NOTES for Ch1 20:1-8
It is hard for us to read the details of the tortures and executions to which David subjected the Ammonites after defeating them. Admittedly, some modern scholars maintain that an inaccuracy occurred in the translation here, so that this passage should be read quite differently. In their interpretation, it refers not to methods of killing but to the tools and kinds of work to which David assigned the captured Ammonites. We would like to hope that this was indeed the case. Yet the subtleties of translation and interpretation do not change the fact that cruelty at that time was characteristic not only of pagans but also of the sons of the people to whom the Lord had long since revealed Himself. Again and again, readers encountering bloody episodes in the pages of the Bible are tempted to regard the cruelties mentioned as the norm. Two conclusions then suggest themselves: either religion must be interpreted as a defence of cruelty and accepted in that form, or Revelation must be rejected because it is recorded in a Book that does not conceal terrible events.
Both responses are wrong. What we read in the Bible is far from always presented as a norm or an example to follow. The Bible simply describes the actual condition of humanity fallen into sin, in which even the best people bear the marks of the corruption shared by all. And, as the saying goes, there is no use blaming the mirror!
Yet it is this very Book that reveals to us the possibility of deliverance from what it shows.