Elijah and Elisha for Today

The Arrogance of Power

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

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Lesson: 8 of 16

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[Rushdoony] Our scripture this evening is the 20th chapter of I Kings, a long chapter dealing with Benhadad the king of Syria. First Kings 20.

“And Benhadad the king of Syria gathered all his host together: and there were thirty and two kings with him, and horses, and chariots; and he went up and besieged Samaria, and warred against it. And he sent messengers to Ahab king of Israel into the city, and said unto him, Thus saith Benhadad, Thy silver and thy gold is mine; thy wives also and thy children, even the goodliest, are mine.

 And the king of Israel answered and said, My lord, O king, according to thy saying, I am thine, and all that I have.

5 And the messengers came again, and said, Thus speaketh Benhadad, saying, Although I have sent unto thee, saying, Thou shalt deliver me thy silver, and thy gold, and thy wives, and thy children; 6 Yet I will send my servants unto thee to morrow about this time, and they shall search thine house, and the houses of thy servants; and it shall be, that whatsoever is pleasant in thine eyes, they shall put it in their hand, and take it away.

7 Then the king of Israel called all the elders of the land, and said, Mark, I pray you, and see how this man seeketh mischief: for he sent unto me for my wives, and for my children, and for my silver, and for my gold; and I denied him not.

8 And all the elders and all the people said unto him, Hearken not unto him, nor consent.

9 Wherefore he said unto the messengers of Benhadad, Tell my lord the king, All that thou didst send for to thy servant at the first I will do: but this thing I may not do. And the messengers departed, and brought him word again.

10 And Benhadad sent unto him, and said, the gods do so unto me, and more also, if the dust of Samaria shall suffice for handfuls for all the people that follow me.

11 And the king of Israel answered and said, tell him, Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.” At that moment Ahab had a little wisdom.

“And it came to pass, when Ben-hadad heard this message, as he was drinking, he and the kings in the pavilions, that he said unto his servants, set yourselves in array. And they set themselves in array against the city.

13 And, behold, there came a prophet unto Ahab king of Israel, saying, Thus saith the Lord, Hast thou seen all this great multitude? Behold, I will deliver it into thine hand this day; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord.

14 And Ahab said, by whom? And he said, thus saith the Lord, Even by the young men of the princes of the provinces. Then he said, who shall order the battle? And he answered, Thou.

15 Then he numbered the young men of the princes of the provinces, and they were two hundred and thirty two: and after them he numbered all the people, even all the children of Israel, being seven thousand.

16 And they went out at noon. But Benhadad was drinking himself drunk in the pavilions, he and the kings, the thirty and two kings that helped him. 17 And the young men of the princes of the provinces went out first; and Benhadad sent out, and they told him, saying, there are men come out of Samaria. 18 And he said, whether they be come out for peace, take them alive; or whether they be come out for war, take them alive.

19 So these young men of the princes of the provinces came out of the city, and the army which followed them. 20 And they slew everyone his man: and the Syrians fled; and Israel pursued them: and Benhadad the king of Syria escaped on an horse with the horsemen.21 And the king of Israel went out, and smote the horses and chariots, and slew the Syrians with a great slaughter.

22 And the prophet came to the king of Israel, and said unto him, Go, strengthen thyself, and mark, and see what thou doest: for at the return of the year the king of Syria will come up against thee.

23 And the servants of the king of Syria said unto him, Their gods are gods of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they.24 And do this thing, Take the kings away, every man out of his place, and put captains in their rooms: 25 And number thee an army, like the army that thou hast lost, horse for horse, and chariot for chariot: and we will fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they. And he hearkened unto their voice, and did so.

26 And it came to pass at the return of the year, that Benhadad numbered the Syrians, and went up to Aphek, to fight against Israel.27 And the children of Israel were numbered, and were all present, and went against them: and the children of Israel pitched before them like two little flocks of kids; but the Syrians filled the country.

28 And there came a man of God, and spake unto the king of Israel, and said, Thus saith the Lord, Because the Syrians have said, The Lord is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys, therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into thine hand, and ye shall know that I am the Lord. 29 And they pitched one over against the other seven days. And so it was, that in the seventh day the battle was joined: and the children of Israel slew of the Syrians an hundred thousand footmen in one day. 30 But the rest fled to Aphek, into the city; and there a wall fell upon twenty and seven thousand of the men that were left. And Benhadad fled, and came into the city, into an inner chamber.

