CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
1 Kings 20:33. Men did diligently observe—Took his words as a good omen. Did hastily catch it—Hastened to seize or quote the words, “my brother.” Ahab found his vanity flattered by their abject suit, and, losing sense and wit, yielded to a sentimental magnanimity.
1 Kings 20:34. Make streets for thee—חִצוֹת means business thoroughfares.
1 Kings 20:38. Ashes upon his face—Rather, head bandage for wounds (1 Kings 20:37).
1 Kings 20:42. Thou hast let go a man, &c.—It was a weakminded act, an injustice, a clear neglect of duty, and a dishonour to the God of Israel, whom the king of Israel represented. Ahab knew Benhadad was Israel’s enemy, and the fact that God had so signally defeated him showed Jehovah’s anger towards him.
1 Kings 20:43. Heavy and displeased—סַר וְזָעֵף, vexed and refractory, from סרר, to be stubborn (Deuteronomy 21:18); more than gloomy and uneasy—fretful and resentful.—W. H. J.
HOMILETICS OF 1 Kings 20:31-43
THE REMORSE OF NEGLECTED OPPORTUNITIES
LIFE is but brief, yet it is full of great opportunities for usefulness. Those opportunities correspond to our position, our means, and our abilities. God expects from no man what He has not given him power to do. He who is wise to sec and prompt to act when the opportunity is presented will win success and honour. Not to do the plainly revealed duty of the moment is to entail weakness, disappointment, and suffering. We shall be punished for the good we neglect, as well as for the evil that we do.
I. That opportunities occur when we are called to do a great work for God.
1. Every opportunity brings with it corresponding responsibility (1 Kings 20:31-32). Victory, a victory achieved by direct Divine interference, had placed Benhadad—the enemy of God and of Israel—in the power of Ahab. It was an opportunity not to be thrown away. The Lord had appointed this man to “utter destruction” (1 Kings 20:42), and Ahab knew it. Benhadad was to be taught to know, in avenging justice, the greatness of that God he had blasphemed; and the power of the state he ruled was to be so broken as to render it incapable of giving further trouble to Israel. The purpose of God and the safety of Israel were placed in the hands of Ahab; the enemy might now be punished, and his power for ever crushed. Ahab neglected the opportunity, and he lived long enough to see and regret it. It is a grave, solemn moment when we are brought into the presence of an acknowledged evil which we have power to destroy. We have need to pray for courage and fidelity to act wisely and decisively.
2. We are not justified in indulging private sentiment at the sacrifice of public duty (1 Kings 20:33-34). It was here that Ahab failed. What at first sight might seem an act of magnanimity becomes, when rightly viewed, a gross weakness; and the generosity which might entitle a man to praise if shown towards a private enemy, may become a crime in a king towards a public adversary. What would have been thought of the Regent of England, after the victory of Waterloo, if, when Napoleon, the great troubler of Europe, was brought a prisoner to our shores, he had been set free? The sense of duty was weakened in Ahab by his past disobedience and by his unlawful sympathy with idolatry. The neglect of one duty incapacitates the soul for doing another; and so when a great emergency comes upon us, we find ourselves unequal to its demands. The king must lose sight of selfish ends and feeling in a righteous anxiety to promote the public good.
II. That a time will come when we shall be made painfully conscious of opportunities neglected.
1. This may be done through the sufferings of others (1 Kings 20:35-38). A son of the prophets submitted to be wounded that he might the more effectively bring home to Ahab his sin. The faithful teacher must not shrink from suffering. It is rarely we can be faithful to others without pain to ourselves. The most powerful method of preaching the truth is learned in the school of trial.
2. Will be done in a way not to be mistaken (1 Kings 20:39-42).
(1). It was symbolic. This is the first example of those symbolical actions of the prophets which occur so often in the subsequent history of Israel and Judah. The man who refused to smite the son of the prophet became a representative of Ahab in his refusal to obey the word of the Lord. The prophets mentioned in 1 Kings 20:13; 1 Kings 20:22; 1 Kings 20:28 had said enough to show Ahab that when his royal enemy fell into his power he must not covenant with him, but smite and utterly destroy him. But his making a covenant with him and sending him away (1 Kings 20:34) was a refusal to smite him.
(2). It was faithful and pointed (1 Kings 20:42). Here Ahab, like David on another occasion (2 Samuel 12:5-6), pronounces his own condemnation. As the son of the prophet was to answer by his life for letting his supposed prisoner free, so Ahab is to answer with his life for granting liberty to the doomed Syrian monarch. The sin of neglect will sooner or later be brought home to every bosom, and the guilt will be self-acknowledged.
