1 Kings 21:10

A VILLAINOUS COMPACT

‘And set two men, sons of Belial, before him, to bear witness against him, saying, Thou didst blaspheme God and the king. And then carry him out, and stone him, that he may die.’

1 Kings 21:10

Ahab is akin, both in his sin and his recovery, to the mass of mankind. He has neither sinned like Saul, nor will he mourn like David. He has been pusillanimous in his sin, and he will not be other than faint-hearted in his return to God. He moves, on the whole, in that middle sphere of moral life which is at best never heroic, and at worst something better than detestable, and which is, after all, the sphere of the mass of humankind.

I. Observe, first, that the repentance of Ahab, so far as it went, was a real repentance.—(1) There is evidently in him a measure of that fear of God which is the beginning of true spiritual wisdom. (2) He does not attempt to palliate his sin. He is silent, not because he has nothing to acknowledge, but because he knows himself to be so simply and altogether wicked that he has nothing to say.

II. Wherein was Ahab’s penitence deficient?—At what point does he cease to be an example and become a terrible warning?

There is nothing in Ahab’s subsequent conduct to show that he had attained to anything deeper than a fear of God’s judgments and an acknowledgment of his own guilt. He feared the consequences of sin, but that by loving God he hated sin itself is more than we can venture to suppose. For: (1) A true hatred of past sins will at all cost put them away and cut off the occasions which led to them. (2) The contrite sinner is concerned for the glory of God, which he has obscured. But with Ahab self was the centre still. He trembled at judgments which would light upon himself; and, on the same principle, he was unequal to sacrifices which were painful to self, however necessary to his Master’s honour.

III. The paramount influence upon Ahab’s mind came from without, and not from within him.—Jezebel stands behind him as an incarnation of the evil one. If Ahab ever struggled to maintain his fear of God, he soon sank vanquished by the more than human energy of his foe, to await his final reprobation.

Canon Liddon.

Illustration

‘Compared with Ahab’s palace gardens the property of Naboth’s was a quite insignificant detail. Yet that little piece of land was Ahab’s ruin. It was small, yet it was large enough to wreck him. He set his heart on it with such desire that everything else seemed valueless without it. And it was not the great possessions which he owned, nor the great dreams of conquest which he cherished—it was not these, but a few roods of land, that brought Ahab in dishonour to his grave. It does not need a blow to destroy eyesight. A grain will do it, or the prick of a fine needle. You may silence the lute by breaking it in twain, but a little rift “makes all the music mute.” Whenever Christ is crucified afresh, great sins are like the spear that wounds His side, but little sins—what we call little sins—are like the nails that pierce His hands and feet.’