1st Kings Chapter 20 verse 23 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 23. - And the servants of the king of Syria said unto him [naturally anxious to retrieve their character and obliterate their disgrace], Their gods are gods of the hills [All pagan nations have believed in local deities, Dii montium, dii nemorum, etc. (see 2 Kings 18:33-35; 2 Kings 19:12, 13). Keil accounts for this belief - that the gods of Israel were mountain divinities, by the consideration that the temple was built on Mount Moriah, and that worship was always offered on "high places." Kitto reminds us that the law was given from Mount Sinai, and that fire had recently descended on Mount Carmel. "In Syrophoenicia, even mountains themselves had Divine honours paid to them" (Movers, Phoen. 1:667 sqq.) But it is enough to remember that Samaria was a hilly district, and that the courtiers must find some excuse for the defeat]; therefore they were stronger than we; but [Heb. (וְאוּלָם often well rendered but not in this instance) by the LXX. οὐ μὴν δὲ ἀλλά] let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they. [This counsel, which apparently rests on religious grounds alone, was, it is probable, really dictated by the practical consideration that in the plain the Syrians would be able to deploy their chariots a most important arm of their service in a way which they could not do in the valleys round Samaria. See 1 Kings 16:24, note. Moreover the Israelites would lose the advantage of a strong position and the cover of their fortifications if they could be induced to meet them in the "great plain," or on any similar battlefield.]

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(23) Gods of the hills.--The idea of tutelary gods, whose strength was greatest on their own soil, is naturally common in polytheistic religions, which, by the very multiplication of gods, imply limitation of the power of each. Now the greater part of the territory where Jehovah was worshipped was a hill-country. Samaria in particular, the scene of recent defeat, lay in the mountain region of Ephraim. The Israelite armies, moreover, being mostly of infantry--having, indeed, few or no cavalry, except in the time of Solomon--naturally encamped and fought, as far as possible, on the hills; as Barak on Mount Tabor (Judges 4:6-14), Saul on Mount Gilboa (1Samuel 31:1), and Ahab himself (in 1Kings 20:27). Perhaps the worship of Jehovah in the "high places" may have also conduced to this belief that the "gods of Israel were gods of the hills," whose power vanished in the plains; where, of course, the Syrian armies of chariots and horsemen would naturally fight at advantage. Shrewd policy might, as so often is the case, lurk in the advice of Ben-hadad's counsellors under the cover of superstition; as, indeed, it seems also to show itself in seizing the opportunity to increase the central power, by organising the troops of the tributary kings under officers of his own.