Hadadezer... king of Zobah. — This name is sometimes (1 Chronicles 18:3; 1 Chronicles 18:5; 1 Chronicles 18:7, &c.) spelt “Hadarezer,” the letters d and r being much alike in Hebrew and easily confused; but the form given here is right, Hadad being the chief idol of the Syrians. Zobah (called in the title of Psalms 60 Aram-Zobah) was a kingdom, the position of which cannot be exactly determined, but lying north-east of Israel, and formerly governed by petty kings with whom Saul had wars (1 Samuel 14:47). When or by what means it had become united under a single sovereign is unknown, but from 2 Samuel 8:4 with 2 Samuel 10:6; 2 Samuel 10:16, it is plain that he was a monarch of considerable power, and controlled tribes beyond the Euphrates.
To recover his border. — Literally, to cause his hand to return, a phrase which in itself might mean either to renew his attack, or to re-establish his power. The latter is shown to be the sense here by the expression in 1 Chronicles 18:3, “to establish his dominion,” and is so translated in the LXX. What happened is more fully explained in 2 Samuel 10:13-19 : the Ammonites had obtained the help of the Syrians when their combined armies were defeated by David; Hadadezer then attempted to summon to his aid the tribes “beyond the river” (i.e., the Euphrates), but David cut short his plans by another crushing defeat, which reduced them all to subjection. Our Version inserts the word Euphrates on the authority of the margin of the Hebrew, several MSS., and all the ancient versions. The river, however, would in any case mean the Euphrates.