Hitherto the Israelites had not cast off their allegiance to Jehovah, or ceased to worship Him, although their worship was damaged by the presence of unworthy emblems, and degraded by maimed rites and an unlawful priesthood. But in the time of Ahab, and under the influence of Jezebel, although they did not formally and expressly renounce Jehovah, they did what was practically the same, by setting up other gods besides Him, and holding Him of no more account than they. Temples were built to them in the metropolis, altars were set up, sacrifices were offered, and bloody and abhorrent rites were performed, by a numerous priesthood. There were nearly a thousand of them; and their frequent presence in the town, and their diligent attendance at the royal court, gave a new and strange aspect to the streets and palaces of Samaria. It is said that there were four hundred who eat their meat at Jezebel’s table; which probably means that they were sustained in the precincts of the palace at her expense. It was clearly seen that this was the fashionable and court religion; whence it would naturally follow, that the mass of the worldly-minded would adopt it also, or at least give a divided attention to it. Had this been endured, the worship of Jehovah would still, doubtless, have been tolerated among those that followed the new religion; for polytheism was tolerant of other gods, and the worshippers of Baal or Ashtaroth would not, on principle, object to the worship of Jehovah, though for themselves they preferred Baal. Jehovah was in their view a God, but He was not their god; they were not his votaries, and He had no claim upon them. It was the sublime monotheism of Judaism that could not be tolerant of any other gods than Jehovah within the sacred land, and that asserted his claim to universal and exclusive worship. This gave voice to the prophets, who proclaimed throughout the land the abomination and futility of this new worship. They denounced the judgments of God upon Ahab and Jezebel, upon the worshippers of Baal, and upon the lands and cities which had been defiled by these detestable enormities, and by miracles, sometimes of judgment and sometimes of mercy, they avouched the divine authority by which they gave forth their utterances. This gave rise to fierce persecution against the worshippers of Jehovah, and especially against the prophets—faithfulness to the Lord God of Israel being by the court regarded as disaffection to the government and its measures. Or, otherwise, Jezebel was determined to maintain her own idolatrous religion in Israel at all hazards; and if, as the prophets alleged, the worship of Baal and of Jehovah could not co-exist, and there could be no peace between their worshippers, then it necessarily became a contest for exclusive and paramount worship; and since either Jehovah or Baal must give place, the hard-willed queen determined that it should not be the god in whose worship she had been brought up. These considerations gave more intensity to her zeal in the establishment of her own worship, and in the suppression of that of Jehovah. Thus, between the smiles of the court upon those who came over to Baal, and the now active hostility evinced against the worshippers of the Lord, it ere long came to pass, that the whole nation had become a nest of idolaters. So it seemed to man’s eye; but the Lord had his hidden ones, even in this time of peril; and when the prophet deemed that he alone had kept the faith, it was made known to him that there were full seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal. Only seven thousand among the millions of Israel! A small number, indeed, to him who counted the nation, but large to him who had deemed that nation lost in this iniquity. It was but a little flock—yet a flock worthy of the great Shepherd’s care—and He did care for it.
Besides the difference in the ultimate object of worship, the worship of the golden calves had never appeared in an aspect so imposing as that now given to the service of Baal and Ashtaroth. This worship was raised up in some degree to a parallel with that of Jehovah at Jerusalem. The golden calf had been established in two provincial towns at the opposite extremities of the kingdom, without any temples, but simply with emblematic images and altars. But now the worship of Baal was centralized in the metropolis, where the temple, doubtless of considerable splendor, was erected, and ceremonial services rendered by numerous bodies of priests. Samaria could now pride itself on being an ecclesiastical, as well as regal metropolis, like Jerusalem; and doubtless many not over-wise persons reckoned, that something the realm had hitherto wanted was now at last supplied.
And what manner of man was he—this Ahab, son of Omri, who gave his royal countenance and sanction to all these doings? Excuse is sometimes made for him as not an essentially wicked, but only a weak man, overborne by the powerful will of a resolute woman, But
“
All wickedness is weakness;”
and it is also true, that all weakness is wickedness, and most of all in a king. He to whose care the welfare of a nation has been entrusted, has no right to be weak. The weakness ascribed to Ahab seems to us merely indolence of character—a love of ease, an indisposition to exertion, unless when thoroughly roused by some awakening stimulus. He was such a man as would rather allow what he feels to be wrong, for the sake of a quiet life, than take the trouble of asserting what he knows to be right. To shake off—to battle against—this sloth of temper, which made him the tool of others, and rendered him impotent for all good, was his duty as a man, and tenfold his duty as a king; and to neglect that duty was wickedness, was ruin; and it ended, as all such neglect does in bringing down upon him tenfold the trouble and disturbance of ease which he had striven to avoid. “Anything for an easy life,” seems to have been Ahab’s rule of conduct. But a king has no right to an easy life. It is hard work to be a king. Especially it is hard work in an eastern country, where, on the person of the sovereign, devolve many duties of decision, of judgment, and of action, which in western countries he devolves upon his advisers and ministers.
Jezebel was just the woman to manage such a man; and she soon found how to manage Ahab as she pleased, and to become in fact, through him, the regnant sovereign of Israel, while on him devolved the public responsibility of her acts. It was not by imperious temper, though she was imperious, or by palpable domineering, that she managed this. No. She made herself necessary to him—necessary to his ease, his comfort, his pleasures. She worked for him; she planned for him; she decided for him. She saved him a world of trouble. She taught him to consider the strength of her will necessary to supply the weakness of his own—necessary to save him the labor of exertion and thought. Prompt in decision, ready in resource, quick in invention, ruthless in action—she saw her way at once to the point at which she aimed, and would cut with a sharp stroke through knotty matters which the king shrunk from the labor of untying. She was thus often enabled to secure for her husband the object of his desires, which he himself shrunk from pursuing or despaired of obtaining; and in accepting it from her hands, he cared not too nicely to inquire whether it were not stained with blood, or whether it heaped not upon his head coals of fire, which would one day consume him.
