20:32 he is my brother. Ahab’s overly-generous treatment of Ben-Hadad and the Syrians may have been because of the ancestral relationship of the Aramaeans and Israelites. In any case, it was unwise, for it enabled the Syrians to recover and later again attack Israel. God had told Ahab to execute Ben-Hadad, but he did not (I Kings 20:42). As a result, God pronounced—through a prophet—that Ahab would himself be destroyed.