1 Kings 20.22-25:
| 20.22ויגש הנביא אל מלך ישראל | The prophet came near the king of Isra’el. |
|---|---|
| ויאמר לו | He said to him, |
| לך התחזק ודע וראה את אשר תעשה | “Walk, toughen up, and see what we must do. |
| כי לתשובת השנה | For in the following year, |
| מלך ארם עלה עליך׃ | the king of Aramα comes up to you.” |
| 20.23ועבדי מלך ארם | The slaves of the king of Aram |
| אמרו אליו | say to him, |
| אלהי הרים אלהיהם | “Their Godβ is a god of hills. |
| על כן חזקו ממנו | Because of this, they were tougher than us. |
| ואולם נלחם אתם במישור | However, let’s fight them on level ground. |
| אם לא נחזק מהם׃ | Aren’t we tougher than them? |
| 20.24ואת הדבר הזה עשה | Do this word: |
| הסר המלכים | Removeγ the kings, |
| איש ממקמו | each man from his position. |
| ושים פחות תחתיהם׃ | Put captains under them. |
| 20.25ואתה תמנה לך חיל | You appoint to yourself an army, |
| כחיל הנפל מאותך | like the army that falls by you— |
| וסוס כסוס | horse like horse, |
| ורכב כרכב | chariot like chariot. |
| ונלחמה אותם במישור | We’ll eat them on level ground. |
| אם לא נחזק מהם | Aren’t we tougher than them?” |
| וישמע לקלם | He hears their voice. |
| ויעש כן׃ | He does so. |
Consider what Hadadezer must have been thinking after he had his ass handed to him by the Israelis. He had been conditioned his entire life (or at least his entire reign) to think of himself as the Barhadad, the son of Ba’al Hadad. Maybe adoptive rather than literal; but the son of Ba’al nonetheless. All he had to do was meet Ba’al’s expectations, and he’d have a successful, victorious reign.
Yet after taking a far superior army of 32 kings and their armies into Israel; despite lots and lots of toasts to Ba’al to the point of getting hammered; despite defending the glory and honor of Ba’al before an apostate king... he got conquered by a tiny, volunteer army, led by slave boys.
The man wouldn’t have trotted out his big giant army unless he had expected an easy victory. Ba’al was mighty, on his side, supposed to make him victorious, and when he wasn’t victorious, it had to evoke one of two things. Either
- Hadadezer suffered a crisis of faith, wrestled with understanding the inscrutable will of Ba’al, and eventually determined he was gonna trust Ba’al no matter what the circumstances; or
- Hadadezer had no such crisis. He trusted Ba’al no matter what; there had to be a good explanation for why Ba’al didn’t come through for him.
And since Hadadezer’s servants concluded that the loss was because the Israelis served a hill god, I’m guessing he went with #2.
Now, if this description disturbs you a little bit, good. I meant it to.
These are the typical responses that your average Christian has when God’s will doesn’t turn out the way we expected. Just substitute “God” for “Ba’al.” We expect that we’re God’s kids ’cause He adopted us when we turned to Jesus. We expect that because we’re His favorites, we should automatically receive favor, success, victory, growth, profit—and when we don’t, it’s ’cause there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for it; either we didn’t follow God properly, or He’s limited (we would say self-limited) in some way.
The problem is: What are our expectations—for favor, success, victory, growth, or profit—based on? Why should we get such things? What makes us think we deserve such things? Is it just because we’re God’s kids?
Contrast Ahab with Hadadezer for a moment. Ahab, too, was probably feeling good about himself as well... but as far as what God expected of him, there was a big difference: There was no guesswork. Ahab knew exactly what God wanted him to do. God had a prophet in the palace, and Ahab was listening to God through the prophet.
If Ahab had tried to divine God’s will through signs, circumstances, coincidences that “may not actually be coincidences,” and other such superstitious junk—like the pagans did, and still do; and sadly like many Christians do as well—he would naturally have come to conclusion that the Sidonian widow had; he’d have concluded that God was punishing him for all his years of Ba’alism. Instead, he followed God’s unorthodox strategy and stomped upon the Syrian army. If Ahab didn’t have a line of communication with God, he’d have assumed that he had driven off Hadadezer once and for all. Instead, the prophet warned him that Hadadezer was coming back—before Hadadezer’s slaves could even pitch the idea to their boss.
The difference between blindly following what God might want, and actually following God, all comes down to whether you and He are talking to one another. You don’t have a living, saving relationship with the Lord Jesus if you aren’t communicating! You may as well worship Ba’al for all the good it’s doing you; you’re just gonna wind up becoming another one of the folks that Jesus doesn’t know at the End.
Talking with God makes all the difference. Because Ahab listened to God’s prophet, he knew to be ready. Because Hadadezer listened to no prophet at all, his slaves guessed (wrongly) that Yahweh is a hill-god. (Wrongly and stupidly. Shouldn’t a weather-god outrank a hill-god?) It makes so much sense to know rather than to guess, that I’m constantly surprised when Christians are willing to settle for guesswork. I really shouldn’t be, but it’s just plain strange to see willful stupidity among the followers of the God of wisdom.
α. Syria.
β. Or “gods.” The word for god, אלהים, is one of those words that could be either singular or plural. Since we now know that God is a Trinity, lots of Christians read that into it, but it’s just an odd word.
γ. Or “behead.” But I’m pretty sure Hadadezer didn’t behead them.
