1 Kings 20:13-34

Living Bible

¹³ Then a prophet came to see King Ahab and gave him this message from the Lord: “Do you see all these enemy forces? I will deliver them all to you today. Then at last you will know that I am the Lord.”

¹⁴ Ahab asked, “How will he do it?”

And the prophet replied, “The Lord says, ‘By the troops from the provinces.’”

“Shall we attack first?” Ahab asked.

“Yes,” the prophet answered.

¹⁵ So he mustered the troops from the provinces, 232 of them, then the rest of his army of 7,000 men. ¹⁶ About noontime, as Ben-hadad and the thirty-two allied kings were still drinking themselves drunk, the first of Ahab’s troops marched out of the city.

¹⁷ As they approached, Ben-hadad’s scouts reported to him, “Some troops are coming!”

¹⁸ “Take them alive,” Ben-hadad commanded, “whether they have come for truce or for war.”

¹⁹ By now Ahab’s entire army had joined the attack. ²⁰ Each one killed a Syrian soldier, and suddenly the entire Syrian army panicked and fled. The Israelis chased them, but King Ben-hadad and a few others escaped on horses. ²¹ However, the great bulk of the horses and chariots were captured, and most of the Syrian army was killed in a great slaughter.

²² Then the prophet approached King Ahab and said, “Get ready for another attack by the king of Syria.”

²³ For after their defeat, Ben-hadad’s officers said to him, “The Israeli God is a god of the hills; that is why they won. But we can beat them easily on the plains. ²⁴ Only this time replace the kings with generals! ²⁵ Recruit another army like the one you lost; give us the same number of horses, chariots, and men, and we will fight against them in the plains; there’s not a shadow of a doubt that we will beat them.” So King Ben-hadad did as they suggested. ²⁶ The following year he called up the Syrian army and marched out against Israel again, this time at Aphek. ²⁷ Israel then mustered its army, set up supply lines, and moved into the battle; but the Israeli army looked like two little flocks of baby goats in comparison to the vast Syrian forces that filled the countryside!

²⁸ Then a prophet went to the king of Israel with this message from the Lord: “Because the Syrians have declared, ‘The Lord is a God of the hills and not of the plains,’ I will help you defeat this vast army, and you shall know that I am indeed the Lord.”

²⁹ The two armies camped opposite each other for seven days, and on the seventh day the battle began. And the Israelis killed 100,000 Syrian infantrymen that first day. ³⁰ The rest fled behind the walls of Aphek, but the wall fell on them and killed another 27,000. Ben-hadad fled into the city and hid in the inner room of one of the houses.

³¹ “Sir,” his officers said to him, “we have heard that the kings of Israel are very merciful. Let us wear sackcloth and put ropes on our heads and go out to King Ahab to see if he will let you live.”

³² So they went to the king of Israel and begged, “Your servant Ben-hadad pleads, ‘Let me live!’”

“Oh, is he still alive?” the king of Israel asked. “He is my brother!”

³³ The men were quick to grab this straw of hope and hurried to clinch the matter by exclaiming, “Yes, your brother Ben-hadad!”

“Go and get him,” the king of Israel told them. And when Ben-hadad arrived, he invited him up into his chariot!

³⁴ Ben-hadad told him, “I will restore the cities my father took from your father, and you may establish trading posts in Damascus, as my father did in Samaria.”