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manner as host going to battle had never done. In the morning, as Judah marched out
of the gate of Jerusalem, the king addressed to his people only this one command: to
have faith - faith in their God, and in the word sent by His prophets. Thus should
they be established. Then "he advised the people,"^97 and with one accord they
appointed for their avant-guard the sacred Temple-singers,^98 robed in their "holy
array,"^99 who were to chant, as if marching in triumphal procession, the well-known
words of worship: "Praise Jehovah, for His mercy endureth for ever" (comp. 2
Chronicles 7:3, 6).
If never before an army had so marched to battle, never, even in the marvelous
history of Israel, had such results been experienced. Above Engedi the chalk cliffs
rise 2000 feet above the Dead Sea, although even that height is still 2000 feet below
the watershed. We have now reached the barren and desolate wilderness, known as
that of Judah, which stretches southward to the mountains of Hebron, and northward
to Tekoa. Innumerable wadys and broad valleys stretch between mountain crests,
often of fantastic shape. It is a pathless wilderness, seamed by rocky clefts and caves.
There, just past the cave where David had been in hiding from Saul, up the cliff
Hazziz - perhaps the modern El Husasah - had the foe swarmed, and then deployed
through the broad wady which leads towards Tekoa. Here, "at the end of the
gully,"^100 would Israel descry them, see their defeat, yet not have to do battle for the
victory.
And as on that bright day the host of Israel looked towards the ascent from Engedi,
they caught sight of the enemy. At that moment as by a preconcerted signal they
began to sing and to praise the LORD. Then a strange scene ensued. It were an entire
misunderstanding of what Scripture designates as the agency of God, to apply to
angelic combatants the words: "Jehovah set liers in wait [ambushments] against the
children of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir."
For God Himself does that which happens in His all-overruling Providence, even
though it come to pass in the orderly succession of natural events. There was no need
of summoning angel-hosts. It is not only quite conceivable, but best explains the
after-event, that a tribe of Edomites, kindred but hostile to that which had joined
Ammon and Moab in their raid, should have lain in ambush in one of the wadys,
waiting till the main body of the combatants had passed, to fall on the rear-guard, or
probably on the camp followers, the women and children, and the baggage. They
would calculate that long before the men in advance could turn upon them in those
narrow defiles, they would have escaped beyond the reach of pursuit. And it is
equally conceivable that when the attack was made the main body of the Ammonites
and Moabites may have regarded it as a piece of treachery preconcerted between the
clan of Edomites who were with them, and the kindred clan that lay in ambush. All
this is quite in accordance with what might still take place among the Bedouins of
(^)