Now Ben-hadad king of Aram assembled his entire army. Accompanied by thirty-two kings with their horses and chariots, he marched up, besieged Samaria, and waged war against it. Sermons
I. THE SPIRIT OF WAR, We see this - 1. In Ben-hadad's message (ver. 3). (1) We do not understand this to be a demand from Ahab for the actual surrender to Ben-hadad of his "silver" and "gold," "wives" and "children." Else it would be difficult to see any material difference between this first message and that which followed (ver. 6). (2) The meaning seems to be that Ben-hadad would hold Ahab as his vassal, so that Ahab should retain his wealth, wives, and children only by the sufferance and generosity of his superior. He would have the king of Israel reduced to the condition of the "thirty and two kings" who, with their subjects and fortunes, appear to have been at his service (compare ver. 12 with ver. 24). 2. In his confident boasting. (1) He boasts of the vastness of his army. "All the people that follow me." The Hebrew is given in the margin, "at my feet," suggesting subjection and submission. (2) Of the certainty and ease with which such an army may carry victory. "The gods do so to me and more also if the dust of Samaria shall suffice for handfuls for all the people that follow me." They need not be content with handfuls of dust when they can fill their hands with the most valuable things in Samaria. (3) This was the boasting which Ahab rebuked by the use of what had probably been a proverbial expression: "Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off." This caution might be profitably considered by those who are engaged in spiritual conflicts: "Be not high minded, but fear." II. THE SPIRIT OF INJUSTICE. This we see - 1. In Ben-hadad's requisitions. (1) In those of his first message right is outraged. "Thy silver and gold are mine." Taking this demand in the sense of Ahab's coming under villenage to Ben-hadad, the claim was iniquitous. Man has rights of property and freedom, which, unless they are forfeited to law by crime, should ever be held most sacred. The injustice of slavery is horrible. (2) The second message went even farther. It threatened open robbery. Robbery not only of the monarch, but of his subjects also. A starving wretch who steals a loaf of bread may be convicted as a felon; but warrior who plunders kingdoms - a Napoleon - is glorified as a hero! Rut how will these weigh together in the balances of the sanctuary? 2. In his principles of appeal. (1) Justice is not named. How often is justice named in warfare where it has no place! The Syrian king was more outspoken than many modern war makers. (2) Mercy is quite out of the question. Yet in modern times wars against savages have been trumpeted as benignities, because of the civilization which, it is presumed, will follow in their wake! (3) Ben-hadad did not live in these favoured times, so the one principle to which he appeals is might. "He has the men," and he will have "the money tool" In this he has had too many successors in the kingdoms of civilization. (4) Not only must the covetousness of the king be gratified; so also must the host "at his feet;" and since the "dust of Samaria" will not satisfy them, Samaria must be sacked and pillaged. One injustice begets another. III. THE SPIRIT OF CRUELTY. This appears - 1. In the provocations. (1) Observe the "putting" of Ben-hadad's requisitions. No attempt is made to spare the feelings of Ahab, but, on the contrary, the language is studiously framed to lacerate. "Whatsoever is pleasant in thine eyes" - note, not what is pleasant in the eyes of the spoilers - "they shall put it in their hand and take it away." (2) Witness also the peremptoriness. "Tomorrow about this time." 2. In the struggles. (1) Men are in conflict. This is not a strife of elements without feeling, which is terrible enough, but of flesh and blood and nerves with exquisite sensibilities, with susceptibilities of acute pain and suffering. (2) The combatants are armed. That they may put each other to torture they are provided with swords, spears, arrows; and in these clays of civilization, with fire-arms of various kinds. Elephants, camels, horses, and other animals are pressed into the dreadful service. (3) Survey the battlefield after the strife. Men and animals dead and dying, mingled; gaping wounds; mangled limbs, sickening horrors I What pictures of cruelty are here! (4) Reflect upon the homes plunged into grief and poverty entailed through the loss of breadwinners; and add the sequel of pestilences and famines. Surely we should pray for the advent of that peaceful reign of righteousness which is promised in the Scriptures of prophecy. - J.A.M.
