Today’s reading: 1 Kings 20; 2 Timothy 4
As I was reading 1 Kings 20, there was a part of me screaming, “What?? Why would you give a miraculous victory to such a faithless and degenerate king as Ahab??”
So I feel like it’s worth calling out that God was not giving Ahab the victory because of his faithfulness. We have talked about this a lot on this blog, but the promises God made to Israel, if they would stay faithful to Him, were kind of ridiculous. If they followed Him faithfully and didn’t go after other gods, the land would produce abundantly, there would never be a famine in Israel, they would have peace on all sides, God would protect them from sickness, etc. The picture God painted was a true Utopia, but it was all premised upon their faithfulness, and there were corresponding curses God proclaimed that would come upon them if they did not remain faithful. So why would God fulfill His promise of supernatural protection from their enemies while Ahab is leading Israel to worship Baal?
Israel’s victory over Syria was not God’s blessing on Israel, it was God protecting His own glory. We see from the response of Ben-hadad’s servants after the first loss that they saw this, to a significant extent, as a spiritual battle between gods. Yes, this was a battle of two armies, but they assume their loss was not an issue or strength, weapons, or tactics, but an issue of Israel’s god being stronger in the hills where they lost the battle. If they are seeing this as a spiritual battle, then if God lets Israel lose because they have been faithless, it strengthens the Syrians’ convictions that their gods are greater than Yahweh. Similarly, if God allowed Ahab to be defeated the second time, this too would have reinforced the Syrians’ belief that Israel’s god was only strong on the hills, but their gods were stronger in the valleys. So God gives Ahab victories, not as a blessing upon His people for their faithfulness, but to protect His own glory and reveal to the Syrians that He is not just another god to pick and choose, but is the God of gods and King of kings.
It’s probably also worth calling out that this only goes so far. It won’t be too much longer before God allows the Babylonians to conquer Israel in order to bring about all the curses He had foretold for their faithlessness. God defends His glory in 1 Kings 20 by proving that He is greater than the Syrian gods, but if He failed to uphold His word and bring curses upon Israel in the face of their disobedience, that would impugn on His glory as well! What’s amazing to watch though is that when the Babylonians believe their gods gave them victory over Israel, God intervenes multiple times to make clear to the Babylonian kings that He is God above the Babylonian gods. God’s name is sacred and He guards it jealously against the Syrians, against the faithless Israelites, eventually against the Babylonians, and so many others who fail to recognize Yahweh for who He truly is.
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