1 Kings 20 "God Defends His Name" 1 Kings ends with three stories about Ahab that tell of his sins first in relation to the Gentiles (chapter 20), then in relation to Israel (chapter 21) and finally in relation to the prophet of the LORD and the king of Judah (chapter 22). 1. Ben-Hadad's First Assault (20:1-22) At the end of chapter 19 we heard that Elijah is commissioned to anoint some guy named Hazael as king over Syria. That provided the hint that Syria is going to be an instrument of God's judgment against Israel. And sure enough we start to see this at work in the days of Ahab. Because Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria, is preparing an assault on Israel. The Syrians (also called the Arameans) have their capital in Damascus present day Syria. The Assyrians (modern day Iraq) are pushing Syria from the east, and so Ben-Hadad is trying to consolidate his territory in the west. Israel is a convenient target. He has 32 kings in his entourage (In other words 32 independent rulers whose realm may consist of a single city, and have formed a coalition under the ruler of Damascus) Syria has not been a major player in Israel's history before. In 10:29 we heard that Solomon provided the Syrians with horses, and in 15:18 we heard that Asa, the king of Judah, had allied with Ben-Hadad of Damascus against Israel. This was only around 20 years ago, so tensions still remain between Israel and Syria. There is a parallel structure between the two parts of our passage tonight. Ben-Hadad's attack (1-12) (25-27) Prophesy of victory (13-15) (28) Israel victorious (16-21) (29-30) Prophetic warning (22) Ben-Hadad's servants (23-25) (30-34) Prophetic judgment (35-43) Ben-Hadad attacks Samaria and with vastly superior forces he declares "thus saith Ben-Hadad"! Your silver and your gold are mine; your best wives and children also are mine. And Ahab says, "yes, Lord!" I am yours, and all that I have. This is what Ahab should have said to Yahweh! This is the proper response to "thus saith the LORD." But it is not the proper response to the enemies of God. Ahab will not surrender to Yahweh, but he will easily capitulate to his enemies. So Ben-Hadad pushes him a step further, not only does he declare that all that Ahab has belongs to him, he now claims the right to take them for himself! Ahab had interpreted the first message as a request for him to be Ben-Hadad's vassal, and he could live with that. But now Ben-Hadad wants proof of Ahab's loyalty. Will Ahab allow Ben-Hadad to take whatever he wants? If you say that you are my disciple, then you should be willing to surrender everything! Do you see what Jesus is doing with the rich young ruler in Luke 18? Jesus is claiming that he is the lord, and we are his vassals in which case he has the right to tell us how to dispose of our stuff. So now Ben-Hadad says not only are your own possessions mine, but also he will send his servants, and they shall search your house and the houses of your servants and lay hands on whatever pleases you and take it away. Ahab viewed his own royal possessions as expendable, but now Ben-Hadad is claiming the right to plunder the whole city. Ahab was smart. By being willing to give up his own gold and silver, his own wives and children, he has demonstrated his willingness to sacrifice for the good of the people. But now that Ben-Hadad is asking for the plunder of the whole city, Ahab goes to the elders of the people, and they rally behind him. They are not willing to surrender their families and possessions except at the cost of their own lives. When Ben-Hadad hears of Israel's refusal, he replies, the gods do so to me and more also if the dust of Samaria shall suffice for handfuls for all the people who follow me. In other words, I don't care about spoil. I will utterly destroy Samaria. This is a reference to total destruction holy war. Ben-Hadad is waging holy war against Israel. When he has had his way, nothing will be left of Samaria. But Ahab replies with a brilliant quip, let not him who straps on his armor boast himself like he who takes it off. Ben-Hadad was drinking with his 32 kings when he heard this, and so he ordered his men into their positions but he and the 32 kings kept on drinking! Meanwhile a prophet came near to Ahab king of Israel and said, Thus says the LORD, Have you seen all this great multitude? Behold, I will give it into your hand this day, and you shall know that I am the LORD. Even as Elijah had demonstrated that Yahweh was God against Baal, so now this prophet has been sent to show Ahab that Yahweh is God against Syria. You might wonder why God is delivering Ahab. After all, Ahab is a wicked king. Why not just let Ahab have what he deserves? But Yahweh is a merciful God a God of second chances! He is patient and long-suffering with his people, even when you are acting like Ahab! But as we'll see throughout the passage, God's purpose is not really upholding Ahab, but defending his own name against scoffers whether Ben-Hadad, or Ahab himself. As God had delivered rebellious Israel from Egypt, so now God will deliver rebellious Ahab from the Syrians! As we have seen, Ahab is not hostile to Yahweh per se, he wouldn't mind including Yahweh in his pantheon of deities! So when a prophet of Yahweh says that Yahweh will give him the victory, Ahab is okay with that! So he asks the prophet who should lead the battle, and the prophet