31 And his servants said unto him, Behold now, we have heard that the kings of the house of Israel are merciful kings: let us, I pray thee, put sackcloth on our loins, and ropes upon our heads, and go out to the king of Israel: peradventure he will save thy life.32 So they girded sackcloth on their loins, and put ropes on their heads, and came to the king of Israel, and said, Thy servant Benhadad saith, I pray thee, let me live. And he said, Is he yet alive? he is my brother.

33 Now the men did diligently observe whether any thing would come from him, and did hastily catch it: and they said, Thy brother Benhadad. Then he said, Go ye, bring him. Then Benhadad came forth to him; and he caused him to come up into the chariot.

34 And Ben-hadad said unto him, The cities, which my father took from thy father, I will restore; and thou shalt make streets for thee in Damascus, as my father made in Samaria. Then said Ahab, I will send thee away with this covenant. So he made a covenant with him, and sent him away.

35 And a certain man of the sons of the prophets said unto his neighbor in the word of the Lord, Smite me, I pray thee. And the man refused to smite him. 36 Then said he unto him, because thou hast not obeyed the voice of the Lord, behold, as soon as thou art departed from me, a lion shall slay thee. And as soon as he was departed from him, a lion found him, and slew him.

37 Then he found another man, and said, smite me, I pray thee. And the man smote him, so that in smiting he wounded him. 38 So the prophet departed, and waited for the king by the way, and disguised himself with ashes upon his face.” That can also be translated “with a bandage upon his face”

“And as the king passed by, he cried unto the king: and he said, Thy servant went out into the midst of the battle; and, behold, a man turned aside, and brought a man unto me, and said, Keep this man: if by any means he be missing, then shall thy life be for his life, or else thou shalt pay a talent of silver. 40 And as thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone. And the king of Israel said unto him, so shall thy judgment be; thyself hast decided it.

41 And he hasted, and took the ashes away from his face; and the king of Israel discerned him that he was of the prophets.42 And he said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people.

43 And the king of Israel went to his house heavy and displeased, and came to Samaria.”

This Chapter speaks to our times, it speaks to our State Department and to our present foreign policy. It speaks to pulpit and pew which too often think that the word of the Lord is sweetness and light, and “smile, God loves you.” The date is approximately 866-865 B.C. A few years before the battle of Quor Por {?}. Assyria was the great power of the day and step by step Assyria was moving towards Syria and Israel as part of its great march towards Egypt. The one great concern of foreign policy on the part of all nations then was ‘what do we do about Assyria?’ Just as today the concern of European state departments and of ours is “What do we do about the Soviet Union?”

Now there were two answers that were being given. There was first the Syrian answer, Syria felt that the way to meet Assyria was by its own imperialism, to go out and take one little country after another just as Assyria was taking countries and to make them a part of Syria and increase its power thereby so that it would be one empire against another. And we find that Syria indeed had 32 kings who were puppet states, vassals, of Benhadad. That was the first answer.

The second answer was that of Israel, and Israel’s answer was “now let’s all get together and bury the hatchet and forget about our differences and all of us little countries form a mutual assistance pact, a kind of a NATO, and then we can meet Assyria. And so, no matter what Syria did Israel kept trying to make the peace with them and saying “now look boys, you’re trying to take us over, but don’t you realize an alliance is the better solution?” Israel put its faith in alliance. It went so far a little later that when it was faced again with a very, very serious threat with Syria it made an alliance with Assyria. Israel destroyed itself by its policy of alliances. But the Lord had said in His word, in His law, and Israel at that time believed in a spiritual religion and didn’t pay much attention to the literal statements of God’s word that no alliance should be made with an unbelieving people, that our alliance should be with the Lord God of hosts, that the Lord God almighty is greater than Assyria and Syria. And today we place our hope not in an alliance with the Lord, but in alliances with the powers of Europe and East Asia and elsewhere, and they place their hope in us, and this is why they’re going under one by one, and this is why we too are going downhill. Neither imperialism nor alliances are the way,

And now Benhadad as part of his policy moves against Israel. He takes over the whole land and all that is left is Samaria with only a relic of the army behind the walls, less than 8,000 men. And so he sends someone in under a flag of truce to tell them the conditions under which the siege will be lifted and the war will be ended, and it’s a triple demand made of Ahab. First, “all your gold and silver”; well at least Benhadad knew something about economics, didn’t he? So he was that much better than our state department and Ahab was too, because at least Ahab knew more than Washington does today, he knew that gold and silver was wealth. Now what was the point of this demand? Well robbed of his treasury, which was the royal treasury, the national treasury, Ahab would lose his power to make war independently, it would take a long time to accumulate a treasury sufficient to provided armament and to pay men and to wage war.