III. That the consciousness of neglected opportunities will fill the soul with bitter remorse (1 Kings 20:43). The slumbering conscience of the weak, easy-going Ahab was once more awoke, and he went to his home depressed and angry—angry with himself, and angry with the means which had been intended to bring him to repentance and disobedience. He felt the burden of a sense of Divine wrath upon him, and, instead of humbling himself and seeking for mercy, he became sulky and soured. He was still refractory and rebellious; and yet he could not shake off the gloomy, stinging remorse of neglected opportunities. His experience is a picture of the tortures which will for ever afflict the impenitent: for ever conscious of oft-repeated sin, and for ever incapable of ridding himself of its consequences!
LESSONS:—
1. Every soul will be judged according to its opportunities in life.
2. Opportunities for well-doing are offered to all.
3. To neglect opportunities for good is to condemn ourselves.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
1 Kings 20:31-43. When authority is compassionate out of the proper season, and neglects its office of correction, it draws upon itself the guilt of the other. God wants no mercy to be shown where He has ordered punishment.—Cramer.
1 Kings 20:31-33. Praise, flattery, and subserviency are only too often the snare with which kings and great men are caught, so that under the appearance of generosity and magnanimity they may be led astray and act contrary to the will of God. They ought, indeed, to be merciful and gracious, but not forget that to do justice is their first duty, and that they do not carry the sword in vain. Ahab persecutes an Elijah in every kingdom, and threatens him with death; but he permits a robber and a plunderer to sit beside him in his chariot, and makes a covenant with him. What in the eyes of the world looks like generosity, in the eyes of God, who trieth the heart and reins, is only weakness and folly. Great injury can be done by seeming ill-timed generosity.—Lange.
1 Kings 20:31. There can be no more powerful attractive of humble submission than the intimation and conceit of mercy. We do at once fear and hate the inexorable. This is it, O Lord, that allures us to thy throne of grace, the knowledge of the grace of that throne; with thee is mercy and plenteous redemption; thine hand is open before our mouths, before our hearts. If we did not see thee smile upon suitors, we durst not press to thy footstool. Behold now we know that the king of heaven, the God of Israel, is a merciful God; let us put sackcloth upon our loins and strew ashes upon our heads, and go meet the Lord God of Israel, that He may save our souls.—Bp. Hall.
1 Kings 20:32 compared with 1 Kings 20:10. Contrasts in the same individual life.
1. The king—the slave.
2. The proud boaster—the craven suppliant.
3. The confident leader of a great army—the defeated and dejected fugitive.
1 Kings 20:32. How well doth this habit become insolent and blasphemous Benhadad and his followers! a rope and sackcloth! a rope for a crown, sackcloth for a robe! He that was erewhile a lord and king, is now a servant; and he that was servant to the king of Syria, is now his lord. He that would blow away all Israel in dust, is now glad to beg for his own life at the door of a despised enemy. No courage is so haughty which the God of hosts cannot easily bring under. What are men or devils in those Almighty hands?—Bp. Hall.
1 Kings 20:34. Complicity with idolatry.
1. Unfits for the proper discharge of kingly duties.
2. Encourages a false leniency towards the greatest enemy.
3. Blinds the mind to true conceptions of public justice.
4. Sows the seeds of future troubles.
—Ahab, without “inquiring of the Lord,” who had given him so great a victory (1 Kings 20:28), whether he should let Benhadad go or no, at once agrees to the terms offered; and, without even taking any security for their due observance, allows the Syrian monarah to depart and return to his own country. Considered politically, the act was one of culpable carelessness and imprudence. It let loose an enemy whose talent, ambition, and personal influence made him peculiarly formidable; and it provided no effectual security against the continuance of his aggressions. Benhadad might, or might not, regard himself as bound by the terms of a covenant made when he was a prisoner. If he took the view that he was not bound—as his after conduct shows that he did (22 1 Kings 20:3)—Ahab left himself no means of enforcing the obligations incurred except by a renewal of hostilities. And if Ahab’s conduct was thus, politically speaking, wrong in him as the mere human head of a state, much more was it unjustifiable in one who held his crown under a theocracy. “Inquiry at the word of the Lord” was still possible in Israel (1 Kings 22, 1 Kings 20:5; 1 Kings 20:8), and would seem to have been the course that ordinary gratitude might have suggested.—Speaker’s Comm.
