TEXT [Commentary]

4. A prophet condemns Ahab (20:35-43)

35 Meanwhile, the LORD instructed one of the group of prophets to say to another man, “Hit me!” But the man refused to hit the prophet. 36 Then the prophet told him, “Because you have not obeyed the voice of the LORD, a lion will kill you as soon as you leave me.” And when he had gone, a lion did attack and kill him.

37 Then the prophet turned to another man and said, “Hit me!” So he struck the prophet and wounded him.

38 The prophet placed a bandage over his eyes to disguise himself and then waited beside the road for the king. 39 As the king passed by, the prophet called out to him, “Sir, I was in the thick of battle, and suddenly a man brought me a prisoner. He said, ‘Guard this man; if for any reason he gets away, you will either die or pay a fine of seventy-five pounds[*] of silver!’ 40 But while I was busy doing something else, the prisoner disappeared!”

“Well, it’s your own fault,” the king replied. “You have brought the judgment on yourself.”

41 Then the prophet quickly pulled the bandage from his eyes, and the king of Israel recognized him as one of the prophets. 42 The prophet said to him, “This is what the LORD says: Because you have spared the man I said must be destroyed,[*] now you must die in his place, and your people will die instead of his people.” 43 So the king of Israel went home to Samaria angry and sullen.

NOTES

20:35 Meanwhile. This term is an effective way to indicate the disjunction in the Hebrew text, “now, a particular member of the sons of the prophets.” Leithart (2006:149-150) interestingly indicates that the appearance of the anonymous prophet here is contrary to the expected narrative sequence found twice in the present chapter (Arameans attack, prophet visits Ahab, Ahab wins battle, prophet advises Ahab, Ben-hadad’s servants advise him, and Ben-hadad takes advice), inasmuch as the reader would have looked for the prophet to appear between 20:29 and 20:30 (as one similarly did back in 20:22 in the first narrative sequence). Thus, the prophet’s delayed appearance here, and his eventual delivery of a harshly negative message directed to King Ahab, are narratively the whole point of the passage (cf. Seow 1999:146).

group of prophets. Lit., “sons of the prophets”; this is the first usage in Kings of what will be a commonplace reference in the Elisha cycle, which comprises 2 Kgs 2–9, 13. The phrase usually indicates a formal prophetic brotherhood (see 2 Kgs 2, 4, 6).

20:36 a lion. The folkloristic prediction-and-immediate-fulfillment motif is quite evident (cf. the lion killing the disobedient “man of God” from Judah back in 13:24). On folkloristic motifs see the note on 3:5. Concerning the existence of lions in biblical Israel, see the note on 13:24.

20:38 disguise himself. Ironically, Ahab himself will do the same thing in 22:30, but for a very different, selfish, and superstitious reason.

20:39 seventy-five pounds of silver. Lit., “one talent of silver”; for the weight of the Hebrew talent, see the second note on 9:14. This was an impossibly huge amount of money for any soldier to contemplate paying.

20:40 You have brought the judgment on yourself. This is similar to the result of Nathan’s parable directed to King David regarding his adultery and commissioning of murder (2 Sam 12:5-6); to his credit, David acknowledged forthrightly the justice of the sentence.

20:42 must be destroyed. As already discussed, this is the main point of the passage: The demands of kherem [TH2764, ZH3051] or “holy war” (cf. NLT mg) must be met (see Hens-Piazza’s comments as quoted in the commentary on 20:23-34; cf. note on 9:21).

20:43 angry and sullen. This same phrase will be found in 21:4 (MT), thus literarily linking Ahab’s breach of the kherem law in the present chapter with his contemplated sin against the ancestral law of inheritance in the next. In both cases his actions or proposed actions seem reasonable, even generous on the surface, but they nevertheless stand in sharp violation of settled Hebrew custom—and in Israel, even the king must submit to the Torah.

COMMENTARY [Text]

We have here a poignant, unsettling conclusion to what should have been a time of triumph for King Ahab. But as I have argued in the previous commentary section, sweet reasonableness is often not the will of God, as is well illustrated in the present passage, with its violence and subterfuge leading to the peevish irritation of the king (20:43). Ahab had clearly not done God’s will, and the narrator will not let him (or us) forget that fact for a moment. This is evident as we see an anonymous prophet announce doom on another prophet for not hitting him as demanded (20:35-36; paralleling Ahab not smiting Ben-hadad as the demands of kherem [TH2764, ZH3051] would dictate), and the same prophet, wounded at his own request, act as an escapee from the battle who had lost his prisoner of war, thus “catching the conscience of the king” by his charade (20:38-42). These scenes parallel Ahab’s focus on politics, economics, and new opportunities for personal and national gain rather than the stipulations of kherem, thus letting his prisoner of war Ben-hadad escape. Ahab could have repented of his hubris (as he does in the next chapter), but instead he became “angry and sullen,” realizing perhaps that it would indeed be his life that would stand in for Ben-hadad’s life, and his people’s lives in place of the Arameans’ lives. This is as Leithart (2006:150) further notes:

Israel wins the victories over the Arameans purely through the Lord’s strength, as Y­ahweh gives the enormous Aramean army into the hands of Ahab and brings the wall down on the remnants of the army. Yahweh even gives Ahab the battle strategy, as the commanding king of Israel’s hosts. Ben-hadad is not Ahab’s prisoner but Yahweh’s. “Devoted to destruction” [i.e., the essence of kherem] essentially means “reserved for Yahweh,” and Ahab should have known from everything about the battle that the decision whether Ben-hadad lived or died was not his to make. Ahab once again proves himself an Achan [the villain of Josh 7, who broke the kherem by keeping some of the plunder from the defeated city of Jericho], a “troubler in Israel” ([1 Kgs] 18:17).

Leithart goes on to suggest that the reference to the talent of silver in 20:39 (an incredibly huge sum of money for a commoner) hints at the possibility of atonement for the king. But Ahab refused any such possibility—at least in this chapter—so it would have to be his life for Ben-hadad’s life (“a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”; Exod 21:23-25). Thus, deservedly, the king was doomed to die, and seemingly his people and his kingdom also stood in that danger as well.