Shew kindness unto the sons of Barzillai. An old English story tells of Frescobald, an Italian merchant who showed great kindness to Thomas Cromwell when he was in sore distress far from home. The stranger was welcomed to the merchant's dwelling, and sent back safely to England. Years passed, and reverses came to Frescobald. He lost wealth and friends, and wandered as a beggar to this country. One day he saw a great crowd moving along the streets of London. The Lord Chancellor was going in state to open the courts. To Frescobald's delight, the central figure of the procession was his old friend Thomas Cromwell The Italian merchant soon reaped the fruit of his generous kindness in other days. Cromwell's hospitality and munificence quickly made him forget all his care and sorrow.(J. Telford, B. A.) Great Thoughts. Sympathy for those who are stronger, wealthier, healthier, more influential, and higher in authority than ourselves, is not so easily rendered. It does not often occur to us to extend the sympathetic hand or word to those whom we look upon as in any way our superiors, and yet none need our sympathy more than such as these. The minister is expected to feel for and with his parishioners, but the truth is that the minister needs sympathetic encouragement from them quite as much. So, too, of the physician and his patient. One of Tennyson's biographers quotes the Queen as saying of the Laureate, "When I took leave of him I thanked him for his kindness, and said I needed it, for I had gone through much, and he said, 'You are so alone on that terrible height; it is terrible.'" The sovereign appreciated kindness, consideration, and sympathy from her subjects, and the poet had a full realisation of what it meant to be so high up as to be practically alone in the world. We easily give our pity, our sympathy, and even our helping hand, to those who seem to us in sore stress, but we are not so thoughtful about what consolation and strength we might give to those who need it because their very elevation isolates them, and cuts them off from those human relations to which we all look for sympathetic aid.(Great Thoughts.) The service and the loyalty I owe, In doing, pays itself. Your Highness' part Is to receive our duties; and our duties Are to your throne and state children and servants, Which do but what they should, by doing everything Safe towards your love and honour. The rest is labour which is not used for you.The humility, also, of that Old Testament hero is already our New Testament humility in its depth and sweetness and beauty. In my spare hours this winter I have been delighting myself with Plutarch's Lives in Thomas North's Bible English. But how often as I read one noble name after another have I exclaimed, Oh, if some of those great men of old had only been among the Greeks who came to Philip, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus! Had they only seen Jesus, or even heard or read Paul! Then what ornaments would they have been in all New Testament nobleness and courtesy and humility. (Alex. Whyte, D. D.) Vers. 8, 9. And, behold, thou hast with thee Shimei, the son of Gera. David's death-bed has never been without its own difficulties to thoughtful and reverential readers. For Shimei with all his good and his bad uses comes back again to David's death-bed to tempt and to try David, and to discover what is in David s dying heart. The death-bed sayings of God's saints have a special interest and a delightful edification to us; but David's last words to Solomon about Shimei — we would pass them by if we could. Three or four several explanations of those terrible words of David have been offered to the distressed reader by able men and men of authority in such matters. I shall only mention those offered explanations, and leave you to judge for yourselves. Well, some students of the Old Testament are bold to take David's dreadful words about Shimei out of David's mouth altogether, and to put them into the mouth of the prophet who has preserved to us David's life and death. Those awful words, they say, are that righteous prophet's explanation and vindication of the too late execution of Shimei by Solomon after his "reprieve," as Matthew Henry calls it, had come to an end with the death of David. Others again, and they, too, some of our. most conservative and orthodox scholars, say to us that the text should run in English in this way: "Hold him not guiltless; at the same time bring not his hoar head down to the grave with blood." You will blame me for my too open ear to such bold scholarship; and you will think it very wrong in me to listen to such evil men. But the heart has its reasons, as Pascal says, and my heart would stretch a considerable point in textual criticism to get Shimei's blood wiped off David's death-bed. Another interpretation is to take the text as it stands, and to hear David judicially charging Solomon about a care of too long delayed justice against a blasphemer of God and the king. And then the last explanation is the most painful one of all, and it is this, that David had never really and truly, and at the bottom of his heart, forgiven Shimei for his brutality and malignity at Bahurim, and that all David's long-suppressed revenge rushed out of his heart against his old enemy when he lay on his bed and went back on the day on which he had fled from Jerusalem. You can choose your own way of looking at David's death-bed. But, in any case, it is Bahurim that we shall all carry home, and carry for ever henceforth, in our hearts. We shall have, God helping us, David's Bahurim-mind always in us henceforth amid all those who insult and injure us, and say all manner of evil against us falsely; and amid all manner of adverse and sore circumstances, so as to see the Lord in it all, and so as to work out our salvation amid it all. And the Lord will look upon our affliction also, and will requite us good for all this evil, if only we wisely and silently and adoringly submit ourselves to it.