The Story
A king dies, and his son inherits a throne he isn’t ready for. That’s where this story starts, and if you’ve ever watched someone step into a leadership role too soon, you already know where this is headed.
Hanun becomes king of the Ammonites after his father Nahash passes away. Across the border, David hears the news and does something decent. He remembers that Nahash showed him kindness years earlier, back when David was running for his life from Saul, and he decides to return the favor. So he sends envoys to Hanun, not to spy, not to scheme, just to say he’s sorry for the loss and that he remembers what Nahash did for him. It should have ended there. Two nations with no reason to be enemies, one simple gesture of respect.
But Hanun is surrounded by young princes, and young princes with no experience and a lot of opinions are a dangerous combination. They tell Hanun that David’s men aren’t there to console him at all, they’re there to scout the city for a future attack. And here’s the part that’s crazy! Hanun never checks it out. He doesn’t send a message back to David asking what’s really going on. He doesn’t give David’s men a chance to explain themselves. He just takes someone else’s suspicion, makes it his own conviction, and acts on it in the most humiliating way possible, shaving off half the beards of David’s envoys and cutting their robes off at the hip before sending them home in disgrace. A gesture of kindness turns into an act of war, and it happened because one man let unverified fear do his thinking for him.
That’s the whole story, really. Not an army, not a battle plan, just a whisper that nobody bothered to test. And if you’ve spent any time in the preparedness community, you’ve seen this exact pattern play out. Someone shares an article, a friend of a friend heard something, a rumor starts circulating about a supplier or a group leader or a piece of gear, and instead of digging into it, we accept it because it’s easier to believe than to verify. Suspicion feels like discernment in the moment. It feels protective. But left unchecked, it doesn’t protect anything. It isolates you, and it can turn people you’ve trusted for years into people you no longer speak to, all over something that was never even confirmed.
Every prepper eventually depends on people outside their own household. You can talk all you want about self-reliance, but survival runs through community, a neighbor with a well, a group you trade skills with, a network built over years of showing up for each other. That kind of trust takes a long time to build and almost no time at all to destroy. Hanun didn’t lose a war because David attacked him. He lost it because he let a rumor make a decision that deserved a conversation.
The Reading
2 Samuel 10:1-4 (NASB)
Now it happened afterward that the king of the Ammonites died, and his son Hanun became king in his place. 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 about his father. But when David’s servants came to the land of the Ammonites, the commanders of the Ammonites said to their lord Hanun, “Do you think that David is simply honoring your father since he has sent you servants to console you? Has David not sent his servants to you in order to explore the city, to spy it out and overthrow it?” So Hanun took David’s servants and shaved off half of their beards, and cut off their robes in the middle as far as their buttocks, and sent them away.
Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Questions for Reflection
- When was the last time you accepted something as true simply because someone you trusted said it, without checking it out for yourself?
- What does it look like in your own life to be “quick to listen, slow to speak,” rather than reacting the moment you hear something troubling?
- Is there a relationship in your life right now that suspicion has quietly damaged, and what would it take to have an honest conversation about it?
- How do you tell the difference between genuine discernment and suspicion that only feels like discernment?
A Question for the Preparedness-Minded
The next time a rumor moves through your group, whether it’s about a supplier, a neighbor, or a fellow prepper, will you take the time to verify it and talk it through with the people involved, or will you let it sit unchecked and let it do the deciding for you?
Peace,
Todd