Then second, he demanded his wives. What was the reason for that demand? Well it has important for him to break Ahab’s power and Ahab’s influence over his people, and a king whose wives had been taken by another king was a shamed man, and through the centuries conquerors have done this, it’s a way of breaking the back of another power. Then third, he demanded Ahab’s children. This again was an ancient tactic, take the children rear them as Syrians, rear them in the Syrian religion, and when Ahab is dead the crown prince will be sent back to take the throne and he will be a stranger to his people. This has been done over and over again in the centuries, numerous times, and it puts a division between the new king and his people.

So you break the treasury of the old king, you humiliate and disgrace him before his people so it’s very difficult for him to command them when he has been shamed by having his wives take, and you take his sons and make them stranger to their country and strangers to their father.

Those things have not changed much, we still treat subject nations the same way, usually. There’s one aspect of this triple policy that is very much with us. About the time of the French Revolution and especially with the French revolution the various heads of state began to decide that the new enemy of every government was not the neighbor state or the state they just finished warring with, it was the people, the people, the citizens. And they began to require two things, it started in Europe and it spread here. First, cities used to be built with streets that round around and there used to be neighborhood and the people in the neighborhood might be all Jews and that’s why it called a ghetto, or they could be all English if it were in French town, or they could be all Huguenots, or all Catholic, and they would have a gateway to their part, and it was difficult to go and come without their permission. They began to break down those neighborhoods and make straight roads. Why? Because they could go to any intersection and mount cannons and shoot either way and clear the streets. And with straight streets the Calvary could go charging down them and reduce the area to submission. That was the first thing they decided calculatingly.

The second was this; instead of the King of Prussia taking the King of Austria’s children as hostages, the real hostages should be where the danger is, the people, let’s take their children as hostages, and rear their children to be at war with their parents and to be enemies. That’s how you created the generation gap and the conflict between the generations. Prussia started it, they called it public education; that was its purpose. What Benhadad sought to do to Ahab every modern government does to all the people, and they buy it because they believe they’re getting special privileges. They’re told that, so they believe it.

Ahab agreed, but you know Benhadad’s policy was “I’ll ask so much, I’ll get an agreement on that, and I’ll immediately come back with a bigger demand.” So the emissary came back immediately and said “we want this of everybody in Jerusalem, total looting so that my troops can come in and take all the wealth, the women, the children, that they want.” Now there were a hundred and fifty thousand men out there and there weren’t that many within the walls, can you imagine what was going to happen? They would have taken not only all the women and children and wealth, they would have taken all the men as slaves and so the elders of Israel said “nothing doing, we want no part of this, we might as well fight and die.” And so Benhadad thought “alright, they’re going to die, tell the troops to get ready and we’ll celebrate, we’re going to wipe out Samaria.” And so he and the 32 kings sat in the pavilion and started to drink themselves dry. What chance did Samaria have with only a handful of troops?

At this point a prophet came forward and said “ye shall know that I am the Lord, because at this point against all appearances I will give you the victory.” How? Well call out the princes of the provinces, a handful of young men, send them out as a commando operation, and follow up after they go out with the remaining troops, 7,000 approximately in number. Now as these young men, 232, came out of the gates there was immediately some doubt in the minds of Assyrians. Nobody attacks under those circumstances, what would be the logic of their position? Why the logic would be that they would stay in those walls and try to hold off the enemy, and hope that maybe Assyria would attack Syria and thereby pull off their troops to defend their rear. Or perhaps that somebody else would attack Syria. But to attack about 150,000 men with 232? Well when they reported this to Benhadad he said “Well whatever they’re planning to do, if they’re coming out peacefully or coming out to do some grandstand bit of fighting, take them alive.” Now that was a drunken order and a stupid one. Can you take a fighting man alive? If you try to do it you’re likely to get killed. Here’s a man trying to kill you and you’re trying to capture him alive, can you imagine any greater absurdity? Well the natural result was that it created confusion and when 7,000 more came out with that the only standing order the Syrian ranks were decimated, they were stricken with panic and they fled.

