with the destruction of the city, and confirming it by a solemn oath: “The gods do so to me - if the dust of Samaria should suffice for the hollow hands of all the people that are in my train.” The meaning of this threat was probably that he would reduce the city to ashes, so that scarcely a handful of dust should be left; for his army was so powerful and numerous, that the rubbish of the city would not suffice for every one to fill his hand.
Verse 11
Ahab answered this loud boasting with the proverb: “Let not him that girdeth himself boast as he that looseneth the girdle,” equivalent to the Latin, ne triumphum canas ante victoriam.
Verse 12
After this reply of Ahab, Benhadad gave command to attack the city, while he was drinking with his kings in the booths. סכּות are booths made of branches, twigs, and shrubs, such as are still erected in the East for kings and generals in the place of tents (vid., Rosenmüller, A. u. N. Morgenl. iii. pp. 198-9). שׂימוּ: take your places against the city, sc. to storm it (for שׂים in the sense of arranging the army for battle, see 1Sa 11:11 and Job 1:17); not οἰκοδομήσατε χάρακα (lxx), or place the siege train.
Verses 13-14
While the Syrians were preparing for the attack, a prophet came to Ahab and told him that Jehovah would deliver this great multitude (of the enemy) into his hand that day, “that thou mayest know that I am Jehovah,” and that through the retainers of the governors of the provinces (המּדינות שׂרי, who had fled to Samaria), i.e., by a small and weak host. In the appearance of the prophet in Samaria mentioned here and in 1Ki 20:28, 1Ki 20:35. there is no such irreconcilable contradiction to 1Ki 18:4, 1Ki 18:22, and 1Ki 19:10, as Thenius maintains; it simply shows that the persecution of the prophets by Jezebel had somewhat abated, and therefore Elijah's labour had not remained without fruit. מי יאסר הם, who shall open the battle? אסר answers to the German anfädeln (to string, unite; Eng. join battle - Tr.); cf. 2Ch 13:3.
Verses 15-16
Ahab then mustered his fighting men: there were 232 servants of the provincial governors; and the rest of the people, all the children of Israel, i.e., the whole of the Israelitish fighting men that were in Samaria (החיל, 1Ki 20:19), amounted to 7000 men. And at noon, when Benhadad and his thirty-two auxiliary kings were intoxicated at a carousal in the booths (שׁכּור שׁתה as in 1Ki 16:9), he ordered his men to advance, with the servants of the provincial governors taking the lead. The 7000 men are not to be regarded as the 7000 mentioned in 1Ki 19:18, who had
