their godsare gods R.V. their god is a god. The LXX. also renders by the singular. The Syrians would speak of the God of Israel as a national divinity, just as they would of their own god. The former battle had been fought in the hill country round about Samaria, and this may have given encouragement to the idea that in a level plain, like that in which their own Damascus lay, the Syrian forces would meet with more success. It was not unnatural, in the heathen ideas about the gods, that they should consider each divinity specially able, and suited, to protect the land over which he was supposed to have the charge.

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