Now the prophet told Ahab “These men shall return next spring, prepare yourself.” The counselors of king Benhadad never breathed a word about the fact that “we lost that battle because you were drunk”, they blamed the 32 kings. Now those 32 kings wouldn’t have dared touch a glass unless Benhadad first told them “let’s drink”, but he replaced them with military men and he prepared a great army, a tremendous one. And then these men said ‘the gods of Israel are gods of the hills, therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain and surely we shall be stronger than they’ and thereby they incurred the wrath of God.

Now as they went back to battle Israel a handful against all the power of Syria, again by the miraculous power of God they won a dramatic victory. They slew the Syrians and hundred thousand footmen in one day. The Syrian army fled to Aphek, everybody wanted refuge. Now obviously no small city is going to take a vast army, maybe fifty hundred thousand men or better inside. What food they might have to resist a siege by Israel would be quickly consumed in a few days, so when Benhadad flew into the city ahead of everybody else and went into an inner chamber they shut the gates, but the panicky army tried to climb over the walls and with all those men clambering over the walls the walls collapsed and thousands, 27,000, died in the collapsing walls and there was Benhadad in a city where the walls were down, and so his servant said “now these Israelite kings are merciful kings.” Of course they were referring to the softness of Israel due to its policy of alliances. “Let us go out to these men, let us put sackcloth on our loins, and a rope upon our heads.” That meant to take a short piece of rope and make a noose at one end and put it around their neck to indicate “we’re at your mercy, you can hang us, you can kill us, we beseech you be merciful” and so they went out.

“And they said to Ahab ‘Thy servant Benhadad saith ‘I pray Thee let me live’” Now this is the man Benhadad who, just the previous year, was demanding Ahab’s [Audio cut out approximately 2 seconds long] easier to be in alliance with Benhadad who wanted his wives and children and his wealth. And he thought “now here’s an opportunity to demonstrate my peaceful intentions and what a good ally I am.” “Is he yet alive? He is my brother.” This must be the only part of the Bible that our state department knows anything about and they probably stopped reading at this point [laughter]. Well of course the Syrian men caught this immediately and they produced Benhadad who was hiding behind something or other and dragged him forward while Ahab was feeling so glowingly virtuous and friendly and ready to be an ally, and he took him up into his chariot, put him on equality with himself, and Benhadad said unto him “the cities which my father took I will restore and so on.” Which, incidentally, he never did. Big hearted of him, wasn’t it? He was totally defeated, totally helpless, and Benhadad was acting generously, and Ahab was buying it.

Now at this time one of the sons of the prophets said unto his neighbor in the word of the Lord “Smite me I pray thee.” And the man refused to smite him, after all they were brothers, friends. “Then said he unto him, because thou hast not obeyed the voice of the Lord, behold as soon as thou art departed from me a lion shall slay thee.” And as soon as he was departed from him a lion found him and slew him. What was God saying? The fact that they were good friends meant nothing in the sight of God. When God said “smite him” it was the word of the Lord which should prevail. When God speaks in this word we do not listen to the commentators or the preachers if they are contrary to it, we obey the word of the Lord. And when God says “thou shalt not make any alliances with the heathen nations roundabout He means it, He doesn’t say ‘except when it’s convenient for you” or “you in your wisdom determine it to be wise.” And so God slew that man, an otherwise good man, but disobedient. And the wages of sin are in every age death.

And so the prophet presented himself to Ahab with a story and he said “sir, I want you to settle a problem, in the battle one of my fellow soldiers captured someone who was a valuable prisoner and there was a good ransom that could be gotten for his life, a very important man in Syria and we could of gotten quite a sum for him, or he could have. And this man who was an officer over me said ‘keep this man in safety, his life for yours or a talent of silver’ which is a fortune. But he said ‘in the midst of all the confusion and fuss of the battle he got away’ and Ahab turned on him coldly and said “so shall thy judgment be, thy self has decided it. You agreed to the terms. You had the word of a superior, you failed, therefore you take the penalty.” And the man unwrapped his face and said “thus saith the Lord ‘because thou hast let go out of thy hand the man whom I appointed to utter destruction therefore thy life shall go for his life and thy people for his people.’ In my case, in the parable I just enacted for you it was only a superior officer, but it’s the word of the covenant God which you have disobeyed, and therefore the penalty is death.”

