“Arise, go down to meet Ahab king of Israel, who dwells in Samaria. Behold, he is in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone down to take possession of it. You shall speak to him, saying, ‘Yahweh says, “Have you killed and also taken possession?” ’ You shall speak to him, saying, ‘Yahweh says, “In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, dogs will lick your blood, even yours.” ’ ”
Ahab said to Elijah, “Have you found me, my enemy?” He answered, “I have found you, because you have sold yourself to do that which is evil in Yahweh’s sight.
Behold, I will bring evil on you, and will utterly sweep you away and will cut off from Ahab everyone who urinates against a wall, and him who is shut up and him who is left at large in Israel. I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah for the provocation with which you have provoked me to anger, and have made Israel to sin.” Yahweh also spoke of Jezebel, saying, “The dogs will eat Jezebel by the rampart of Jezreel. The dogs will eat he who dies of Ahab in the city; and the birds of the sky will eat he who dies in the field.”
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv19, 23 This was fulfilled in Jehoram his son, as 2…
This was fulfilled in Jehoram his son, as 2 Kings 9:25, 26.
Dost thou think to have any advantage by murdering of an innocent?
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv18–24 1Ki 21:18 Arise, go down to meet Ahab king…
1Ki 21:18 Arise, go down to meet Ahab king of Israel, which [is] in Samaria: behold, [he is] in the vineyard of Naboth, whither he is gone down to possess it.
Ver. 18. Which is in Samaria.] There was Ahab when the message was given in charge to Elias; but in the vineyard at Jezreel when Elias met him.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv18, 19, 20, 21, 23 Which is in Samaria; either who now is there,…
Which is in Samaria; either who now is there, and about to depart thence to Jezreel; or who commonly dwells there.
He is in the vineyard, or rather, he will be; by that time that thou comest thither thou shalt find him there.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv18–23 And will make thine house like the house of…
And will make thine house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah,.... Two of his predecessors, whose families were utterly destroyed, Kg1 15:29,
for the provocation wherewith thou hast provoked me to anger, and made Israel to sin: not only by his worship of the calves, but of the idols of the Zidonians, particularly Baal, and also of the Amorites, Kg1 21:26.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv19, 20, 23, 24 Saying - Thou hast murdered an innocent man; and…
Saying - Thou hast murdered an innocent man; and instead of repenting for it, hast added another piece of injustice and violence to it, and art going confidently and cheerfully to reap the fruit of thy wickedness. Thy blood - The threatening was so directed at first; but afterwards, upon his humiliation, the punishment was transferred from him to his son, as is expressed, ver. 29, yet upon Ahab's returning to sin, in the next chapter, he brings back the curse upon himself, and so it is no wonder if it be in some sort fulfilled in him also.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv18, 19, 20, 23 Verse 18. Go down to meet Ahab] This was…
Verse 18. Go down to meet Ahab] This was the next day after the murder, as we learn from the above quotation, 2Kg 9:26.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv18, 20, 23 1Ki 21:18-19. Arise, go to meet Ahab, which is…
1Ki 21:18-19. Arise, go to meet Ahab, which is in Samaria — That is, who reigns in Samaria. Behold, he is in the vineyard of Naboth — Or, rather, he will be there by the time thou comest thither. And speak unto him, Hast thou killed and also taken possession? — Thou hast murdered an innocent and righteous man; and, instead of repenting of thy crime, hast added another piece of injustice and violence to it, and art going, confidently and cheerfully, to reap the fruit of thy wickedness. He ascribes Jezebel’s act to Ahab, because Jezebel did it by his connivance, consent, and authority, and for the gratification of his inordinate desire. In the place where dogs licked, &c. — Instead of the place, some would render the original word here used, the manner, and so the sense of the passage will be, As the dogs licked, or, in like manner as they licked Naboth’s blood, even so shall they lick thy blood: mark what I say, even thine. According to this reading, the prophet foretold that this judgment should come upon him, but did not assign the place; accordingly, the dogs licked Ahab’s blood, not in Jezreel, but in Samaria, 1Ki 22:38. If, however, our translation be preferred, it may be observed, 1st, Ahab’s blood was licked by the dogs, if not in the same individual, yet in the same general place, Jezreel being in the territory of Samaria. 2d, This was particularly accomplished in his son Joram, as is affirmed 2Ki 9:25-26, whose blood is not improperly called Ahab’s, children being said to be born of their parents’ blood. The expression, indeed, thy blood, even thine, seems to show that the threatening was at first denounced against Ahab’s person, and designed to be fulfilled in him: but afterward, upon his humiliation, the punishment was in part transferred from him to his son, as is expressed 1Ki 21:29; yet upon Ahab’s returning to sin, as is related in the next chapter, he brought back the curse upon himself, and so it is no wonder that it was in some sort fulfilled in him also.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv19, 20, 21, 23 Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? - These…
Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? - These words rebuke especially Ahab’s indecent haste. He went to Jezreel the very day after Naboth’s execution 2Ki 9:26.
