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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Kings 16:30 - 16:30
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Whereas the former kings of Israel had only perpetuated the sin of Jeroboam, i.e., the calf-worship. or worship of Jehovah under the image of an ox, which he had introduced, Ahab was not satisfied with this. לֶכְתֹּו הֲנָקֵל וַיְהִי, “it came to pass, was it too little?” i.e., because it was too little (cf. Ewald, §362, a.) to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, that he took as his wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal the king of the Sidonians, and served Baal, and worshipped him. וַיֵּלֵךְ before וַיַּעֲבֹד, “he went and served,” is a pictorial description of what took place, to give greater prominence to the new turn of affairs. אֶתְבַּעַל .sri (i.e., with Baal) is the Εἰθώβαλος (בַּעַל אִתֹּו or Ἰθόβαλος: Jos. Ant. viii. 13, 1) mentioned by Menander in Josephus, c. Ap. i. 18, who was king of Tyre and Sidon, and priest of Astarte, and who usurped the throne after the murder of his brother, king Pheles, and reigned thirty-two years. Jezebel (אִיזֶבֶל, i.e., probably without cohabitation, cf. Gen 30:20, = untouched, chaste; not a contraction of אֲבִיזֶבֶל, as Ewald, §§273, b., supposes) was therefore, as tyrant and murderess of the prophets, a worthy daughter of her father, the idolatrous priest and regicide. Baal (always הַבַּעַל with the article, the Baal, i.e., Lord κατ ̓ ἐξοχήν) was the principal male deity of the Phoenicians and Canaanites, and generally of the western Asiatics, called by the Babylonians בֵּל = בְּעֵל (Isa 46:1), Βῆλος, and as the sun-god was worshipped as the supporter and first principle of psychical life and of the generative and reproductive power of nature (see at Jdg 2:13). Ahab erected an altar to this deity הַבַּעַל בֵּית, in the house (temple) of Baal, which he had built at Samaria. The worship of Baal had its principal seat in Tyre, where Hiram, the contemporary of David and Solomon, had built for it a splendid temple and placed a golden pillar (χρυσοῦν κίονα) therein, according to Dius and Menander, in Joseph. Ant. viii. 5, 3, and c. Ap. i. 18. Ahab also erected a similar pillar (מַצֵּבָה) to Baal in his temple at Samaria (vid., 2Ki 3:2; 2Ki 10:27). For statues of images of Baal are not met with in the earlier times; and the בְּעָלִים are not statues of Baal, but different modifications of that deity. It was only in the later temple of Baal or Hercules at Tyre that there was, as Cicero observes (Verr. iv. 43), ex aere simulacrum ipsius Herculis, quo non facile quidquam dixerim me vidisse pulcrius.