Now age after age men who are ostensibly of the covenant, of Israel or of the church have sought to see the word of God in terms of their own eyes and their own wisdom, and they have said “now this I like, and this I don’t, and this is good for today but of course as long as I’m a spiritual man I can chart out a course. Don’t I pray twice every day? Don’t I go faithfully to the Lord’s house? Surely the Lord will honor my way.” But there are two basic aspects to a covenant. Every covenant has first of all the shedding blood. The shedding of blood signifies that he who violates the covenant dies so that when a covenant is made there is bloodshed to signify the penalty for violation thereof. And when Israel made the covenant with God the blood of the sacrificial animals was caught in basins and sprinkled all over the people to signify that the death penalty would be upon them if they violated the covenant, and the death penalty has been proclaimed and executed in Jesus Christ so that we stand in the covenant because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and we are in the covenant because of His shed blood for our sins which means that we are bound by His blood.

The other aspect of the covenant is the law. No law, no covenant. The two are inseparable; blood and law are basic to every covenant. The law is the agreement between the two. God binds Himself by His word, God who cannot lie. He says “Thus I will be unto thee” and the people take this book and say “thus shall we be unto Thee oh Lord so that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” And so Christ as our representative keeps this law perfectly, and He regenerates us and makes us the new Israel of God and gives us by His Spirit power, writes that law on the tables of our hearts so that we have it here, as well as here, and tells us to go out and we are saved that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled, that is put into force through us. Because we are the people of the blood we are the people of His law, the people of His word, the people of His book. Unto the extent that we doubt or disobey, or diminish any word of this we are like that man to whom the prophet said “smite me” and he said “not you my friend.” We have put our word above His word and our Lord says “that I have come to put enmity between fathers and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, in terms of this.” They are the people of the flood; they are the people of my word.

But all around us we have people who claim to be of the covenant of God, but they want the covenant on their terms, a lawless covenant, a bloodless covenant, a covenant in which man says “it will be thus and so, and Lord see how spiritual I am, I fast twice in a day, I do this and I do that. These are the things I choose to do Lord, and see how well I do them.” “Ye shall know that I am the Lord” God said to Israel as He gave them the victory before the gates of Samaria and as He gave them the victory before Aphek, and then because they refused to know Him as the Lord He determined that they should know Him as the Lord in His judgment. Therefore Thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people.

These United States were established deliberately to be a covenant nation and a covenant people. Again and again in the early years of this country the men who established it spoke of themselves as a covenant people. They sent summons to England and elsewhere asking immigrants to come say ‘here we build the new Zion of our God, here we establish a covenant people from whence the word must go unto all nations.’ They invoked the covenant and we cannot depart from that. We are under the burden of it as surely as we are under the burden of Adam’s fall, and we bear the judgment on that fall, and we bear the judgment upon our apostasy from the covenant of our God.

All men, says God repeatedly to Isaiah, shall know that I am the Lord and every tongue shall confess and every knee shall bow to me. Either as their Lord, or as their judge, ye shall know the Lord. How will you know Him? As Lord and Savior, or as judge? Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father we come unto Thee pleading for this land. It is Thy country Oh Lord, and Thy people whom Thou didst bless above all nations and we were established upon Thy word and upon Thy covenant and we have forsaken Thy word cast down Thine altars and imprisoned Thy servants, oh Lord have mercy upon us. Recall us again to Thy word and to Thy covenant, make us a people knowing the blood of the covenant and the law of the covenant faithful in season and out of season to Thine every word. Make us zealous in prayer, obedient in all our lives, and joyful in Thy word, that we may be more than conquerors through Him that loved us, even Jesus Christ our Lord. In His name we pray, amen.

[Moderator] We’ve been having a short time of questions and answers after each message and I trust that those of you that had questions the last couple nights and have not asked them, that you will begin to do so. I’ve got a couple that I want to ask tonight for the benefit of the rest of you. Before I ask mine are their others that may have a question they would like to begin with tonight? Either on the message or anything else related.

Alright, brother {?}

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] The question is with respect to social security what will happen to it and what is our escape from it. It has been rightly called social insecurity.

First of all it is not an insurance or a pension system, it is simply a tax. As quickly as the money is paid in it is spent by the federal government and some IOU’s put on deposit. The only way those IO [Audio cut off.]