ISRAEL. 
23 
Benhadad, the Syrian, suddenly declares war against Israel, and, at the head of two- 
and-thirty vassal kings, pours so overwhelming a force into the country, that all resistance 
is abandoned. The King of Israel flies before him, and, with the remnant of his army, 
takes refuge in the capital, where he is besieged, and where his refusal to surrender at 
mercy is answered by an immediate order for the storm. Of all the combinations of human 
terror, such a crisis must be the most terrible. For what language can equal the reality of 
its despair; the agonising images of insult, rapine, and massacre before the general eye; the 
vast and various miseries of a fugitive population, crowded within the walls of a great city, 
with a barbarian enemy at its gates, awaiting only the signal for slaughter! Ahab, in utter 
hopelessness, surrounded by his nobles, sits in his palace, expecting to hear only the roar of 
the assault. It is at this last moment, that one of the prophets, at whose head was Elijah, 
is sent to the king: he enters the royal presence, and proclaims the words:—“ Thus saith 
the Lord, Hast thou seen all this great multitude? Behold, I will deliver it into thine hand 
this day.” He then declares the purpose of the miracle: “ And thou shalt know that I AM 
the Lokd .” 1 
The king, still in despair, scornfully asks, where he is to find an army? “ By whom” 
am I to fight this battle? He is answered, Even by the few within this hall; “ By the 
young men of the princes of the provinces.” And “ who shall order the battle?” who is to 
be the leader in this frantic enterprise ? asks the hopeless and unbelieving king. “ Thou,” 
sceptic and trembler, even thou! is the prophet’s answer. 
By the Divine command the princes, amounting only to two hundred and thirty-two 
men, issue from the gates, to attack the whole host of Syria! They are not suffered even 
to wait for night, or to try the effect of surprise. The miracle is to vindicate itself to all 
eyes; they march out in noonday. The Syrian king, in contempt of their numbers, orders 
them to be taken alive. But, impelled by the Divine power, they are irresistible; they are 
seen to destroy those sent to seize them, rush into the camp, and fill it with slaughter. The 
seven thousand troops in Samaria sally forth with Ahab at their head, and complete the 
rout of the invader. 
Taking events like those in the simplest light, what must be their inevitable effect on 
the mind of any people, in any period of the earth ? What a tide of wonder must rush 
through the general bosom! what acclamations must burst from the lips of the thousands 
watching from the walls the progress of the victory! what rejoicings must swell the heart 
of parent and child thus rescued beyond all hope from the havoc of the sword! and what 
an instinctive contrast must have been drawn alike by peasant and king between the rising 
of a day when every man expected to be in his grave before its close, and the coming of an 
evening filled with the exultation of boundless triumph and matchless miracle! Even 
intractable as Israel was, how many a knee, before that sun went down, must have bowed 
to the Mighty God; who had been the shield of their fathers, and who, in all their 
wanderings, had not yet forgotten his people Israel! 
Yet this was but one of many deliverances. Before the prophetic messenger left the 
king, he warned him to expect another invasion in the next year. But when the event 
1 Kings, xx. 13, &c. 