The prophecy following had a double fulfillment. The main fulfillment was by the casting of the dead body of Jehoram into Naboth’s plot of ground at Jezreel, where, like Naboth’s, it was left for the dogs to eat 2Ki 9:25. This spot, which was just outside the city wall, and close to a gate 2Ki 9:31, was probably the actual scene of Naboth’s execution. Here did dogs lick Ahab’s blood, that is, his son’s blood, the execution of the full retaliatory sentence having been deferred to the days of his son, formally and explicitly, on Ahab’s repentance 1Ki 21:29. But, besides this, there was a secondary fulfillment of the prophecy, when, not at Jezreel but at Samaria (marginal reference), the actual blood of Ahab himself, was licked by dogs, only in a way that implied no disgrace. These two fulfillments are complementary to each other.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv19–24 Possession, by desire; though he was yet only on…
Possession, by desire; though he was yet only on the road. (Menochius) --- Perhaps he had sent his servants before. (Haydock) --- Place, not precisely, as Achab was slain in Samaria. (Menochius) --- But Naboth’s vineyard, perhaps, was not far distant from the pool, where dogs licked the blood of the king. (Haydock) --- On account of Achab’s repentance, the sentence was (ver. 29.; Calmet) rather changed, and his son Joram was substituted in his stead, 4 Kings ix. 25. Jehu, and his captain, Badacer, were present, when Elias denounced this sentence upon the family of Achab; and they concluded that the prediction regarded Joram. He had, perhaps, taken part with his impious parents, and promoted the same crimes. (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv19–21 In the place where dogs licked, &c.--a righteous retribution…
In the place where dogs licked, &c.--a righteous retribution of Providence. The prediction was accomplished, not in Jezreel, but in Samaria; and not on Ahab personally, in consequence of his repentance (Kg1 21:29), but on his son (Kg2 9:25). The words "in the place where" might be rendered "in like manner as."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv18, 19, 20, 21, 23 ELIJAH’S PROPHECY AGAINST AHAB, 1Ki_21:17-29.
ELIJAH’S PROPHECY AGAINST AHAB, 1Ki_21:17-29.
18. Which is in Samaria — Or, who reigns in Samaria. The words merely designate the seat of Ahab’s government, and his usual place of residence; not that the prophet is to meet Ahab in Samaria, or that Naboth’s vineyard was in Samaria.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv18–24 17–29. Elijah meets Ahab and tells him God’s sentence.…
17–29. Elijah meets Ahab and tells him God’s sentence. Ahab repents and the punishment is deferred (Not in Chronicles)
18. which is [R.V. dwelleth] in Samaria] This change is necessary for consistency in the narrative. There is no verb in the original, as will be seen from the italics of A. V. The verbs describing the action first of Ahab and then of Elijah, shew that both had gone down, the one from Samaria, and the other, perhaps, from Carmel, to the city of Jezreel, which lay on lower ground than either.
