1 Kings 20:34

" I will send thee away, " etc . On another occasion such conduct as this was commanded ( 2 Kings 6:22 , 2 Kings 6:23 ). Why, then, was it sinful now? Precisely because it was not commanded; because God intended the opposite ( 1 Kings 20:42 ). It was not clemency, it was culpable weakness to send this overbearing despot, who had already cost Israel so dear, to send him to his home, there to renew his plots against the people of God. As well might the magistrate compassionate the burglar, or the garotter, and instead of shutting him up in prison, send him into the streets, to be the plague of society. The king, like the magistrate, is trustee for the commonwealth. He has no right to gratify his benevolent instincts at the expense of the community. Still less right had the theocratic king, the representative of Heaven, to liberate, ex mero arbitrio, a tyrant whom God had manifestly given into his hands. "Charity cannot excuse disobedience." He had proved Ben-hadad twice, yet he asks for no material guarantees. He neither consults nor remembers his deliverer.