General effect of Elijah's Mission - The Two Expeditions of Syria and the Twofo ld Victory of Israel-Ahab releases

Ben-hadad - The Prophet's Denunciation and Message

(1 Kings 20)

BUT the mission of Elijah must also have had other and, in somen respects, even more deep-reaching results than those

with which God had comforted His serv ant in his deep dejection of spirit. Thus the "seven thousand" who had never

bent the knee to Baal, must have been greatly quickened and encouraged by what had taken place on Carmel. Nay, it

could not but have made lasting impression on King Ahab himself. Too self-indulgent to decide for Jehovah, too weak

to resist Jezebel, even when his conscience misgave him, or directed him to the better way, the impression of what he

had witnessed could never have wholly passed from his mind. Even if, as in the case of Israel after the exile, it

ultimately issued only in pride of nationality, yet this feeling must ever afterwards have been in his heart, that Jehovah

He was God - "the God of Gods"35 - and that Jehovah was in Israel, and the God of Israel.

It is this which explains the bearing of Ahab in the first wars with Ben-hadad of Syria.  36

It need scarcely be said that this monarch was not the same, but the son of him who during the reigns of Baasha (1

Kings 15:20) and Omri had possessed himself of so many cities, b oth east and west of the Jordan, and whose

sovereignty had, in a sense, been owned within the semi-independent Syrian bazaars and streets of Samaria itself (1

Kings 20:34). To judge from various notices, both Biblical and on Assyrian monuments, this Ben-hadad had inherited

the restless ambition, although not the sterner qualities of his father. The motives of his warfare against Ahab are not

difficult to understand. It was the settled policy of Syria to isolate and weaken the neighboring kingdom of Israel. With

this object in view, Ben-hadad IV. (the father of this king of Syria) had readily broken his league with Baasha, and

combined with Asa against Israel.37

But since the days of Omri the policy of both Israel and Judah had changed. Their former internecine wars had given

place, first to peace, and then to actual alliance between the two kingdoms, cemented at last by the marriage of the son

of Jehoshaphat with the daughter of Ahab (2 Chronicles 18:1; 2 Kings 8:18). To this cause for uneasiness to Syria must

be added the close alliance between Israel and Tyre, indicated, if not brought about, by the marriage of Ahab with

Jezebel. Thus the kingdom of Israel was secure both on its southern and western boundaries, and only threatened on

that towards Syria. And the increasing prosperity and wealth of the land appear not only from the internal tranquillity

that obtained during the thirty-six years of the reign of Ahab and his two descendants, but also from the circumstance

that Ahab built so many cities, and adorn ed his capital by a magnificent palace made of ivory (1 Kings 22:39). Lastly,

the jealousy and enmity of Ben-hadad must have been increased by his own relations to the great neighboring power of

Assyria, which (as we shall see) were such as to make a dangerous alliance between the latter and Israel an event of

political probability.

In these circumstances, Ben-hadad resolved to strike such a blow at Samaria as would reduce it to permanent

impotence. At the head of all his army, and followed by thirty-two vassal kings, or probably rather chieftains, who

ruled over towns with adjoining districts within the territory between the Euphrates and the northern boundary of

Israel,  38 he invaded Samaria.

He met with no opposition, for, as Josephus notes (Ant. 8. 14 , 1), Ahab was not prepared for the attack. But even if it

had been otherwise, sound policy would have dictated a retreat, and the concentration of the Israelitish forces behind

the strong walls of the capital. This proved a serious check to the plans of Ben-hadad. The Syrian army laid, indeed,

siege to Samaria, but the heat of the summer season,39 the character and habits of his allies, and even the circumstance

that his own country seems to have been divided among a number of semi -savage chiefs, must have proved unfavorable

to a prolonged warfare.

Ben-hadad might have succeeded if at the first onset he could have crushed the small, hastily -raised forces of Ahab by

sheer weight of numbers. But the slow systematic siege of a well-defended city, into which Ahab had evidently

gathered all the leading personages in his realm and all their wealth,40 must have appeared even to a boastful Oriental a