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to possess it] R.V. to take possession of it. Thus it is shewn that the expression is the same as in 1Ki_21:15-16; 1Ki_21:19.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv18–21 (18) Which is in Samaria.—These words are almost unmeaning,…
(18) Which is in Samaria.—These words are almost unmeaning, unless they literally signify that Ahab was then in Samaria, not in Jezreel. To interpret them as simply part of Ahab’s title, or as signifying the country, not the town of Samaria, is to explain them away.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv18–24 Arise, go down Bahr hence concludes that Elijah was…
Arise, go down Bahr hence concludes that Elijah was at this time in a mountain district. But wherever he might be, this word would probably be used of journey to the plain of Esdraelon to meet "The word. 1Sa_17:48 of David going out to meet Goliath (Stanley) But the same word is used (1Sa_18:6) of the women going out to meet Saul, and indeed it is the usual word for all meetings. We cannot hence infer, consequently, that Elijah went forth as if to encounter a foe Ahab king of Israel, which is in Samaria i.e., whose seat is in Samaria; who rules there. There is no need to understand the word of the territory of Samaria: behold, he is in the vineyard of Naboth, whither he is gone down to possess it. The words imply that Elijah found Ahab strode into his presence in the vineyard; not that he was there already when the royal chariot entered it (Stanley).
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v20 Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?
1Ki_21:20
Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?
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Ahab and Elijah
The keynote of Elijahs character is force--the force of righteousness. The New Testament, you remember, talks about the power of Elias. The outward appearance of the man corresponds to his function and his character. The whole of his career is marked by this one thing--the strength of a righteous man. And then, on the other hand, this Ahab; the keynote of his character is the weakness of wickedness, and the wickedness of weakness. And so the deed is done: Naboth safe stoned out of the way; and Ahab goes down to take possession! The lesson of that is, my friend--Weak dallying with forbidden desires is sure to end in wicked clutching at them: But my business now is rather with the consequences of this apparently successful sin, than with what went before it. The king gets the crime done, shuffles it off himself on to the shoulders of his ready tools in the little village, goes down to get his toy, and gets it--but he gets Elijah along with it, which was more than he reckoned on.
I. Pleasure won by sin is peace lost. Action and reaction, as the mechanicians tell us, are equal and contrary. The more violent the blow with which we strike upon the forbidden pleasure, the further back the rebound after the stroke. When sin tempts--when there hangs glittering before a man the golden fruit that he knows he ought not to touch-then, amidst the noise of passion or the sophistry of desire, conscience is silenced for a little while. Conscience and consequence are alike lost sight of. Like a mad bull, the man that is tempted lowers his head and shuts his eyes, and rushes right on. The moment that the sin is done, that moment the passion or desire which tempted to it is satiated, and ceases to exist for the time. It is gone as a motive. Like some savage beast, being fed full, it lies down to sleep. There is a vacuum left in the heart, the noise is stilled, and then--and then--conscience begins to speak. Now, you will say that all that is true in regard to the grossest forms of transgression, but that it is not true in regard to the less vulgar and sensual kinds of crime. Of course it is most markedly observable with regard to the coarsest kind of sins; but it is as true, though perhaps not in the same degree-not in the same prominent, manifest way at any rate--in regard to every sin that a man does. There is never an evil thing which--knowing it to be evil--we commit, which does not rise up to testify against us. As surely as to-nights debauch is followed by to-morrows headache; so surely--each after its kind, and each in its own region--every sin lodges in the human heart the seed of a quickspringing punishment, yea, is its own punishment. When we come to grasp the sweet thing that we have been tempted to seize, there is a serpent that starts up amongst all the flowers. When the evil act is done--opposite of the prophets roll--it is sweet in the lips, but oh! it is bitter afterwards. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder! The silence of a seared conscience is not peace. For peace you want something more than that a conscience shall be dumb. For peace you want something more than that you shall be able to live without the daily sense and sting of sin. You want not only the negative absence of pain, but the positive presence of a tranquillising guest in your heart--that conscience of yours testifying with you, blessing you in its witness, and shedding abroad rest and comfort.