(Alex. Whyte, D. D.) There are three ways in which David may have been influenced in giving this dying injunction to his son —I. AS THE AGENT, UNCONSCIOUS OR OTHERWISE, OF DIVINE JUSTICE. We cannot conceive this measure as being the consummation of a Divine purpose, it had apparently so much about it of human plan. The Almighty's power, when exerted in support of justice, has always been certain and direct in its action, without any reference to contingencies. A man's punishment ,never precedes his crime, nor is inflicted without one. With God it is all justice or all mercy; no half measures. No sparing for a time in uncertainty or doubt as to our guilt, begetting in us a sense of false security, till suddenly the knell of .doom sounds on our deafened ears. How different from man's punishment this. The very manner of Shimei's death is the greatest argument against its having been ordained by God (vers. 36-46.) David's conduct in giving this dying injunction to his son may have been influenced — II. BY A CONSCIENTIOUS DESIRE TO ADMINISTER HUMAN JUSTICE, ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF GOD. David, we are told, was a man of God, one after His own heart. How; then, with such clear perceptions of the Divine attributes, can we conceive of him as acting in this matter conscientiously and with cool judgment, in the full belief of the harmony of his decree with Almighty rectitude? To do so is to dishonour the unswerving uprightness of God's justice, or to depreciate David's experiences and knowledge of the Divine character. We would rather be left to our final alternative in — III. REGARDING HIS INJUNCTION AS PROMPTED BY REVENGE. As a man he forgave Shimei at the time of his crime, which, then, should have been utterly effaced from his memory. Heavenly justice, if not satisfied, would have taken its own way of vindicating itself, without further action on David's part. With David as a man of God and Israel's law-giver, we must utterly disconnect this act, and attribute it entirely to a flaw in his character, which, at the last, reasserted its natural power in antagonism to Divine grace. In nothing, during life, do men differ so greatly as at death. The weakest on earth often enter the gates of heaven triumphant. While yet in the flesh, one foot is firmly planted on the threshold of the mansion prepared for them. On the other hand, the spiritual giant now is frequently then but as a timid and fearful child; often, indeed, appearing to lose his entire spiritual existence in the fearful struggle which Satan and his earthly nature keep up in endeavouring to wrest another soul from heaven to people the wilderness of hell. (R. Liswil, B. A.) People Ahab, Aram, Ben, Benhadad, Ben-hadad, Hadad, Israelites, SyriansPlaces Aphek, Damascus, Samaria, SyriaTopics Accompanied, Aram, Army, Assembled, Attacked, Ben, Benhadad, Ben-hadad, Ben-ha'dad, Besieged, Carriages, Chariot, Chariots, Collected, Entire, Fighteth, Force, Fought, Gathered, Got, Hadad, Horse, Horses, Host, Kings, Layeth, Mustered, Samaria, Sama'ria, Shutting, Siege, Syria, Thirty, Thirty-two, War, WarredOutline 1. Ben-Hadad, not content with Ahab's homage, besieges Samaria13. By the direction of a prophet, the Syrians are slain 22. As the prophet forewarned Ahab, the Syrians come against him in Aphek 28. By the word of the prophet, and God's judgment, the Syrians are smitten again 31. The Syrians submit; Ahab sends Ben-Hadad away with a covenant 35. The prophet, under the parable of a prisoner, 39. making Ahab judge himself, denounces God's judgment against him Dictionary of Bible Themes 1 Kings 20:1 4657 horse Library The Lost OpportunityTEXT: "And as thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone. And the king of Israel said unto him, So shall thy judgment be; thyself hast decided it."--1 Kings 20:40. There is a very striking incident connected with this text. The great battle is raging, a certain important prisoner has been taken, and if you read between the lines you seem to know that upon him depend many of the issues of war. His skill in leading the enemy had been marvelous, his courage in the thick of the fight striking; … J. Wilbur Chapman—And Judas Iscariot Putting on the Armour The Section Chap. I. -iii. The Letter of the Synod to the Emperor and Empress. Nature of the Renderings The Practice of Piety in Glorifying God in the Time of Sickness, and when Thou Art Called to Die in the Lord. The Twelve Minor Prophets. Tiglath-Pileser iii. And the Organisation of the Assyrian Empire from 745 to 722 B. C. Kings Links 1 Kings 20:1 NIV1 Kings 20:1 NLT 1 Kings 20:1 ESV 1 Kings 20:1 NASB 1 Kings 20:1 KJV 1 Kings 20:1 Bible Apps 1 Kings 20:1 Parallel 1 Kings 20:1 Biblia Paralela 1 Kings 20:1 Chinese Bible 1 Kings 20:1 French Bible 1 Kings 20:1 German Bible 1 Kings 20:1 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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