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Life Lessons from Mighty Men – Benaiah Part 1  Benaiah son of Jehoida was a brave warrior from Kabzeel who performed great exploits. He struck down the two sons of Ariel of Moab. He also went down and killed a lion in a cistern on a snowy day. 2 Samuel 23:20 (NET Bible) When we are introduced to Benaiah the subtext to his life seems to be, “When things go from bad to worse.” Few if any of us have ever had to kill a predatory animal with our hands, or at best with a sword. Benaiah fought an animal, a lion no less, but that is merely where the story begins. The amazing thing about Benaiah’s battle with the lion is that it appears that rather than avoiding the confrontation he sought it out. The story is not that he simply fought a lion, but that he “went down” to fight a lion. The reason that he had to go down to fight the lion is that this particular lion was in a pit or cistern. Benaiah faced a beast, a divinely designed killing machine, and he did it in a confined space with no room to run or flee the scene. The last and possibly the most unbelievable part of this struggle is that Benaiah chose to go to battle on a snowy day. Snow is a rare occurrence in Israel, occurring every few years and even then only in the mountainous parts of the region. In the snow Benaiah would have had difficulty keeping his footing and the least little bit of a slip and the beast could have pounced on him before he even had a chance to react. So why did he choose to go to war with a lion? Was Benaiah insane? Did he survive this seemingly foolish act out of sheer luck or good fortune? A deeper look at the situation reveals that Benaiah’s actions versus the lion were anything but foolish and his victory was far from the result of luck. First, by attacking the lion in the pit Benaiah actually chose a battleground that reinforced his strengths and minimized that of the lion’s. A smaller area reduced the lion’s ability to use his superior speed in an attack. Second, while the snow would have made Benaiah’s footing treacherous it would have also been a disadvantage for the lion as well. The lion, though more sure-footed and agile, would have been just as unfamiliar with snow, if not more so that Benaiah. Third, in battle just as in outdoor sports such as football in snowy weather the advantage is always with the aggressor. Next winter watch a football game played in the snow. The offense always has an advantage because they know where the play is going, but the defense has to try to keep up all without slipping. There are many times in our lives when things seem to be getting more and more difficult. One minute we are facing a lion of a problem, the next minute we realize we are trapped with that problem in a pit, and before you know it there are little flakes landing on our noses. In times like those it always seems like there is plenty of reason to despair, and little reason to hope. Circumstances, however, can change instantly, and often with a little patience and a lot of faith we just might see that those very things that seem to spelling our doom might eventually turn out to be part of our salvation. Staff Writer: Aaron Sharp |
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