II. Sin is blind to its true friends and its real foes. Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? Elijah was the best friend he had in his kingdom. And that Jezebel there, the wife of his bosom, whom he loved and thanked for this thing, she was the worst foe that hell could have sent him. Ay, and so it is always. The faithful rebuker, the merciful inflictor of pain, is the truest friend of the wrong doer. The worst enemy of the sinful heart is the voice that either tempts it into sin, or lulls it into self-complacency,
III. The sin which mistakes the friendly appeal for an enemy, lays up for itself a terrible retribution. Elijah comes here and prophesies the fall of Ahab. The next peal, the next flash, fulfil the prediction. There, where he did the wrong, he died. In Jezreel, Ahab died. In Jezreel, Jezebel died. That plain was the battlefield for the subsequent discomfiture of Israel. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Success that fails
Ahab went out to take possession of a garden of herbs, and there he stands face to face with righteousness, face to face with honour, face to face with judgment. Now take the vineyard! He cannot! An hour since the sun shone upon it, and now it is black as if it were part of the midnight which has gathered in judgment. There is a success which is failure. We cannot take some prizes. Elijah will not allow us! When we see him we would that a way might open under our feet that we might flee and escape the judgment of his silent look. If any man is about to take unholy prizes, let him remember that he will be met on the road by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of righteousness. If any man is attempting to scheme for some little addition to his position or fortune, in the heart of which scheme there is injustice, untruthfulness, covetousness, or a wrong spirit, let him know that he may even kill Naboth, but cannot enter into Naboths vineyard. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The tragedy of Jezreel
When a man gives way to lust and coveting, does not struggle against them, a tempter is sure to be at hand to put him on gratifying them one way or another.
1. Be sure, said Moses to the Reubenites, Your sin will find you out. (Num_32:23). What an exemplification here! how literally was Elijahs denunciation fulfilled! Yes, and history and human experience are ever bearing witness to this, that sin finds out the sinner; and that, not simply in punishment following sin, but in the sin becoming its own means of detection and punishment--in a certain correlation of sin and its penalty. Thine own wickedness etc (Jer_2:19). Be not deceived, God is not mocked, etc. (Gal_6:7). Whoso breaketh a hedge, etc. (Ecc_10:8).
2. Success in wrongdoing the sinners loss. Better indeed had it been for Ahab if Jezebels scheme had failed. Men often fret and fume if thwarted in attaining some coveted object, yet may it have been their mercy to be so thwarted. It is Divine goodness which again and again hedges up our way, and providentially coerces us. To be given up to the devices and desires of our own hearts is the sorest of judgments.
3. The fatal mistake of resenting righteous rebuke. Terrible was Ahabs mistake in calling Elijah his enemy. That uncompromising rebuker, his truest friend, would he only have listened to him instead of yielding to the siren seductions of Jezebel. (A. R. Symonds, M. A.)
