So Hanun took David’s servants, shaved their beards, cut off their garments at the hips, and sent them away.
Let us here observe, 1. That is becomes good people to be neighbourly, and especially to be grateful. David will pay respect to Hanun because he is his neighbour; and religion teaches us to be civil and obliging to all, to honour all men, and to be ready to do all offices of kindness to those we live among; nor must difference in religion be any obstruction to this.
Commenting on 1 Chronicles 19:1-5
shaved them--not completely, but only the half of their face. This disrespect to the beard, and indecent exposure of their persons by their clothes being cut off from the girdle downwards, was the grossest indignity to which Jews, in common with all Orientals, could be subjected.
Wherefore Hanun took David's servants, and shaved them, and cut off their garments in the midst hard by their buttocks, and sent them away. (c) They shaved off half of their beards, . (d) To put them to shame and villany, while the ambassadors should have been honoured: and because the Jews used to wear side garments and beards, they thus disfigured them, to make them odious to others.