2 Then David said, “I will show kindness to Hanun the son of Nahash, just as his father showed kindness to me.” So David sent some of his servants to console him concerning his father. But when David’s servants came to the land of the Ammonites,
3 the princes of the Ammonites said to Hanun their lord, “Do you think that David is honoring your father because he has sent consolers to you? Has David not sent his servants to you in order to search the city, to spy it out and overthrow it?” (2 Samuel 10:2-4)
My only reading language is English, and I am reading and researching the New American Standard Bible.
This was in my regular study today, and my study of I Samuel is recent enough that the reference to a "showing of kindness" to David confused me.
Searching for an act of kindness. I find no reference to Nahash (or any other Ammonite king) showing kindness to David.
Searching for Nahash, king of Ammonites. In I Samuel 11, it is Nahash's siege of Jabesh-Gilead that brings in Saul as a deliverer, and thus sets him on the throne, which ultimately leads to David ascending to the throne of the united kingdom forty years later. That might be stretched enough to call it a kindness, but I would have questions about the wisdom of an ethics professor who presented that theory of kindness to me in a classroom setting.
At any rate, that happened before David was born.
Is it possible that David is being ironic (or something else) when he sends the servants? Was he, in fact, sending them to spy out the land?