1 Kings 20:13-24

¹³At that moment, a prophet came to King Ahab and said to him, “This is what Yahweh says: ‘ Do not be at all afraid RHQ of the large enemy army that you see! I will enable your army to defeat them today, and you will know that it is I, Yahweh, who have the power to do what I say that I will do.’”

¹⁴Ahab asked, “What group of our army will defeat them?” The prophet replied, “The young soldiers who are commanded by the district governors will do it.” The king asked, “Who should lead the attack?” The prophet replied, “You should!”

¹⁵So Ahab gathered the young soldiers who were commanded by the district governors. There were 232 of those men. Then he also summoned all the Israeli army. There were only 7,000 soldiers.

¹⁶They started to attack at noon, while Ben-Hadad and the other rulers were getting drunk in their temporary shelters.

¹⁷The young soldiers advanced first. Some scouts who had been sent out by Ben-Hadad reported to him, “There are men coming out of Samaria city”!

¹⁸He said, “It does not matter whether they are coming to fight against us or to ask for peace. Capture them, but do not kill them

¹⁹The young Israeli soldiers went out of the city to attack the Syrian army, and the other soldiers in the Israeli army followed them.

²⁰Each Israeli soldier killed a Syrian soldier. The rest of the Syrian army then ran away, and the Israeli soldiers pursued them. But King Ben-Hadad escaped riding his horse, along with some other men riding horses.

²¹Then the king of Israel went out of the city, and he and his soldiers captured all the other Syrian horses and chariots, and also killed a large number of Syrian soldiers.

²²Then that same prophet went to King Ahab and said to him, “Go back and prepare your soldiers, and think carefully about what will be necessary for you to do, because the king of Syria with attack with his army again in the springtime of next year.”

²³After the Syrian army was defeated, Ben-Hadad's officials said to him, “The gods that the Israelis worship are gods who live in the hills. Samaria is built on a hill, and that is why their soldiers were able to defeat us. But if we fight against them in the plains/lowlands, we certainly will be able to defeat them.

²⁴So, this is what you should do: You must remove the 32 kings who are leading your troops and replace them with army commanders.