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There is a strange moment near the end of the story of King Ahab that I had never really noticed until I slowed down and read it carefully.
Ahab is going into battle, but he has a problem. The prophet Micaiah has already warned him that he will not return safely, so Ahab decides to disguise himself. Instead of entering the battle dressed as a king and making himself an obvious target, he goes in looking like an ordinary soldier. On the surface, it seems like a sensible precaution.
Then an unnamed archer fires an arrow.
Some Bible translations say that he fires “at random.” The Hebrew is slightly more complicated than that, but the important point is clear enough: the archer does not knowingly aim at the king. Ahab has disguised himself successfully. As far as the man holding the bow is concerned, he is simply shooting at another soldier somewhere in the middle of a battle.
The arrow flies across the battlefield and somehow finds a gap between the sections of Ahab’s armour. By the end of the day, the king is dead.
It is an extraordinary detail because nothing about the moment looks particularly miraculous. There is no thunder from heaven, no angel guiding the soldier’s hand and no voice telling him where to aim. The archer does not even know that he has struck the king.
He simply fires an arrow, and everything changes.
