And when the Syrians saw that they were smitten before Israel, they gathered themselves together.
The gathering was wholly unprovoked by David and sprang in reality from jealousy of his increasing power, after the Ammonites had made themselves odious to him by scorning and insulting his ambassadors. The Ammonites then sent a thousand talents of silver to hire chariots and horsemen from Mesopotamia and from Syria-maachah and from Zobah, hiring thirty-two thousand chariots, while the Ammonites themselves gathered together from their cities for battle. The result was a formidable alliance in which the inhabitants of the region lying between the Euphrates River and the Mediterranean Sea had leagued with the Ammonites, so that the north and east of Canaan were encircled with armed foes banded together to crush Israel.
The verse describes the Syrians regrouping after their first defeat before Israel under Joab, when the king of Syria gathered an immense army and renewed the war the next year. Out of this vast coalition of the surrounding nations grew the greatest wars and victories of David's reign and his most extensive accessions to power. David then took the field in person and, by God's blessing, inflicted so disastrous a defeat that the Syrians from Lebanon to the Euphrates not only gave up the war but became tributary to Israel, while he pressed the war against the Ammonites until their strongholds fell and the whole region came under Israel's dominion.
The gathering was wholly unprovoked by David and sprang in reality from jealousy of his increasing power, after the Ammonites had made themselves odious to him by scorning and insulting his ambassadors. The Ammonites then sent a thousand talents of silver to hire chariots and horsemen from Mesopotamia and from Syria-maachah and from Zobah, hiring thirty-two thousand chariots, while the Ammonites themselves gathered together from their cities for battle. The result was a formidable alliance in which the inhabitants of the region lying between the Euphrates River and the Mediterranean Sea had leagued with the Ammonites, so that the north and east of Canaan were encircled with armed foes banded together to crush Israel.
The verse describes the Syrians regrouping after their first defeat before Israel under Joab, when the king of Syria gathered an immense army and renewed the war the next year. Out of this vast coalition of the surrounding nations grew the greatest wars and victories of David's reign and his most extensive accessions to power. David then took the field in person and, by God's blessing, inflicted so disastrous a defeat that the Syrians from Lebanon to the Euphrates not only gave up the war but became tributary to Israel, while he pressed the war against the Ammonites until their strongholds fell and the whole region came under Israel's dominion.