David took the gold shields that belonged to the officers of Hadadezer and brought them to Jerusalem. – 2 Samuel 8:7

Today’s Scripture Reading (April 16, 2019): 2 Samuel 8

At every Olympic games, we see Olympic Medal winners with their medals in their mouths. The reason for the bizarre behavior is that gold is a soft metal in its pure form and if you have something that is pure gold and you bite into it, your teeth will leave a mark. In previous centuries, biting down on something made of metal and then looking for your teeth marks was one way to ascertain if the metal you were holding could be real gold. Unfortunately, for all of those Olympic Medal biters, there is very little gold in those medals (about 6 grams or just over 1% of the weight of the total medal.) Those medals are actually mostly silver, which is another soft metal but not quite as soft as gold, with some copper making up the rest of the mix.

It is the softness of gold and silver which makes the metals so valuable for making jewelry. The metal can be easily bent into whatever shape or design that is required. But if you are not careful with your jewelry, it is also easy to bend it out of the intended shape. That is one of the reasons why very little jewelry is actually solid gold. Our jewelry often contains the precious metals that we desire combined with other stronger metals, increasing both the strength and durability of the jewelry. But even then gold, and silver, jewelry is easily damaged.

The author of 2 Samuel says that David took gold shields from Hadadezer’s officers. But we really don’t exactly know what the writer might be indicating with the statement. It is possible that it was some kind of decoration or insignia that the officers were wearing that David had confiscated from them. The problem with it being gold battle shields is that a gold shield would have been relatively useless in battle. The metal was too soft and would be easily bent and destroyed. Gold shields did serve a ceremonial purpose, but they would never have been brought onto the battlefield. If it were gold battle shields that David collected, then that means that Hadadezer’s officers were confident that they were not going to be involved in a fight.

Whatever it was that David took, it was ceremonial in nature. And it indicated the total dominance of David, not just over the battlefield, but over the culture as well.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 60