1 Kings 21:27

And it came to pass, when Ahab heard those words, that he rent his clothes.

Ahab’s repentance

I. How Ahab’s repentance was called forth. A threefold crime is here laid to the charge of the King of Israel: that he had provoked God to anger--that he had made Israel to sin--and that he had sold himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord. It was for this cause that the sword of the Almighty had been whetted for the destruction of himself and his house. It is a common proverb that “Every man has his price”; that there is something for which every one will be found willing to sell himself. These are words of very awful import, and yet they are but too true concerning every natural man. The children of this world, proud as they are of themselves, may always be bought with one temptation or another: honours, profits, pleasures of one class or another, will induce them to debase themselves more and more. The idol to which Ahab sacrificed was his affection for Jezebel. His own will, his honour, his peace of conscience, the salvation of his soul, the favour of God--all that he had or hoped for, was laid at this idol’s feet. Would that he were singular in such infatuation; or only one of a few! But alas, it is common in every age. Let any one ask himself, why he is an unbeliever; why he despises the people of God; why he serves the world and the devil, and endeavours to stifle every good conviction. What an accursed alliance, though it be under the sacred name of friendship itself, must that be, which is connected with enmity against God!

II. What kind of repentance it was. This mourning of the King of Samaria was real as far as it went. The wretched outward dress in which he appeared was a true expression of his inward temper and state of mind. Still, much was wanting in his repentance to render it a repentance unto life and salvation. It was not a mourning like that of the woman that was a sinner at the feet of Jesus, like that of the thief on the cross, or that of the poor publican. Ahab’s repentance was utterly destitute of love; and it is love which hallows all our acts and deeds, and give them a real value. Now, when a sinner has, with heartfelt seriousness, pronounced sentence against himself before the throne of God, he has begun to die to the law. For here is an end of his supposed self-righteousness, and of his own supposed ability. But that true repentance, which the Scripture calls a godly sorrow, and a repentance which needeth not to be repented of, does not, as yet necessarily exist. This is but, as it were, dying before the Divine holiness; as we see was the case of St. Paul, in Romans 7:1,: “When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.” Now, this glorious and happy death comes by “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:2). And this law is no other than the Gospel; whereby alone it is that true, divine, and saving repentance is called forth.

III. What were its consequences. Here was a delay of execution; but no revocation of the sentence. The curse still rested upon Ahab and his house. Yet even this respect shown to a repentance which had so little intrinsic worth, this exemption of Ahab from personally experiencing those storms which impended over his house, was an instance of great condescension and favour. But why, it may be asked, if Ahab’s humiliation was so little worth, was any Divine regard shown towards it? This, we answer, was to show by a living example that self-condemnation and abasement before God is the way to escape His anger, and obtain His favour. Just as a novice in any art or trade may be cheered by words of encouragement at the first favourable attempt which he makes, however important it may be; so the exemption which the Lord made in Ahab’s favour on repenting, was calculated to encourage him to aim at something better. Self-condemnation, self-abasement, and giving God the glory, are the first steps from spiritual death to spiritual life. (F. W. Krummacher, D. D.)

Repentance of Ahab

I. A person whose heart is unchanged, and who is totally destitute of real piety, may perform many outward religious duties, and have inward sentiments and affections, somewhat resembling the Christian graces.

II. How powerful is the word of God, which can humble the haughtiest oppressors, and make the most hardened of mortals tremble.

III. Sin is always succeeded by sorrow and remorse. (H. Kollock, D. D.)

Ahab

In the context we have three subjects worthy of attention.

1. A fiendishly greedy soul,

2. A truly heroic soul.

3. A morally alarmed soul. In this incident we discover three things.

I. The worthlessness of a partial reformation.

II. The mighty force of Divine truth.

III. The self-frustrating power of sin. (Homilist.)

Ahab’s sin and repentance

There is much in this old chronicle of sin and doom which it may profit us to ponder. Let me try to bring out of it some present-day lessons of warning and admonition.

I. Happiness consists, not in having, but in being. How many even to-day are letting their lives be darkened because some Naboth denies them a vineyard, or some Mordecai will not salute them! They forget that, even if they had the things which they so long for, happiness would be as far from them as ever, and some new object would take the place of their old grievance. They do lack one thing. But that one thing is not external to them, but within them. They lack a new heart, and until they get that they can have no abiding satisfaction. “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again.”

II. The evil of unhallowed alliances. Dazzled with the glitter of a fortune, or the glare of an exalted position, a young person enters into the sacred alliance of matrimony with one who has no moral stability or Christian excellence, and the issue is certain misery, with the probable addition of crime and disaster.

III. The perversion which an evil heart makes of religious knowledge. The Spaniards have a proverb somewhat to this effect, “When the serpent straightens himself, it is that he may go into his hole.” So when the unscrupulous suddenly manifest some punctilious regard for legal forms or for religious observances, you may be sure that they are after mischief. Some of the blackest crimes that have ever been committed have been perpetrated through the forms of law, or under the colour of religion. Is it not true that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked”? and are we forcibly impressed with the fact that no one is so daringly defiant in wickedness as he who knows the truth and disregards it? Mere knowledge never yet saved any one from ruin; for, if the heart be perverted, everything that enters the head is only made subservient to its iniquity. Your educated villains are all the more dangerous because of their education; and among godless men they are the most to be dreaded who have an intelligent acquaintance with the Word of God.

