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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 330. Ahab's Covetousness
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Ahab's Covetousness
1. Close to the gardens of Ahab, by his new palace at Jezreel, was a vineyard belonging to Naboth, which the king coveted, to make of it a “garden of herbs.” He offered to buy it of Naboth, or to exchange it for another. “The Lord forbid it me,” was the answer, “that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee.” It was the natural answer of a free Israelite, who in the spirit of the Mosaic Law regarded an inherited property as a sacred trust; and even Ahab did not think it possible to override such a refusal. He returned to his palace “heavy and displeased,” sulked, and refused to eat.
It goes without saying that it was Ahab's true part to dismiss the coveted object from his thoughts and accept the situation. But he took the temptation to his heart and made a grievance of what was no more than a perfectly intelligible and legitimate difficulty; and where an entirely honest man would have resolutely put the thought and desire from him, he allowed it to lodge in his heart until all its sweetness turned to gall and bitterness, and he was just in the mood to lend an ear to any dishonest and wicked suggestion. He had wronged Naboth already in his heart; it was a little thing that he should go further and wrong him in fact.
Just as a pilgrim journeying along a road on which he has never been before thinks that each house he sees in the distance is the inn, and, finding that it is not, sets his hopes on the next, and so on with house after house, until at last he comes to the inn; in like manner the soul of man, as soon as she enters upon the new and untried pathway of this life, directs her eyes towards the goal of the Supreme Good, and whatever she sees with any appearance of good in it, thinks that is the object of her quest. And because at first her knowledge is imperfect, owing to inexperience and lack of instruction, things of little worth appear to her of great worth, and so she begins by fixing her desires upon these. Hence we see children first of all set their hearts on an apple; then, at a later stage, they want a bird; then, later, fine clothes; then a horse, and then a mistress; then they want money, at first a little, then a great deal, and at last a gold-mine. And this happens because in none of these things does a man find what he is in search of, but thinks he will come upon it a little further on.1 [Note: Dante, Convivio, iv. 12 (trans. by Paget Toynbee).]
How Ahab longs! Ahab must be possest
Of Naboth's Vineyard, or can find no rest:
His tongue must second his unlawful eye:
Ahab must sue; and Naboth must deny:
Ahab grows sullen; he can eat no Bread:
His Body prostrates on his restless Bed:
Unlawful Lust immoderate often brings
A loathing in the use of lawful things:
Ahab's desire must not be withstood,
It must be purchas'd, though with Naboth's Blood;
Witness must be suborn'd: Naboth must lie
Open to Law; must be condemn'd; and die:
His Goods must be confiscate to the Crown;
Now Ahab's pleas'd; The Vineyard's now his own:
Unlawful Pleasures, when they jostle further
Than ordinary bounds, oft end in murther.
Me thinks, the Grapes that cluster from that Vine,
Should (being prest) afford more blood than wine.2 [Note: Francis Quarles, Divine Fancies, ii. 36.]
2. Very probably Ahab did not meditate any serious misconduct. He evidently had no thought of forcing Naboth to yield to his desires, or of laying violent hands either upon himself or upon his property. Here, as elsewhere, the man has still a troublesome conscience checking an evil will. But Jezebel was not burdened with any such conscientious regard for the rights of others; and when she learned what the cause of her husband's moping was, she bitterly taunted him with his scrupulous timidity, and intimated that she would make short work of Naboth and his inheritance. Jezebel maintained her power over Ahab by pandering to the worst that was in him. She was infinitely more daring and reckless than he. She possessed herself of the royal seal, and wrote a letter to the “elders and nobles” of Jezreel, who evidently formed the local court for the administration of justice. She ordered them to “proclaim a fast” (as if some great crime had been committed), and then to procure two false witnesses who would accuse Naboth of blasphemy against God and the king. The servile magistrates carried out the hideous travesty of justice. Naboth was condemned and stoned to death, and apparently his sons suffered with him. News was sent to the queen, and she in triumph bade her husband go now and take possession of the vineyard.
3. One might have thought that Ahab would have expressed some condemnation of this awful conspiracy, culminating in such a tragic horror. But no! Like many in modern times, though he was restrained by his conscience from committing murder himself, he had no scruple in availing himself of the results of such a crime when perpetrated by another. He flattered himself that though he had no hand in Naboth's death, he might, as well as another, “receive the benefit of his dying.” So, summoning Jehu and Bidkar to accompany him, he drove down from Samaria to Jezreel.
