CHAPTER 20

(901 B.C.)

BEN-HADAD BESIEGES SAMARIA

¹And Ben-hadad the king of Syria gathered all his host together: and there were thirty and two kings with him, and horses, and chariots: and he went up and besieged Samaria, and warred against it (evidently, these 32 kings were vassals, not allied powers; at any rate, it was a formidable force).

²And he sent messengers to Ahab king of Israel into the city, and said unto him, Thus says Ben-hadad (as he laid siege to the city),

³Your silver and your gold is mine; your wives also and your children, even the goodliest, are mine. (Even though Israel was far, far from God, still, whatever it is they had belonged to God. So, Ben-hadads threat was actually against the Lord, even though he would not have realized such.)

⁴And the king of Israel answered and said, My lord, O king, according to your saying, I am yours, and all that I have (as we shall see, Ben-hadad didnt exactly believe Ahab).

⁵And the messengers came again, and said, Thus speaks Ben-hadad, saying, Although I have sent unto you, saying, You shall deliver me your silver, and your gold, and your wives, and your children;

⁶Yet I will send my servants unto you tomorrow about this time, and they shall search your house, and the houses of your servants; and it shall be, that whatsoever is pleasant in your eyes, they shall put it in their hand, and take it away (the object of Ben-hadad was to couch his message in the most offensive and humiliating terms).

⁷Then the king of Israel called all the elders of the land, and said, Mark, I pray you, and see how this man seeks mischief: for he sent unto me for my wives, and for my children, and for my silver, and for my gold; and I denied him not.

⁸And all the elders and all the people said unto him, Hearken not unto him, nor consent.

⁹Wherefore he said unto the messengers of Ben-hadad, Tell my lord the king, All that you did send for to your servant at the first I will do: but this thing I may not do. And the messengers departed, and brought him (Ben-hadad) word again.

¹⁰And Ben-hadad sent unto him (Ahab), and said, The gods do so unto me, and more also, if the dust of Samaria shall suffice for handfuls for all the people who follow me (my army is big enough to reduce Samaria to a pile of dust).

¹¹And the king of Israel answered and said, Tell him, Let not him who girds on his harness boast himself as he who puts it off (this was the message sent by Ahab to Ben-hadad).

¹²And it came to pass, when Ben-hadad heard this message, as he was drinking, he and the kings in the pavilions, that he said unto his servants, Set yourselves in array. And they set themselves in array against the city (against Samaria).

GOD PROMISES VICTORY FOR AHAB

¹³And, behold, there came a Prophet unto Ahab king of Israel, saying, Thus says the LORD, Have you seen all this great multitude? behold, I will deliver it into your hand this day; and you shall know that I am the LORD. (Despite the great evil being committed by Israel, the Lord, at this time, would deem it desirable to deliver His people. Israel belonged to Him, even though most were far from God.

We learn from this that all had best be careful in laying their hands on that which belongs to the Lord. In fact, God gives no man the right to chastise another brother or sister in the Lord [James 4:12]. While the Lord, at times, may use human instrumentation to carry out chastisement, it is always unwitting on the part of the subjects. In other words, the individuals being used are not conscious of such a fact.)

¹⁴And Ahab said, By whom? And he said, Thus says the LORD, Even by the young men of the princes of the provinces. Then he said, Who shall order the battle? And he answered, You.

VICTORY OVER THE SYRIANS

¹⁵Then he numbered the young men of the princes of the provinces, and they were two hundred and thirty two: and after them he numbered all the people, even all the Children of Israel, being seven thousand (a miserably small group of men to meet the powerful Syrian army).

¹⁶And they went out at noon. But Ben-hadad was drinking himself drunk in the pavilions, he and the kings, the thirty and two kings who helped him.

¹⁷And the young men of the princes of the provinces went out first; and Ben-hadad sent out, and they told him, saying, There are men come out of Samaria.

¹⁸And he said, Whether they be come out for peace, take them alive; or whether they be come out for war, take them alive.

¹⁹So these young men of the princes of the provinces (from Israel) came out of the city, and the army which followed them (such as it was!).

²⁰And they killed every one his man: and the Syrians fled; and Israel pursued them: and Ben-hadad the king of Syria escaped on an horse with the horsemen.

²¹And the king of Israel went out, and smote the horses and chariots, and killed the Syrians with a great slaughter (of course, all of this was done by the Lord!).

THE PROPHET WARNS AHAB

²²And the Prophet (the same one who came at the first, whom the Word of God does not identify) came to the king of Israel, and said unto him, Go, strengthen yourself, and mark, and see what you do: for at the return of the year the king of Syria will come up against you.

²³And the servants of the king of Syria said unto him, Their gods are gods of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they. (The Syrians recognized that it was God Who had defeated them, but they looked at Jehovah as a local deity, and, in this case, a God of the hills. So, if they fight in the valley, the God of Israel will be helpless, or so they think. Unredeemed man has no idea of Who God is, or what God is!)

