Whispers, Wars, and Who We Listen To
Reading 2 Samuel 10 and 1 Chronicles 19 today, I was drawn to the role of advisors in the story. David sends messengers to Hanun, king of the Ammonites, as a gesture of goodwill after his father dies. But instead of accepting the gesture, Hanun listens to his officials, who convince him that David is really sending spies. What follows is humiliation, war, and the deaths of thousands.
Suspicion, Power, and the Problem with Paranoia
It’s not hard to imagine why Hanun might have been unsure. He’s new to the throne. His father, Nahash, had been in some sort of alliance with David, but maybe it was complicated. And when someone shows up being unusually kind, it can feel suspicious. Still, the leap from uncertainty to public humiliation is extreme—and it wasn’t Hanun’s idea alone. It came from the people advising him.
The Advice Behind the Chaos
That part got me thinking. Who do I listen to when I’m uncertain? Who are the voices that shape how I respond when something feels ambiguous? The passage doesn’t go into detail about why Hanun’s advisors were so quick to see conspiracy, but their advice set off a chain reaction that affected two entire nations.
There’s something quietly unsettling about how easily things escalated. One minute, David is sending condolences; the next, Joab is rallying Israelite troops. None of it was inevitable. It was a few sentences of advice that tipped everything.
From Condolences to Catastrophe
It makes me wonder how often bad advice leads to real harm. Not just on a global scale, but personally. Have I ever rejected someone’s good intentions because I trusted someone else’s skepticism more than my own experience? Have I ever been the advisor whose fear or assumptions colored someone else’s decisions?
There are a lot of unnamed voices in this chapter. Hanun’s officials don’t get names, but their words carry weight. They influence a king. And that influence gets people killed. That seems worth paying attention to.
The Power of a Whisper
The story doesn’t wrap up with a moral about listening better or vetting your sources. It just moves on to the next event. But the implication lingers. Not every war starts with weapons. Some start with whispers.
I don’t have a tidy takeaway from this. But the next time I find myself reacting to something with anger or suspicion, maybe I’ll pause to ask: where is that feeling coming from? And whose voice am I trusting in that moment?