¹¹ He is saying, ‘Jeroboam will soon be killed, and the people of Israel will be sent away into exile.’”

⁴ While they drank from them they praised their idols made of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.

⁵ Suddenly, they saw the fingers of a human hand writing on the plaster wall of the king’s palace, near the lampstand. The king himself saw the hand as it wrote, ⁶ and his face turned pale with fright. His knees knocked together in fear and his legs gave way beneath him.

¹⁶ About noontime, as Ben-hadad and the thirty-two allied kings were still in their tents drinking themselves into a stupor, ¹⁷ the troops of the provincial commanders marched out of the city as the first contingent.

As they approached, Ben-hadad’s scouts reported to him, “Some troops are coming from Samaria.”

¹⁸ “Take them alive,” Ben-hadad commanded, “whether they have come for peace or for war.”

¹⁹ But Ahab’s provincial commanders and the entire army had now come out to fight. ²⁰ Each Israelite soldier killed his Aramean opponent, and suddenly the entire Aramean army panicked and fled. The Israelites chased them, but King Ben-hadad and a few of his charioteers escaped on horses.

²⁴ They will be killed by the sword or sent away as captives to all the nations of the world. And Jerusalem will be trampled down by the Gentiles until the period of the Gentiles comes to an end.

²⁷ So I will send you into exile, to a land east of Damascus,^[a]” says the Lord, whose name is the God of Heaven’s Armies.