²⁴And do this thing, Take the kings away, every man out of his place, and put captains in their rooms (put veteran military men at the head of each unit):

²⁵And number you an army, like the army that you have lost, horse for horse, and chariot for chariot: and we will fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they. And he hearkened unto their voice, and did so.

²⁶And it came to pass at the return of the year, that Ben-hadad numbered the Syrians, and went up to Aphek, to fight against Israel (exactly as the Prophet had said would happen).

²⁷And the Children of Israel were numbered, and were all present, and went against them: and the Children of Israel pitched before them like two little flocks of kids (a tiny army); but the Syrians filled the country (outnumbered Israel, probably 100 to 1, or even more).

²⁸And there came a man of God, and spoke unto the king of Israel, and said, Thus says the LORD, Because the Syrians have said, The LORD is God of the hills, but He is not God of the valleys, therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into your hand, and you shall know that I am the LORD. (Whether this man of God was the same person as the Prophet of Verses 13 and 22 is not quite clear. This was being done for Israel by the Lord for their benefit, but also that neighboring nations might learn His Power, and that His Name might be magnified among them.)

²⁹And they pitched one over against the other seven days. And so it was, that in the seventh day the battle was joined: and the Children of Israel killed of the Syrians an hundred thousand footmen in one day (did so by the Power of God, for that was the only way it could be done).

³⁰But the rest fled to Aphek, into the city; and there a wall fell upon twenty and seven thousand of the men who were left. And Ben-hadad fled, and came into the city, into an inner chamber (evidently, the 27,000 men had gotten on the wall, or else were sitting against the wall, when the Lord caused it to fall; whatever happened, it was caused totally by the Lord).

AHAB SINS IN SPARING THE LIFE OF BEN-HADAD

³¹And his servants said unto him, Behold now, we have heard that the kings of the house of Israel are merciful kings: let us, I pray you, put sackcloth on our loins, and ropes upon our heads, and go out to the king of Israel: peradventure he will save your life.

³²So they girded sackcloth on their loins, and put ropes on their heads, and came to the king of Israel, and said, Your servant Ben-hadad says, I pray you, let me live (compare this abject petition for life with the arrogant insolence of Verses 6 and 10). And he (Ahab) said, Is he (Ben-hadad) yet alive? he is my brother (a most ridiculous position for Ahab to take).

³³Now the men did diligently observe whether any thing would come from him, and did hastily catch it: and they said, Your brother Ben-hadad. Then he said, Go you, bring him. Then Ben-hadad came forth to him; and he caused him to come up into the chariot.

³⁴And Ben-hadad said unto him, The cities, which my father took from your father, I will restore; and you shall make streets for you in Damascus, as my father made in Samaria. Then said Ahab, I will send you away with this covenant. So he made a covenant with him, and sent him away (which was greatly displeasing to the Lord!).

THE PROPHET REBUKES AHAB

³⁵And a certain man of the sons of the Prophets said unto his neighbour in the Word of the LORD, Smite me, I pray you. And the man refused to smite him. (The neighbor was a companion Prophet, hence the seriousness of his ignoring the Word of the Lord. In fact, this was a school of the Prophets, which owed its existence, more than likely, to Samuel, who began it about 200 years before.)

³⁶Then said he unto him, Because you have not obeyed the voice of the LORD, behold, as soon as you are departed from me, a lion shall kill you. And as soon as he was departed from him, a lion found him, and killed him (at first glance, it may seem as if the punishment was severe; however, again we emphasize: to ignore the plain, clear, and simple Word of God is a most serious thing).

³⁷Then he found another man, and said, Smite me, I pray you. And the man smote him, so that in smiting he wounded him.

³⁸So the Prophet departed, and waited for the king by the way, and disguised himself with ashes upon his face.

³⁹And as the king passed by, he cried unto the king: and he said, Your servant went out into the midst of the battle; and, behold, a man turned aside, and brought a man unto me, and said, Keep this man: if by any means he be missing, then shall your life be for his life, or else you shall pay a talent of silver (through the Prophet, the Lord presents an object lesson to Ahab).

⁴⁰And as your servant was busy here and there, he was gone (escaped). And the king of Israel said unto him, So shall your judgment be; yourself have decided it (Ahab himself now pronounces that the judgment is just).

⁴¹And he hasted, and took the ashes away from his face; and the king of Israel discerned him that he was of the Prophets.

⁴²And he said unto him, Thus says the LORD, Because you have let go out of your hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction (whom the Lord appointed), therefore your life shall go for his life, and your people for his people (Ahab has seriously displeased the Lord in letting Ben-hadad go free; he will now pay the price, even though it will be a couple of years in coming).

⁴³And the king of Israel went to his house heavy and displeased, and came to Samaria.