Randomness
“Every two lengths of them were put to death, and the
third length was allowed to live.” 2 Sam 8:2
After Davidand his army defeated the Moabites, he had all of enemies lie on the ground and
measured them off with a length of cord and killed all of them except the ones
who happened to fall on the third length of cord. There are many places in the
Scriptures that puzzle me, but this verse may be one of the more difficult ones
for me to comprehend. Why did David do such a cruel thing to the Moabites?
Was it because he had difficulty figuring out who to kill and who to spare among the Moabites
he had captured, therefore he came out with this random way of selecting the
ones to kill? If he desired to show mercy to his enemies, why didn’t he just
spare all of them? I suppose he decided to spare one third of his enemies and
it was the best way to calculate.
The randomness of this selection still abhors me a great deal. What David was dealing with was
human life, which was precious in God’s sight. It wasn’t some sort of game the
king was playing.
What were the Moabites thinking when they were prostrate on the ground, waiting for the sword
to fall? All of them were expecting death, since it was a common practice for
victors to execute their enemies. They were thrilled when they realized there
was a slim chance that their lives would be spared, but one out of three was
still a very strong odds against them, as far as one’s life was concerned. Most
of them simply closed their eyes, waiting for the inevitable as the sound of
footsteps drawing closer and closer to them.
O the dread of death and the zeal for life! How did it feel to be lying there, counting the
minutes before their heads fell? What were the Moabites thinking during those
critical moments when the Israelites were measuring their lives off with a
cord? How did they prepare for death? Did they pray to their gods for mercy for
themselves or for the loved ones who would be left behind?
How do we prepare for the inevitable?
One third of the Moabites’ lives were spared that day and they lived for another month or
another year, but lives would have been extremely difficult, for they surely
would spend the balance of their lives as slaves, laboring in the fields for
their masters. Did those surviving Moabites have any envy for their companions
who were executed while they were still being tortured by their masters? Some
twenty or thirty years later all of them would have been dead and all things would
be equalized. It mattered very little whatever manner they lost their lives,
since a good death was still death.
Was David playing a joke on his hated enemies? It was indeed inhumane and cruel, but the
Moabites would have done the same thing, if not worse, to the Israelites had
they emerged victorious. Things such as this will continue to take place in the
world if we don’t eliminate the root cause of our inhumanity toward other men.