David took the gold shields carried by the officers of Hadadezer and brought them to Jerusalem. - 1 Chronicles 18:7

Today's Scripture Reading (June 3, 2022):  1 Chronicles 18

We see Olympic Medal winners at every Olympic Games 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 made of 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.

But it is the softness of gold and silver that 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 the jewelry's strength and durability. 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 don't exactly know what the writer might be indicating with the statement. It is possible that these shields were 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. And if it were gold battle shields that David had collected, then that means that Hadadezer's officers were so confident that they were not going to be involved in a fight that they brought their ceremonial shields with them.

Whatever David took, it had to serve a ceremonial purpose. The capture of these gold shields indicated the total dominance of David, not just over the battlefield but also over the culture.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Samuel 9