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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Kings 21:20 - 21:20
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Ahab answered, “Hast thou found me (met with me), O mine enemy?” (not, hast thou ever found me thine enemy? - Vulg., Luth.) i.e., dost thou come to meet me again, mine enemy? He calls Elijah his enemy, to take the sting from the prophet's threat as an utterance caused by personal enmity. But Elijah fearlessly replied, “I have found (thee), because thou sellest thyself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord.” He then announced to him, in 1Ki 21:21, 1Ki 21:22, the extermination of his house, and to Jezebel, as the principal sinner, the most ignominious end (1Ki 21:23). הָרַע לַעֲשֹׂות חִתְמַכֵּר to sell one's self to do evil, i.e., to give one's self to evil so as to have no will of one's own, to make one's self the slave of evil (cf. 1Ki 21:25, 2Ki 17:17). The consequence of this is πεπρᾶσθαι ὑπὸ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν (Rom 7:14), sin exercising unlimited power over the man who gives himself up to it as a slave. For 1Ki 21:21, 1Ki 21:22, see 1Ki 14:10-11; 1Ki 15:29-30; 1Ki 16:3, 1Ki 16:12-13. The threat concerning Jezebel (1Ki 21:23) was literally fulfilled, according to 2Ki 9:30. חֵל, written defectively for חֵיל, as in 2Sa 20:15, is properly the open space by the town-wall, pomoerium. Instead of בְּחֵל we have בְּחֵלֶק in the repetition of this threat in 2Ki 9:10, 2Ki 9:36-37, and consequently Thenius and others propose to alter the חֵל here. But there is no necessity for this, as בְּחֵלֶק, on the portion, i.e., the town-land, of Jezreel (not, in the field at Jezreel), is only a more general epithet denoting the locality, and חֵל is proved to be the original word by the lxx.