2 Sam 10:4   So Hanun seized David's men, shaved off half of each man's beard, cut off their garments in the middle at the buttocks, and sent them away.

                            

Sometimes incidents in Scripture seem quite bizarre, yet remember that indeed, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16). Today's verse is very simple and straight-forward. It says very simply, think before you do stupid things!  

   

The context of this verse is as follows: “the king of the Ammonites died, and his son Hanun succeeded him as king.” (v.1) and “David thought, ‘I will show kindness to Hanun son of Nahash, just as his father showed kindness to me.' So David sent a delegation to express his sympathy to Hanun concerning his father.” (v.2)   Now that was nice! David had good intentions, so why did this young king act like this? He was suspicious because he was insecure and insecure people throw their weight around, and when they do that they upset people.

This act was utterly provocative, designed to demean the delegation. They were laughed out of town! Any idiot could have foreseen the outcome of that. It would have upset any king. Of course there are going to be bad consequences, anyone could have seen that a mile off.

However, before we judge too harshly and too quickly, perhaps we should ask ourselves, do we sometimes act without regard for the consequences? Put yourself in the place of the person you speak badly to. How would you feel? With a little more thought we could avoid many of the upsets of life! Watch how you speak. Think before you act is the clear lesson here. That can be simple things - like how we speak to the children or our partner, or how we speak to employees or classmates - or it can be big issue things at national level. The message is the same: think before you speak, think before you act, and in so doing we may avoid a lot of grief!