The war against the Jebusites. 3. The war against the Philistines and their allies. 4. The war against the Philistines alone. 5. The war against the Moabites. 6. The war against Hadadezer. 7. The war against the Idumeans. 8. The war against the Ammonites and Syrians. This last victory was soon followed by the complete conquest of the kingdom of the Ammonites, abandoned by their allies. What glory to the monarch of Israel, had not the splendor of this illustrious epoch been obscured by a complication of crimes, of which one could never have even suspected him capable! We have now done with the first part of this book, in which we find David great, glorious, and pious: we come to the second part, in which we shall have the pain to observe him fallen from God, and his horn defiled in the dust by crimes of the most flagitious nature. Let him that most assuredly standeth take heed lest he fall.