replies, the young men the inexperienced servants of the governors. God will use the weak and inexperienced to shame the strong. And so Ahab wonders, "Who shall begin the battle?" And the prophet replies, "You." Go now, in the middle of the day at noon. Ben-Hadad is drinking in his tent, drinking himself drunk with the 32 kings, celebrating a victory like one who has taken his armor off! And so Ahab sends out the 232 servants of the governors, followed by all the people of Israel 7,000 men! And they went out at noon. Seven times in verses 16-21 we hear this word "went out" yatza. This is the standard word used when speaking of armies going out (and coming in) or a king going out before his army. But now it is the young men of the governors weak and inexperienced men who go out before the army. God is the one who wins the victory against the Syrians. Well, when Ben-Hadad sees them he says, If they have come out for peace, take them alive. Or if they have come out for war, take them alive! He's drunk and witless. If they have come out for war, then taking them alive won't work so well! And it doesn't, and the men of Israel slaughter those who came to take them, and slaughter the armies of the Syrians, whose leaders are unable to lead. Ben-Hadad flees from the armies of Israel, and the final use of yatza speaks of Ahab, the king of Israel going out and striking the Syrians with a great blow. Note that for the next several verses Ahab is not named. He is simply called "the king of Israel" from verses 15-33, all the time during which he is obedient to the voice of the LORD. But once he rebels again, he is called "Ahab" once more! In other words, he is acting out of character in his obedience to Yahweh! Though he is acting the way a king of Israel should. Then the prophet came near to the king of Israel and said to him, 'Come, strengthen yourself, and consider well what you have to do, for in the spring the king of Syria will come up against you.' Apparently Ahab did as the prophet said, because whereas Ben-Hadad attacked Samaria in the first assault, the second assault will be stopped at Aphek, at the northern border of Israel. 2. Ben-Hadad's Second Assault (20:23-34) Peter Leithart says it well when he says that there is a "Loony Tunes quality about the advice from Ben-Hadad's servants" in verses 23-25. Maybe the king should have paid attention to the battle, rather than getting drunk with his buddies? Oh, no! That could not have been it at all! Their gods are gods of the hills, and so they were stronger than we. But let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they. So they urge Ben-Hadad to remove the 32 kings from power, and replace them with 32 commanders, and muster an army like the army that you have lost, horse for horse, and chariot for chariot. Can't you just see Elmer Fudd or Wile E. Coyote making that sort of argument? Obviously the problem isn't me! But this is exactly the way that pride thinks. I think that 1 Kings 20 is a great passage for counseling. When you are faced with someone who keeps doing the same stupid thing over and over, just point them to 1 Kings 20! You can change circumstances all you want, but the problem remains the same: YOU!!!!! And so in the spring (as the prophet of Yahweh had said) Ben-Hadad attacks. God's providence extends to the actions of his enemies! Ben-Hadad thinks he is following the advice of his advisors, but he is really following the word of the LORD. And the people of Israel were mustered and were provisioned and went against them. The people of Israel encamped before them like two little flocks of goats, but the Syrians filled the country. This is a very vivid description. Israel has no chance against the Syrian hordes. They are like two little flocks of goats against the hordes of Syria. But Yahweh again sends a prophet a man of God who tells Ahab, Thus says the LORD, 'Because the Syrians have said, "The LORD is a god of the hills but he is not a god of the valleys," Therefore I will give all this great multitude into your hand, and you shall know that I am the LORD.' Once again, the reason why God will give the victory to Ahab is not Ahab. Rather, it is for the sake of God's own great name. God will vindicate his own reputation. The point of this victory is the same as the first, that you may know that I am Yahweh. Once again, Israel wins the battle against overwhelming odds. Ben-Hadad fled, and this time, his servants counsel surrender, we have heard that the kings of the house of Israel are merciful kings. Let us put sackcloth around our waists, and ropes on our heads and go out to the king of Israel. Perhaps he will spare your life. (v31) So Ben-Hadad sent his servants to the king of Israel and they said, Your servant Ben-Hadad says, Please let me live. Ahab replied, Does he still live? He is my brother. The servants rightly took this as a sign of hope, and said, Yes, your brother, Ben-Hadad. Ahab views the pagan kings of the nations as his brothers. That is not so good. But Ahab imposes a covenant upon Ben-Hadad, restoring cities to him, and allowing him to trade in Damascus. This is a great deal for Israel! Ahab has restored the dignity of the house of Omri. Israel is headed back for the glory days of Solomon, the days when the nations bowed the knee to Israel, Right? We have seen already that treaties or covenants that benefit Israel are acceptable to God. So