It is a comfort to mourners to find that there are those who mourn with them, are sensible of their loss and share with them in it. It is a comfort to those who are honouring the memory of their deceased relations to find there are others who likewise honour it and who had a value for those whom they valued. The great affront which Hanun the king of the Ammonites put upon David in his ambassadors. He hearkened to the spiteful suggestions of his princes, who insinuated that David's ambassadors, under pretence of being comforters, were sent as spies, v. 3 . They would not thus have imagined that David dissembled but that they were conscious to themselves that they could have dissembled, to serve a turn.
Unfounded suspicion argues a wicked mind.
Men of the greatest honour and virtue must not think it strange if they be thus misrepresented. Charity thinketh no evil. Entertaining this vile suggestion, he basely abused David's ambassadors, like a man of a sordid villainous spirit, that was fitter to rake a kennel than to wear a crown. David's tender concern for his servants that were thus abused. He sent to meet them, and to let them know how much he interested himself in their quarrel and how soon he would avenge it, and directed them to stay at Jericho, a private place, where they would not have occasion to come into company, till that half of their beards which was shaved off had grown to such a length that the other half might be decently cut to it, v. 5 .