“Your servant Benhadad pleads with you for his life.”
Ahab answered, “Is he still alive? Good! He’s like a brother to me!”
Really?! After what he just went through (1 Kings 20:7)? Ahab wants to be liked more than anything. Fatal (Galatians 1:10). May I never seek to be a friend of this world, Father (John 15:18-19; 17:14). The reality for Ahab? Benhadad absolutely despises him (1 Kings 22:31).
Benhadad said to him, “I will restore to you the towns my father took from your father, and you may set up a commercial center for yourself in Damascus, just as my father did in Samaria.”
Ahab replied, “On these terms, then, I will set you free.” He made a treaty with him and let him go.
Empty words (1 Kings 22:1-3). Commerce has always been at the heart of everything.
As the king was passing by, the prophet called out to him and said, “Your Majesty, I was fighting in the battle when a soldier brought a captured enemy to me and said, ‘Guard this man; if he escapes, you will pay for it with your life or else pay a fine of three thousand pieces of silver.’ But I got busy with other things, and the man escaped.”
The king answered, “You have pronounced your own sentence, and you will have to pay the penalty.”
The prophet tore the cloth from his face, and at once the king recognized him as one of the prophets. The prophet then said to the king, “This is the word of the Lord: ‘Because you allowed the man to escape whom I had ordered to be killed, you will pay for it with your life, and your army will be destroyed for letting his army escape.’”
How this is reminiscent of the encounter between Nathan and David (2 Samuel 12:1-14)! If it falls to us to execute God’s judgement, never, never, never back away (1 Samuel 15:32-33).
The king went back home to Samaria, worried and depressed.
Like Saul (1 Samuel 15:13), King Ahab expected to be treated as a hero. What he got was just the opposite – much like the “welcome” Elijah received from Jezebel (1 Kings 19:1-3). It is for us to simply do what is good and right and leave the rest to the Lord – free from expectations.