We’re comfortable with heroes and villains. We can cheer the one, scorn the other, and then get on with our lives. Most of us don’t rise to such heights or sink to such depths, however. Maybe that’s why the Bible says so much about Joab. Maybe that’s why a lot of Bible readers don’t pay much attention to him.

Who was Joab? He was David’s nephew and served as his army commander. He was also a bundle of contradictions: intensely loyal to David but sometimes disobedient, brave but not at the very end of his life, violent yet capable of mercy, utterly self-centered but pious.… Read the rest