Blind to ones own guilt
1. That which first of all blinded Ahab more or less to the true character and extent of his responsibility for the death of Naboth was the force of desire. A single desire long dwelt upon, cherished, and indulged, has a blinding power which cannot easily be exaggerated. Ahab had long looked wistfully from his villa across the moat of Jezreel at the vineyard of Naboth. There it lay, beautiful in itself, most desirable as an appendage to the royal property. Without it the summer villa was obviously incomplete, and each visit to Jezreel would have strengthened the kings wish to possess it. It was not that he enjoyed to baulk a great mans wishes in the spirit of that rough and surly independence which is sometimes fostered by the near neighbourhood of a Court; it was not that he was governed by a natural sentiment common in all ages and civilisations against parting with an old family property; it was that the sacred law did not permit the exchange or the sale. With a view to maintaining the original distribution of landed property among the tribes, and of preventing the accumulation of large landed estates in a few hands, the Mosaic law forbade the alienation of lands or families holding them; and especially it forbade the transfer from one tribe to another. And this is the meaning of Naboths exclamation, The Lord forbid it me that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee. Desire is not always wrong in its early stages, and so long as it is under control of principle it is a motive, a useful motive power in human life. But when it finds itself in conflict with the rights of other men, and, above all, in conflict with the laws and with the rights of God, it must be suppressed unless it is to lead to crime. When Naboth declined to sell or to exchange his vineyard, Ahab ought to have ceased to desire it. Ahab went back to his palace baulked of his desire by the conscientious resistance of Naboth. The impulsive force in life is not thought, nor will, but desire. Thought sees its object; will gives orders with a view to attain it; but without desire thought is powerless, and will, in the operative sense, does not exist. Desire is to the human soul what gravitation is to the heavenly bodies. Ascertain the object of a mans desire, and you know the direction in which his soul is moving; ascertain the strength of a mans desire, and you know the rapidity of the souls movement. In St. Augustines memorable words, Whithersoever I am carried forward it is desire that carries me. Quocumque feror amore feror. If the supreme object of desire is God, then desire becomes the grace of charity, and carries the soul onwards and upwards to the true source of its existence. If the supreme object of desire be something earthly, some person, some possession, then desire becomes what Scripture calls concupiscence, and carries the soul downwards--downwards to those regions in which the soul is buried and stifled by matter and sense. Concupiscence is desire diverted from its true object--God--and centred upon some created object which perverts and degrades it; and concupiscence grows by self-indulgence; it may very easily pass a point at which it can be no longer controlled, it may absorb as into a practically resistless current all the other interests and movements of the soul; it may concentrate with an all-increasing importunity the whole body and stock of feeling and passion upon some trifling object upon which, for the moment, it is bent, and which, by absorbing it, blinds it--blinds it utterly to the true proportions and value of things into the true meaning and import of action. So it was with Pharaoh when he set out in the pursuit of Israel; so it was with the vain and miserable Haman when he set his heart on exterminating the Jews; so it was with Ahab.
2. And a second cause, which could have blinded Ahab to the true character of his responsibility for the murder of Naboth, was the ascendant influence and prominent agency of his queen, Jezebel. Ahab could not have enjoyed the results of Jezebels achievement, and decline to accept responsibility for it; yet, no doubt, he was more than willing to do this, more than willing to believe that matters had drifted somehow into other hands than his, and that the upshot, regrettable, no doubt, in one sense, but in another not altogether unwelcome, was beyond his control. It is to-day, as of old, that false conscience constantly endeavours to divest itself of responsibility for what has been done through others, or for what others had been allowed by us to do. This is the origin of that saying, Corporations have no conscience. The fact is that every individual member of a corporation gets too easily into the habit of thinking that all, or some of the other members are really answerable for the acts of tim whole, and that each merely acquiesces in what the others decide or do. But then, if everybody thinks this, where, meanwhile, does the real responsibility reside?--it must be somewhere, it cannot evaporate altogether. In very large bodies of men acting together, the responsibility is divided into very small portions of unequal magnitude; this is the case with nations and with churches, but responsibility is not destroyed by being thus distributed; while, on the other hand- the smaller the corporation the greater the responsibility of each one of its members. Thus the responsibility of each member of the British legislature for the well-being of the country is vastly greater than that of each Englishman who possesses a vote, and that of each member of the Cabinet is vastly greater than that of each member of Parliament. Ahab and Jezebel were at this time, practically speaking, the governing corporation in Israel, but Ahab could not shift his responsibility on Jezebel.
