1 Kings 21:17-24

C. THE CONDEMNATION BY ELIJAH 21:17-24

TRANSLATION

(17) And the word of the LORD came unto Elijah the Tishbite, saying, (18) Arise, go down to meet Ahab king of Israel, who is in Samaria; behold he is in the vineyard of Naboth which he has gone down to possess. (19) And speak onto him saying, Thus says the LORD: Have you murdered; and also taken possession? Then you speak unto him, saying, Thus says the LORD: In the place where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, the dogs shall also lick your blood. (20) And Ahab said unto Elijah, Have you found me, O my enemy? And he answered, I have found you, because you have sold yourself to do evil in the eyes of the LORD. (21) Behold I am about to bring against you evil, and it will consume after you, and I will cut off to Ahab male descendants, even the one shut up and the one left in Israel. (22) And I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah, because of the provocation with which you have provoked Me, and because you have made Israel to sin. (23) And also of Jezebel the LORD has spoken, saying, The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel. (24) And the dead of Ahab in the city shall the dogs eat, and the dead in the field shall the birds of the heavens eat.

COMMENTS

God would not allow the ruthless murder of Naboth to go unrebuked. Elijah the prophet was reactivated (1 Kings 21:17) and sent to meet Ahab in the vineyard which he had confiscated (1 Kings 21:18). That Ahab might realize the full impact of what he had done, the prophet was to open the conversation with a penetrating rhetorical question: Have you murdered and also taken possession? This indictment was to be followed by a pronouncement of the doom of Ahab: In the place where dogs licked Naboth's blood, shall dogs lick your blood! (1 Kings 21:19). The execution of this sentence against Ahab was stayed when the king repented[487] (cf. 1 Kings 21:27 ff.). But the subsequent folly and sin of Ahab brought down upon this king a judgment of God strikingly similar to that which is here pronounced against him.

[487] This explains the seeming contradiction between the prediction of Elijah here and the actual events of 1 Kings 22. According to 1 Kings 21:13 Naboth was executed outside the city of Jezreel. According to 1 Kings 22:38, Ahab's blood was licked up by the dogs at the pool of Samaria. It is also possible that the Hebrew bimqom -asher should be translated not in the place where, but in place of that. The point would then be that Ahab's blood would be subjected to a similar fate, rather than that the two occurrences would happen at the same spot.

Ahab was shocked at the sudden appearance of Elijah whom he had not seen since the Carmel contest. Now at the very moment Ahab was entering on the fruit of his sin, God's prophet of judgment appeared! Have you found me out? the conscience-stricken king meekly asked. Ahab considered Elijah his enemy because it seemed that this prophet always had been opposed to him and always had thwarted him. Yet it was not because he was the king's enemy that Elijah had sought out Ahab, but because the king had sold himself, i.e., completely surrendered himself, to do what was evil in the eyes of the Lord (1 Kings 21:20). Ahab, the supreme judge of the land, the representative of God, may have been ignorant of the tactics by which Jezebel proposed to procure the vineyard for him; but he had acquiesced in her infamous crime after its accomplishment, and he was anxious to reap the benefits of it. Thus instead of punishing his guilty wife and those who had carried out her instructions, the king, by his actions, sanctioned and approved the crime. Therefore, the prophetic pronouncement was directed against Ahab.

After he explained the reason for the sentence, Elijah elaborated upon it. The judgment would involve every male descendant of Ahab[488] (1 Kings 21:21). Ahab's house was to be exterminated like that of Jeroboam, the first king of Israel, and Baasha, founder of the second dynasty of the Northern Kingdom. By his actions Ahab had provoked God to anger, and had also encouraged Israel to sin; therefore he must be punished (1 Kings 21:22). Furthermore, the queen must also taste the vengeance of the living God. The dogs would eat Jezebel beside the wall of Jezreel, the scene of her latest crime (1 Kings 21:23). In the prophetic formula used by previous prophets to condemn earlier kings, Elijah closed off his threat against Ahab (1 Kings 21:24; cf. 1 Kings 14:11; 1 Kings 16:4).

[488] The Hebrew reads literally, him who urinates against the wall. On the phrase, the one shut up and the one left in Israel, see comments on 1 Kings 14:10. Behold I am about to bring is the familiar formula by which the prophets threatened imminent judgment. Cf. 1 Kings 14:10; 1 Kings 16:3.