bibl. R. W. i. p. 154), and in Syrophoenicia even mountains themselves had divine honours paid to them (vid., Movers, Phöniz. i. p. 667ff.). The servants of Benhadad were at any rate so far right, that they attributed their defeat to the assistance which God had given to His people Israel; and were only wrong in regarding the God of Israel as a local deity, whose power did not extend beyond the mountains. They also advised their lord (1Ki 20:24) to remove the kings in his army from their position, and appoint governors in their stead (פּחות, see 1Ki 10:15). The vassal-kings had most likely not shown the desired self-sacrifice for the cause of their superior in the war. And, lastly (1Ki 20:25), they advised the king to raise his army to its former strength, and then carry on the war in the plain. “Number thyself an army, like the army which has fallen from thee.” מאותך, “from with thee,” rendered correctly de tuis in the Vulgate, at least so far as the sense is concerned (for the form see Ewald, §264, b.). But these prudently-devised measures were to be of no avail to the Syrians; for they were to learn that the God of Israel was not a limited mountain-god.
Verse 26
With the new year (see 1Ki 20:22) Benhadad advanced to Aphek again to fight against Israel. Aphek is neither the city of that name in the tribe of Asher (Jos 19:30 and Jos 13:4), nor that on the mountains of Judah (Jos 15:53), but the city in the plain of Jezreel not far from Endor (1Sa 29:1 compared with 1Sa 28:4); since Benhadad had resolved that this time he would fight against Israel in the plain.
Verse 27
The Israelites, mustered and provided for (כּלכּלוּ: supplied with ammunition and provisions), marched to meet them, and encamped before them “like two little separate flocks of goats” (i.e., severed from the great herd of cattle). They had probably encamped upon slopes of the mountains by the plain of Jezreel, where they looked like two miserable flocks of goats in contrast with the Syrians who filled the land.
Verse 28
Then the man of God (the prophet mentioned in 1Ki 20:13, 1Ki 20:22) came again to Ahab with the word of God: “Because the Syrians have said Jehovah is a mountain-God and not a God of the valleys, I will give this great multitude into thy hand, that ye may know that I am Jehovah.”
Verses 29-30
After seven days the battle was fought. The Israelites smote the Syrians, a hundred thousand men in one day; and when the rest fled to Aphek, into the city, the wall fell upon twenty-seven