—This as impolitic as untheocratic proceeding of Ahab arose by no means from a “heart naturally very good,” but from weakness, indecision, and self-deluding vanity. To free a cruel and faithless enemy was not only great harshness towards his own subjects, but also an obvious striving against God, who, by granting the promised victory, had given the enemy of His people into His hand. Even though Ahab had no express command, as Saul had regarding Agag (1 Samuel 15:3), yet there lay upon him, if as theocratic ruler he would respect the will of the Lord, inasmuch as the Lord had given him into his hands as a despiser of His Divine Majesty, the sacred duty of securing rest for himself and his subjects by his death; as it was natural to presume that the faithless adversary, after his freedom was recovered, would not adhere to a treaty formed on compulsion, which accordingly happened (1 Kings 21:1). The punishment of his striving against God is immediately announced to Ahab.—Keil.
1 Kings 20:35-37. He who has his calling and service from the Word of God ought to allow no danger to detain him from making an announcement of the fact (2 Timothy 4:2), and must obediently submit himself to His commands, even when the fulfilment of them is joined with pain and sacrifice.
1 Kings 20:35-36. Disobedience.
1. Is aggravated as committed against the revealed will of God.
2. Is not excused from a reluctance to inflict pain.
3. Is faithfully denounced.
4. Is inevitably punished.
1 Kings 20:35. “Smite me, I pray thee.”
1. That hereby I may show Ahab how he hath wounded his own soul by sparing Benhadad.
2. What a wound both he and his people shall hereafter receive hereby.
3. That I may seem a wounded soldier, and so may have the easier access to Ahab.—Trapp.
1 Kings 20:36. It is not for us to examine the charges of the Almighty: be they never so harsh or improbable, if they be once known for His, there is no way but obedience or death. Not to smite a prophet when God commands, is no less sin than to smite a prophet when God forbids. It is the divine precept or prohibition that either makes or aggravates an evil; and if the Israelite be thus revenged that smote not a prophet, what shall become of Ahab that smote not Benhadad!—Bp. Hall.
1 Kings 20:40. Lost opportunities. I. Important interests have been committed to our care.
1. Our personal salvation.
2. The salvation of our neighbours.
3. The religious education of our children.
4. Sympathy and relief for the poor and suffering. II. God furnishes an opportunity to all.
1. He fits the opportunity to the work required.
2. He provides the means essential to success.
3. He gives efficiency and certainty to the effort. III. Opportunities lost are lost for ever.
1. We lose them unconsciously.
2. We lose them while busied here and there with minor things.
3. Lost opportunities bring loss of happiness.
4. The consequences of their loss will be eternal.—Wythe.
—The danger of much worldly business. Consider—
1. The extreme brevity of seasons of spiritual advantage. Shortness of life—illustrate by metaphors of Scripture. Life as the commencement of eternity, everything; in competition with eternity, nothing. Danger of procrastination. Importance of every opportunity of spiritual instruction. II. The difficulties and dangers against which we have to guard, if we would not sacrifice them.
1. The absorbing character of worldly business.
2. Liable to neglect chief ends of existence for inferior pursuits.
3. Much devotedness to the world disqualifies for spiritual services.
4. Positive losses of religious privilege accrue from multitude of engagements. III. The appalling losses we may sustain through a solitary act of negligence. Great business of Satan is to draw off men from the care of the soul. One act of indiscretion may, in the things of this life, involve years of repentance; but one neglect of the soul may be the cause of its everlasting ruin. “Oh, that thou hadst known at least in this thy day,” &c.
LESSONS.—
1. Cultivate a spirit of contrition over past indifference.
2. Use all diligence to make your calling and election sure.—The Preacher’s Portfolio.
1 Kings 20:42-43. Ahab listened well pleased to the falsehood from the lips of the Syrian nobles, for it gave nourishment to his folly; the truth from the mouth of the prophet made him restless and angry, because it punished his folly. There is no help for the man who allows himself to be irritated by the truth instead of receiving it with meekness (James 1:21). There is nothing that so rouses and provokes an unconverted and unbelieving man as to have his sinful character so unveiled and set before his eyes that he can no longer justify or excuse himself.—Lange.
1 Kings 20:42. The equity of punishment.
1. The Divine order.
2. Is regulated by opportunities granted.
3. Is afflicted according to nature and degree of sin.
1 Kings 20:43. “Heavy and displeased.” Not with a “sorrow according to God,” but such as arose from a slavish fear. This heavy message in the midst of his triumph being worse than the whip and bell hung up usually in the chariot of the Roman triumpher, to show him what he might one day come to—namely, to be whipped as a slave, yea, to lose his head as an offender.—Trapp.