Remember that II Samuel 17:25 tells us that David replaced
Joab with Amasa. To put that in perspective, he gave Joab's position to a
recently defeated general. It was a severe slighting of Joab for David to
replace him with his recent enemy. But, Joab would not surrender so easily.
When David sent Amasa out against an upstart named Sheba, Joab was bitterly
upset.
When the tribes of Israel got into a feud with the tribe of
Judah over which group had the closest connection with the old king, Sheba took
that opportunity to exert whatever influence he had to lead another rebellion against
King David. To stop this, David called on Amasa. When he took too long, David
called on Abishai (Joab's brother) to do the job. Really, Joab took the men who
were loyal to him and took off on his own to accomplish the mission before the
other 2 could do it.
In the process or pursuing Sheba, Joab came upon Amasa, and,
under the pretense of a kind greeting, Joab killed Amasa. That's one way of
making sure you are the winner. Kill your competition. Obviously, Joab was
wrong in doing it. In the long run, he paid for his actions. But, for the time
being he got what he was after. He took Sheba's head to David and was thereby
restored to his position as military chief. It seems that David was rather
pragmatic when it came to appointing military leaders (see II Samuel 5:8).
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