1 Kings 20:23 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Their gods are gods of the hills, &c. The heathen, in general, had no notion of the God of the universe, but only worshipped local and tutelary deities; who, they thought, ruled over particular countries, and distributed the several parts of those countries among them, some being gods of the woods, others of the rivers, and others of the mountains: and the Syrians fancied the gods of the Israelites, whom they thought to be no better than their own gods, to be of the latter kind, gods of the hills, because the land of Canaan was a mountainous land, and the great temple of their God, at Jerusalem, stood upon a hill, as did the city of Samaria, where they had received their last blow; or because the Israelites did generally choose high places for the places of their worship. It is observable, that the Syrians do not impute their ill success to their negligence, and drunkenness, and bad conduct, nor to the valour of the Israelites, but to a divine power, which was indeed visible in it. Let us fight against them in the plain In this counsel there was not only superstition, but policy; because the Syrians excelled the Israelites in horses and chariots, which were most serviceable on plain ground.