Ben-hadad, the king of Syria, swept through Israel with 32 kings in tow. Arriving at the capital in Samaria, he encamped at the gate and demanded surrender from King Ahab. “Deliver to me your silver and your gold, your wives and your children” (1 Ki 20:5).
Ahab agrees to the demand, but then stalls. The messengers from Ben-hadad arrive again and demand the same tribute. This time, Ahab seeks counsel. He draws together the elders of the land, who encourage him not to bow to Ben-hadad’s demands.
Ben-hadad blusters back, boasting of his power, “The gods do so to me and more also, if the dust of Samaria shall suffice for handfuls for all the people who follow me” (1 Ki 20:10). “You won’t be able to count the number of people who bow to me,” Ben-hadad brags.
Ahab retorts, “Let not him who straps on his armor boast himself as he who takes it off” (1 Ki 20:11). “Boast at the end of the battle, not the beginning,” Ahab says.
It’s an unusual moment for Ahab. After all, the author earlier tells us that, “Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him” (1 Ki 16:30). Yet for a brief moment, Ahab acts courageously. If the Lord can use Balaam’s donkey to speak truth, he can use Ahab.
The Lord sent word to Ahab that he would strike down the Syrians, “Because the Syrians have said, ‘The Lord is a god of the hills but he is not a god of the valleys,’ therefore I will give all this great multitude into your hand, and you shall know that I am the Lord” (1 Ki 20:28). And so God struck down the Syrian army and granted Ahab victory.
Be wary of boasting when you haven’t yet strapped on your armor.
Several millennia later, Teddy Roosevelt would echo Ahab,
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
We would do well to heed Ahab and Roosevelt’s warnings. In our contemporary world, shrunk by media, it is enticing to microwave hot takes for all types of issues. Geopolitical events, religious issues, and economic and social policies entice us to weigh in. We want to know what is right and wrong, good and evil, and we want to hold firm opinions in fields in which we have little to no experience.
Ben-hadad meant “son of Hadad,” the Syrian god of thunder. It’s a fitting name. He was booming and terrifying, but relatively harmless. There are a lot of Ben-hadads out there today, those who dial up every opinion to 100 decibels.
I’ve listened to pundits who’ve never been pastors weigh in with certainty about how pastors ought to lead their congregations. Hubris is not a one-way street: you might have listened to pastors weigh in on your area of expertise with outsized opinions.
A measure of humility would serve us all well. Be careful not to give too much weight to the opinions of those speaking outside their area of expertise. And don’t feel obligated to have an opinion on everything. Warning lights should flash if we think that we are pretty confident we know the right solution for the situation in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, tariffs, and the dechurching of America.
Ahab was right. “Let not him who straps on his armor boast himself as he who takes it off.”
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Photo by Luca Di Giovine on Unsplash