No sooner did he enter the vineyard than Elijah appeared before him, suddenly, abruptly, and mysteriously, as before, and for the last time. This time a further truth had to be vindicated. Not only was Jehovah the living God, who could have no rival in the nature-deities of Canaan or Tyre; He was the God of character as well as of power. Eternal righteousness Himself in His own nature, He demanded righteousness from His worshippers, even from kings.
If the religious feeling of the true worshippers of Jehovah had already been deeply outraged by the position taken up by Ahab towards the worship of Baal, now the whole nation's sense of justice is in like manner outraged by this base murder in the name of the law. Again it is Elijah who gives clear and frank expression to what is exciting the mass of the people so profoundly. At the very instant when, on the day after the judicial murder, Ahab is just on the point of taking possession of the field which has by law fallen to him, Elijah bursts in upon him with the words: “Surely I have seen yester-night the blood of Naboth and of his children: to thee will I requite it on this field.” The fate of the dynasty in the public judgment of the nation is thereby sealed, if Elijah possessed at all the authority which the accounts we have ascribe to him. So far as Ahab himself was concerned, these words were to find their fulfilment in his last battles with the Syrians, which end with the death of the king.
4. The incident is instructive to the student of Hebrew religion, as it illustrates the contrast in the attitude of Phœnician as compared with Hebrew religion towards social morality. In the words of W. R. Smith: “The religion of Jehovah put morality on a far sounder basis than any other religion did, because in it the righteousness of Jehovah as a God enforcing the known laws of morality was conceived as absolute” (The Prophets of Israel, 73). It is more than doubtful whether Ahab really comprehended the religious issues. He regarded Elijah as a mischievous fanatic, “a troubler of Israel” bent on wrecking the imperial schemes of aggrandizement based on alliance with Phœnicia at the expense of Syria, and his hatred hissed out in the words, “Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?” Elijah answered, “I have found thee: because thou hast sold thyself to do that which is evil in the sight of the Lord.” He then foretold the awful end of Ahab, the destruction of his house, and the subsequent fearful death of Jezebel.
When a man fancies that God's prophet is his enemy, and dreams that his finding him out is a calamity and a loss, that man may be certain that something worse will find him out some day. His sins will find him out, and that is worse than the prophet's coming. Picture to yourself this-a human spirit shut up, with the companionship of its forgotten and dead transgressions. There is a resurrection of acts as well as of bodies. Think what it will be for a man to sit surrounded by that ghastly company, the ghosts of his own sins!-and as each forgotten fault and buried badness comes, silent and sheeted, into that awful society, and sits itself down there, think of him greeting each with the question, “Thou too? What! are ye all here? Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?” and from each bloodless spectral lip there tolls out the answer, the knell of his life, “I have found thee, because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord.”1 [Note: Alexander Maclaren.]
5. Elijah's words, not forgotten for nearly twenty years by Jehu, who merely overheard them, sank like lead into the heart of Ahab, and took from him all the joy of his new possession, so that “he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly.” There was yet some sense of justice in him; and these outward symbols of sorrow were not hypocritical. He did not feign the feelings of which they were the signs. He was humiliated. He was sad. If it had been to be done again, he would not have allowed Naboth to be put to death. For so much let us give him credit. But though his repentance was sincere, as far as it went, yet it did not go far enough. He feared the punishment of his sin more than he hated the sin itself. There was no word of restitution. There was no change in the general current of his life. And yet, because he humbled himself, the Lord spoke of it to Elijah (as friend speaks to friend), and declared that the predicted evil should fall in his son's days, and not in the days of Ahab. In a word, Ahab was reprieved, not pardoned. In the heart of Ahab there was a sense of better things, and that sense was recognized and blessed.
Think of the infinite patience of God's love! Again and again, and yet again, does God move our souls within us, and once more give us at least feeling enough to be impressed with what we hear, and with what we see others do, and with what we remember that we ourselves resolved. With inexhaustible patience is the message of the Gospel, the promise of forgiveness, the offer of love, repeated in our hearing, whispered by our consciences, made to thrill through our hearts. And, in spite of sins so often repeated that we can hardly believe them forgiven, we still hear the ever-renewed call to repentance. How soon would our own patience have been worn out if a brother had thus repeatedly sinned against us! Look back at your life and at your besetting sin, and think, if that had been an offence by one of your friends against yourself, how surely your patience with his fault would have been exhausted long before this. And yet God's patience is not worn out with you, or you would not feel even the wish to return to Him again. Nay, our patience with ourselves is sooner worn out than God's patience with us. Sooner do we say, “It's of no use; I cannot help it; I must give up this unavailing struggle”; than does He say, “This is an unprofitable tree; cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?”1 [Note: Archbishop Temple.]