3. And the third screen which would have blinded Ahab to the real state of the case was the perfection of the legal form which had characterised the proceedings. When Jezebel wrote to the magistrates of Jezreel she had been very careful indeed about legal propriety. She wrote in the kings name; she signed the letter with the kings seal, which would have borne the kings signature, and this, when stamped on the writing, made the actual signature unnecessary. Thus the letter had nothing less than the character of a royal command, and was addressed to the persons at Jezreel with whom the administration of justice properly lay--the elders and notables, the local magistracy. Law is a great and sacred thing. It is nothing less than a shadow upon earth of the justice of God. The forms which surround it, the rules which give it the dignity and honour which belong to its representatives, are the outworks of a thing itself entitled to our reverence. But when the machinery of law is tampered with, as was, no doubt, the case by Jezebel, when a false witness or a biased judge contributes to a result which, if legal, is not also moral, then law is like an engine off the rails--its remaining force is the exact measure of its capacity for mischief and for wrong, then, indeed, if ever, Summum jus, summa injuria. Naboths trial and execution was, in truth, one of the earliest recorded samples in the worlds history of that dreadful outrage against God and man--a judicial murder. When the sword of justice smites down innocence and becomes the instrument of crime, the whole spirit and drift of law is abandoned, its language and its usages survive, and, as in Ahabs case, they form a screen between a guilty conscience and the stern reality. Of the authors and abettors of such deeds as this, it was said in an earlier age, They will not be learned nor understand, but walk on still in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course. The foundations are out of course! Yes, that is the effect bad law makes in many a case where consciences, the deepest and most precious things in the moral and social life of man, are ruined. Propriety of outward form in the condemnation of Naboth is the measure of the miserable self-deceit of Ahab.
1. Let us carry away two lessons, if no more. The first to keep all forms of desire well under control--under the control of conscience illuminated by principle, illuminated by faith. Some measure of desire is necessary for exertion; but the fewer wants we have the freer men we are, and the freer we are the happier we are. The one direction in which desire may be safely unchecked is heavenward. Safety lies in taking and keeping it well in hand, and in doing this betimes.
2. And, secondly, for us Christians the event or the man who discovers us to ourselves should be held to be not our enemy, but our friend. (Canon Liddon, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v20 1 Kings
1 Kings
AHAB AND ELIJAH
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1Ki 21:20.
The keynote of Elijah’s character is force-the force of righteousness. The New Testament, you remember, speaks of the ‘power of Elias.’ The outward appearance of the man corresponds to his function and his character. Gaunt and sinewy, dwelling in the desert, feeding on locusts and wild honey, with a girdle of camel’s skin about his loins, he bursts into the history, amongst all that corrupt state of society, with the force of a hammer that God’s hand wields. The whole of his career is marked by this one thing,-the strength of a righteous man. And then, on the other hand, this Ahab;-the keynote of his character is the weakness of wickedness, and the wickedness of weakness. Think of him. Weakly longing-as idle and weak minds in lofty places always do-after something that belongs to somebody else; with all his gardens, coveting the one little herb-plot of the poor Naboth; weak and worse than womanly, turning his face to the wall and weeping when he cannot get it; weakly desiring to have it, and yet not knowing how to set about accomplishing his wish; and then-as is always the case, for there are always tempters everywhere for weak people-that beautiful fiend by his side, like the other queen in our great drama, ready to screw the feeble man that she is wedded to, to the sticking-place, and to dare anything to grasp that on which the heart was set. And so the deed is done: Naboth safe stoned out of the way; and Ahab goes down to take possession! The lesson of that is, my friend,-Weak dallying with forbidden desires is sure to end in wicked clutching at them. Young men, take care! You stand upon the beetling edge of a great precipice, when you look over, from your fancied security, at a wrong thing; and to strain too far, and to look too fixedly, leads to a perilous danger of toppling over and being lost! If you know that a thing cannot be won without transgression, do not tamper with hankerings for it. Keep away from the edge, and ‘shut your eyes from beholding vanity.’
But my business now is rather with the consequences of this apparently successful sin, than with what went before it. The king gets the crime done, shuffles it off himself on to the shoulders of his ready tools in the little village, goes down to get his toy, and gets it-but he gets Elijah along with it, which was more than he reckoned on. When, all full of impatience and hot haste to solace himself with his new possession, he rushes down to seize the vineyard, he finds there, standing at the gate, waiting for him-black-browed, motionless, grim, an incarnate conscience-the prophet whom he had not seen for years, the prophet that he had last seen on Carmel, bearding alone the servants of Baal, and executing on them the solemn judgment of death; and there leaps at once to his lip, ‘Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?’