what is the problem with this one? The Syrians are not one of the nations who are to be utterly destroyed, so isn't this an acceptable result? The problem is that the Syrians have mocked Yahweh. God's people may not enter covenant with those who mock him! And since the Syrians have mocked Yahweh, Ahab's duty (as God's vicegerent) is to render the judgment of God against the wicked. So the battle of Aphek demonstrates that Ahab has failed. Peter Leithart points out that the battle of Aphek resembles the battle of Jericho. At Jericho, Israel marched for seven days, and on the seventh day the wall came tumbling down. At Aphek, the battle is a seventh-day battle, that ends with the walls tumbling down and killing the Syrians (v30). You might think of this as a coincidence. But why does the author mention the whole seven-day thing. If the seventh day doesn't matter, then why does the author of Kings emphasize the seventh day by mentioning it twice in verse 29? And it would have been easy to say "and Israel won a great victory over Syria," but instead Kings points out that the wall fell on 27,000 Syrian soldiers. It was not the great brilliance of Israelite tactics or the strength of their soldiers, but it was the mighty hand of God that overthrew the Syrians. What is more, we have been set up for this parallel to Jericho in Ahab's question to Elijah, "Is it you, you troubler of Israel?" (18:17) The troubler of Israel was Achan, the one who took plunder from Jericho and brought disaster on Israel. By preserving the life of Ben-Hadad Ahab brings trouble on Israel. It is only when you see the Jericho parallel that this story makes sense. Because Syria was not one of the nations under the ban. But Ben-Hadad had threatened holy war against Israel. Ben-Hadad had insulted Yahweh the God of Israel. And now Ahab is making a covenant with him! You do not make friends with those who insult God. I'm not talking about whether you can be nice to such people. I'm saying, you do not become bosom buddies with those who mock the living God! You don't tell them that you are brothers! You don't say that it's no big deal. Rather you make it clear that the LORD, he is God. There is no other. Any friendship with the nations must be conditioned on this. Conclusion: the Prophet declares the Word of the LORD (20:35-43) Kings does not leave this episode uninterpreted. A certain man of the sons of the prophets said to his fellow at the command of the LORD, Strike me, please. A strange request, admittedly. But the man refused to strike him. Like Ahab, he followed the route of common sense. Common sense and courtesy says, don't hit your friend, even if he asks you to! Then he said to him, Because you have not obeyed the voice of the LORD behold, as soon as you have gone from me, a lion shall strike you down. Disobeying the voice of the LORD is dangerous! Some people have said that this sort of immediate judgment is an OT phenomenon, but remember Ananias and Sapphira in the NT, who were struck dead by God for lying to the Holy Spirit. God doesn't do this very often, but he does this from time to time as a reminder of the judgment that is coming against all those who rebel against him. And as soon as he had departed from him, a lion met him and struck him down. This is Ahab the man who has not obeyed the voice of the LORD. Then he found another man and said, Strike me, please. And the man struck him struck him and wounded him. The prophet then lies in wait for Ahab, setting a trap for him, even as Nathan had ensnared David. But here he sets Ahab up by making it appear that he is condemning himself: he says that he was charged with guarding a prisoner, and was told that he would forfeit his life (or pay a talent of silver around 75 pounds a ridiculous amount for an ordinary person) if the man escaped. But he was busy with his own affairs and the man escaped. This is a no brainer for Ahab! Well, buddy, so shall your judgment be; you yourself have decided it! But then the prophet took the bandage off and Ahab recognized him. And he said, Thus says the LORD... Ahab had listened to the "thus says Ben-Hadad" but he had disregarded the "thus says the LORD." Because you have let go out of your hand the man whom I had devoted to destruction, therefore your life shall be for his life, and your people for his people. Compare Ahab's response to that of David. David heard Nathan's "You are the man," and he repented. Ahab hears the word of the LORD, and he went to his house vexed and sullen and came to Samaria. How do you respond to the word of the LORD? When the word of the LORD convicts you of sin, what is your response? Do you repent? Or do you get upset? But even further, how do you respond to the enemies of God? Because God does have enemies! The world, the flesh and the devil are opposed to God. Ever since the fall, there has been enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And you are called to war against the enemies of God, just like Ahab. We cannot compromise with the world. Or do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. James 4:4 issues the same warning to you that this prophet gave to Ahab. Our spiritual warfare consists in an all-out assault on the power of the devil. James makes it clear that enmity is inescapable. You will either be an enemy of the world or an enemy of God. There is no way to be friends with the world AND friends with God.