1 Kings 20 Bible study: You yourself have decided it

"Ben Hadad the king of Syria gathered all his army together; and there were thirty-two kings with him, with horses and chariots. He went up and besieged Samaria, and fought against it" (20:1). His first message is short: "Your silver and your gold are mine" (20:3), and his wives and children too (20:3). Ahab gives in at once: "It is according to your saying, my lord, O king. I am yours, and all that I have" (20:4). The second message goes further. Ben Hadad's servants will "search your house and the houses of your servants" (20:6), and "Whatever is pleasant in your eyes, they will put it in their hand, and take it away" (20:6). Now Ahab calls "all the elders of the land" (20:7), and "All the elders and all the people said to him, “Don’t listen, and don’t consent.”" (20:8). Ahab answers, "All that you sent for to your servant at the first I will do, but this thing I cannot do" (20:9). Ben Hadad answers with an oath:"The gods do so to me, and more also, if the dust of Samaria will be enough for handfuls for all the people who follow me" (20:10). Ahab's reply is a saying: "Don’t let him who puts on his armor brag like he who takes it off" (20:11) (tap puts on, brag). In Hebrew the saying itself is four words. Ben Hadad hears it "as he was drinking, he and the kings in the pavilions" (20:12).

1 Kings 20:40→leads toLuke 19:22

The disguised prophet told the king that in the battle a man had been brought to him with the charge, "Guard this man!" (20:39), and "As your servant was busy here and there, he was gone" (20:40). The king of Israel answered, "So shall your judgment be. You yourself have decided it" (20:40). Near Jerusalem (Luke 19:11), Jesus told a parable of a nobleman who gave his servants money and said, "Conduct business until I come" (Luke 19:13). One servant brought back his master's mina, "which I kept laid away in a handkerchief" (Luke 19:20), and gave his reason (Luke 19:21). The nobleman said, "Out of your own mouth I will judge you, you wicked servant!" (Luke 19:22). Jesus doesn't cite 1 Kings 20, so setting the two side by side is a reading, resting on a shared point, not a shared word. Some see the same thing in both: a man given something to keep, who lost it or left it unused, and whose own account is what he is judged by (20:39-40; Luke 19:20-22). Others read each on its own terms: the prophet's story is a disguise, and the verdict falls on the king himself (20:41-42), while Jesus' parable is about what servants do with what their master gives them until he comes (Luke 19:13, 19:15).

חֵרֶםcheremsay KHE-rem

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "devoted thing", and "devotion, ban". Strong's: "usually a doomed object". "The man whom I had devoted to destruction" (20:42) is, in Hebrew, ish chermi, literally "the man of my cherem". This is the word's only use in 1 Kings. Jericho was declared cherem: "The city shall be devoted, even it and all that is in it, to the LORD" (Joshua 6:17), and in 1 Samuel the people took "the best of the devoted things" (1 Samuel 15:21). In 1 Kings 20 the chapter doesn't say when the LORD had devoted Ben Hadad; 20:42 is the only place it says so.