Fresh circumstances show us the king’s moral condition. Covetousness overruns his heart, eager greed for something God had not given him. Now this is idolatry just as well as is the worship of Baal (Col. 3:5). Ahab, dominated by the enemy, has simply passed from one form of idolatry to another.
Ahab’s proposal to Naboth is much greater in import than would appear at first glance. It would result in permanently giving away the inheritance of this godly Israelite. To make an exchange or even to give the value of the land in money would mean that Ahab would take full and final possession of his neighbor’s vineyard. Now an Israelite who feared God could not accept such conditions. When he would sell his land, he would only sell its harvests, and, as his possession would be restored to him in the year of jubilee, its price would be set according to the number of years the buyer would harvest its produce (Lev. 25:15). The seller even had the right to redeem his land at any time by refunding the buyer the amount over the value of the crops for the years that had passed since the time of the sale. The Israelite who feared God would keep the inheritance of his fathers because they had received it from the Lord; but there was a reason even more peremptory than that. In reality the land, the ground itself, did not belong to the people, but to the Lord: “The land shall not be sold forever; for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me. And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land” (Lev. 25:23-24).
This makes Naboth’s very categoric answer understandable: “Jehovah forbid it me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers to thee” (1 Kings 21:3).
1 Kings 21:4 shows us the effect produced by unrealizable covetousness on the heart of a man without God: “And Ahab came into his house sullen and vexed.” Here we find again the same words as at the end of 1 Kings 20. Oh, the poor heart of man, overwhelmed with sorrow, swollen up with vexation! And that is all that it can hold unless Satan, in order to keep his sway over him, comes to him to whisper of new deceptive lusts. Ahab is sullen at seeing the object of his desire placed out of his reach; vexed with a will that presents an obstacle to him that he cannot make give way because, in short, it is the will of God.
Thus on every hand Ahab had met God on his path. Behind drought and thirst, he had found God; he had found Him in opposition to his religion, in opposition to his league with Ben-Hadad, and in opposition to his lusts. God, always God, that God whom he had thought to replace by his idols! Since the slaughter of his priests the house was, it is true, swept and garnished, but already worse demons had entered it.
Who stirs up the evil spirits that feed these lusts? It is Jezebel, a true type of the satanic spirit (1 Kings 21:5-14). Jezebel does evil, knowingly and willingly. She rouses all the evil instincts of her husband’s heart. She appeals to his pride: “Dost thou now exercise sovereignty over Israel?” (1 Kings 21:7). She adds, “I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jizreelite.” When a man has sold his soul to Satan, as Ahab had, Satan does not fail to make him all sorts of promises. He is the tempter. What God does not want to give you, I’ll give you. Leave it to me; I shall give you the vineyard. Ahab leaves it to her, because he sees that thus his eager desire will be realized. And now, Ahab, “arise, eat bread, and let thy heart be glad.” That indeed is the constant goal of the flesh: health, a gay time, doing what one pleases, and getting what one wants. But how to attain this goal? Naboth had said, “I will not give thee the inheritance of my fathers.” Jezebel comes and says, “I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth.” She takes Ahab by the hand and leads him down her own path, a path of lying and murder, under the guise of being his benefactress. She “will give him,” but meanwhile she possesses herself of his authority, of his royal prerogative: “She wrote a letter in Ahab’s name, and sealed it with his seal” (1 Kings 21:8). Ahab has turned into her slave. She does not shrink back from either perjury or from the murder of a righteous man in order to bring gain to her protégé. This worshipper of Baal has the false witnesses say: “Naboth blasphemed God and the king” (1 Kings 21:10, 13). She uses God’s name, acknowledged by the people but not by herself, to destroy a servant of the true God. Has not Jezebel always acted thus? We see her appearing again in Revelation 2, no longer in Judaism but in the Church, taking on the character of a prophetess and accusing God’s true witnesses of “knowing the depths of Satan,” while she herself is teaching her children to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed to idols.
Ahab lets evil be done and iniquity be consummated in order to profit thereby; the men of Jizreel, the elders and nobles, do it knowing the reason for it, for the letters sent them told them to choose two wicked men, sons of Belial, who should perjure themselves in order to get rid of Naboth. They have hardly any scruples, for it is in their interests to please the king and to gain his good will.
Naboth is stoned; at last the time has come for Ahab to enjoy the fruit of his coveteousness. “Arise,” says Jezebel, “take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jizreelite, which he refused to give thee for money; for Naboth is not alive, but dead” (1 Kings 21:15).
Ahab goes down. Is he going to be happy now? This is the moment for him, his goal having been attained, to have that gay time that Jezebel had promised him. Scarcely has he begun to take possession when Elijah, informed by God, meets him there where he had come to survey his new estate. His enjoyment, his happiness disappear. Satan always entices us and leaves us facing God after having betrayed us and plunged us into the mire.
Ahab says to Elijah: “Hast thou found me, mine enemy?” (1 Kings 21:20). Yes, his enemy! He had taken Satan as his friend; he finds God to be his enemy. In the very place of promised satisfaction he finds nothing of that he had hoped for, but God stands up before him, represented by His prophet, and says to him: “Hast thou killed and also taken possession?” (1 Kings 21:19). Others had done the killing; God holds Ahab accountable. The joy so longed for is replaced by that horrible curse which is repeated all through this sad history of Israel. This was the judgment of Jeroboam, the judgment of Baasha, in the very same words: “Him that dieth of Ahab in the city shall the dogs eat, and him that dieth in the field shall the fowl of the heavens eat” (1 Kings 21:24; cf. 1 Kings 14:11; 16:4). And Jezebel is not forgotten: “The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the moat of Jizreel” (1 Kings 21:23). The execution of the judgment foretold is postponed for her (2 Kings 9), but it is no less certain.
This time Ahab must say to himself: God’s judgment has reached me. He is aroused to the fact that God’s word against his predecessors had been without repentance. For himself, who had done worse than all the rest, judgment is at the door.
What does Ahab do? He humbles himself; he goes about afflicted, mourning, and fasting (1 Kings 21:27-29); he lies down in the sackcloth he has put upon his flesh; he “went softly,” as one does in a funeral home. Where is his pride and his merry heart, and even his sadness of the wrong kind and his vexation? Nothing remains but unbounded mourning in face of his inevitable fate. Is this conversion? The next chapter will give us the answer, but in the meanwhile, what a merciful God is our God! If He discovers the evil, He also ascertains the slightest return of a soul to that which is good; He takes note of the least sign of repentance. He says to Elijah: “Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before Me? because he humbleth himself before Me, I will not bring the evil in his days: in his son’s days will I bring the evil upon his house” (1 Kings 21:29). Not one jot of His Word will fall to the ground, but the judgment is to be deferred until the times of his heir.