IV. The price which we have to pay for sin. What weighty words are these of Elijah to Ahab, “Thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord”! The great German poet has elaborated this thought into that weird production wherein he represents his hero as selling his soul to the mocking Mephistopheles. And it were well that every evil-doer laid to heart the moral of his tragic tale. That which the sinner gives for his unhallowed pleasure or dishonest gain is himself. Consider it well.

V. The curse which attends ill-gotten gains. The gains of ungodliness are weighted with the curse of God; and, sooner or later, that will be made apparent. For the moral government of God to-day is administered on the same principles as those which we find underlying this narrative. True, the dishonest man now pursuing his purposes in secret may have no Elijah sent to him, with the special mission to declare to him the sort of punishment which shall overtake him; but Elijah’s God is living yet, and one has only to open his eyes, and mark the progress of events from year to year, to be convinced that “sorrow tracketh wrong, as echo follows song--on, on, on.”

VI. The tenderness of God toward the penitent. Ahab was filled with bitter regret at what had been done, and God, who will not break the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax, said that the evil should not come in his day. If God were so considerate of Ahab, the idolater, the murderer, the thief, will He not regard thee, O thou tearful one! who art bemoaning the number and aggravation of thy sins? Go, then, to Him; and let this be thine encouragement. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)

Ahab’s repentance, and punishment deferred

I. The repentance of Ahab was awakened by the fearful prediction of coming vengeance, which Elijah delivered at the moment when he had taken possession of Naboth’s vineyard. Mark the power of the Divine word. Is it not “like as a fire, saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces”? In the moment of Ahab’s humiliation, his remorse was sincere; i.e., his conscience was roused, his fears excited, his sense of God’s justice real, and his desire for pardon unfeigned.

II. Ahab’s punishment was suspended in his own days. “Because he humbleth himself before Me, I will not bring the evil in his days.” How can this be? It is possible that the God of mercy should show mercy; and that His mercy should rejoice against judgment. The history of our own lives, still spared and still prolonged, notwithstanding our manifold transgressions, is an evidence of this certain truth. And what is the practical result, arising from this combined view of God’s mercy and truth? Assuredly, it will cause the contrite to hope, and the careless to fear. The one will recognise, in the sorest visitations that befall him, the hand of a gracious Father who chastens that He may bless; and whose afflictions are strewed upon the path of life, like the arrows of Jonathan before David, not for destruction, but for warning. The other will as surely perceive, that God’s word shall not return unto him void; and, that, if it work not his conversion, it must be his condemnation. The threatenings which are revealed, that the sinner may repent, will remain, if he do not repent, to proclaim his fall.

III. The threatened evil, which was suspended in the days of Ahab, should, in his son’s days, be brought upon his house. And here we cannot but call to mind the fact, that, whatever be the difficulties, connected with the view which is here presented to us, of God’s moral government, or however weakly we may succeed in explaining them; it is, still, the government of God, of Him who is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works. The matter of fact, in the history before us, came to pass, as it is here predicted. Evil was brought upon Ahab’s house, in his son’s days Ahaziah, his first successor, soon perished. The next, Jehoram, fell by the arm of Jehu, in the very portion of Naboth’s field. The seventy sons in Jezreel, were also slain, in obedience to the commands of Jehu, which he sent to the elders of that city; and, last of all, the same anointed captain, “slew all that remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men, and all his kinsfolk, and his priests, until he left him none remaining.” Now, if we examine the sacred narrative which relates these events, we shall find that all these descendants of Ahab walked in his evil ways, and wrought evil in the sight of the Lord. It was not the innocent, then, suffering for the guilty; but the guilty reaping the harvest of his own guilt. And since “known unto God are all his works before the beginning of the world,” the whole of this train of wickedness was known likewise,--itself, its causes, and its consequences,--that long process stretching out, from year to year, and from generation to generation,--whose separate and disjointed portions, only, can be discerned by moral intellect,--but the whole of which was, alike, and at the same moment, present to the Eternal Mind. It is difficult for us, in forming our estimate of actions, to preserve this distinction between the occasion which leads to an event, and its immediate effective cause; but a distinction there is, and must be remembered. When a criminal is convicted at the tribunal of an earthly judge, the law, and they who administer it, are the instrumental causes of inflicting the sentence; but the crime committed is the immediate cause which deserves it. We do not confound these things, in our estimate of the dealings between man and man: let us not confound them, therefore, when we are contemplating the revealed dispensations of God to man. But may we not be permitted, in some degree, to trace the course of the Divine counsels, in the present instance? The punishment of Ahab’s descendants, we know to have been inflicted under a theocracy, which employed temporal rewards, and temporal punishments, as the instruments of its government. Now, what instrument could be more powerful, in such a case, than the prospect of misery, about to fall upon the children of the sinner, as well as upon himself? His own licentious and hardened passions might make a man insensible to the fear of temporal evil befalling himself; but, when he was assured, as he could not fail to be, by the moral law of Moses, that Divine wrath would visit his iniquity, upon his “children, unto the third and fourth generation,” every instinctive feeling of parental kindness and affection would be enlisted on the side of duty, and act as a restraint upon the unruly will. (J. S. M. Anderson, M. A.).