I. I find here, in the first place, this broad principle: Pleasure won by sin is peace lost.
It does not need that there should be a rebuking prophet standing by to work out that law. God commits the execution of it to the natural operations of our own consciences and our own spirits. Here is the fact in men’s natures on which it partly depends: when sin is yet tempting us, it is loved; when sin in done, it is loathed. Action and reaction, as the mechanicians tell us, are equal and contrary. The more violent the blow with which we strike upon the forbidden pleasure, the further back the rebound after the stroke. When sin tempts-when there hangs glittering before a man the golden fruit which he knows that he ought not to touch-then, amidst the noise of passion or the sophistry of desire, conscience is silenced for a little while. No man sins without knowing that it is wrong, without knowing that in the long run it is a mistake; but at the instant, in the delirium of yielding, as in moments of high physical excitement, he is blind and deaf, deaf to the voice of reason, blind to the sight of consequences. Conscience and consequence are alike lost sight of. Like a mad bull, the man that is tempted lowers his head and shuts his eyes, and rushes right on. The moment that the sin is done, that moment the passion or desire which tempted to it is satiated, and ceases to exist for the time. It is gone as a motive. Like some savage beast, being fed full, it lies down to sleep. There is a vacuum left in the heart, the noise is stilled, and then- and then-conscience begins to speak. Or, to take another image, the passion, the desires, the impulses that lead us to do wrong things- they are like a crew that mutiny, and take for a moment the wheel from the steersman and the command from the captain, but then, having driven the ship on the rocks, the mutineers get intoxicated, and lie down and sleep. Passion fulfils itself, and expires. The desire is satisfied, and it turns into a loathing. The tempter draws us to him, and then unveils the horrid face that lies beneath the mask. When the deed is done and cannot be undone, then comes satiety; then comes the reaction of the fierce excitement, the hot blood begins to flow more slowly; then rises up in the heart conscience; then rises up in majesty in the soul reason; then flashes and flares before the eye the vivid picture of the consequences. His ‘enemy’ has found the sinner. He has got the vineyard-ay, but Elijah is there, and his dark and stern presence sucks all the brightness and the sunniness out of the landscape; and Naboth’s blood stains the leaves of Naboth’s garden! There is no sin which is not the purchase of pleasure at the price of peace.
Now, you will say that all that is true in regard to the grosser forms of transgression, but that it is not true in regard to the less vulgar and sensual kinds of crime. Of course it is most markedly observable with regard to the coarsest kind of sins; but it is as true, though perhaps not in the same degree-not in the same prominent, manifest way at any rate-in regard to every sin that a man does. There is never an evil thing which-knowing it to be evil-we commit, which does not rise up to testify against us. As surely as {in the words of our great philosopher poet} ‘lust dwells hard by hate,’ and as surely as to-night’s debauch is followed by to-morrow’s headache, so surely-each after its kind, and each in its own region-every sin lodges in the human heart the seed of a quick-springing punishment, yea, is its own punishment. When we come to grasp the sweet thing that we have been tempted to seize, there is a serpent that starts up amongst all the flowers. When the evil act is done-opposite of the prophet’s roll-it is sweet in the lips, but oh! it is bitter afterwards. ‘At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder!’
Then, you may say again, ‘All that is very much exaggerated. That is not the sort of feeling which men that go on persistently doing wrong things, cherish. They live quietly and contentedly enough. “There are no bands in their death, and their strength is firm.”‘ All that would be true if men’s consciences kept sensitive in the midst of men’s sins, but they do not; and so it cannot be that every transgression has thus its quick result in loss of peace. I grant you at once that it is quite possible for men to sin away the delicacy and susceptibility of their consciences. I dare say there are people here now who, after they have done a wrong thing, go on very quietly, with no knowledge of those agonies that I have been speaking about, with scarcely ever a prick of conscience for their sin. But what then? I did not say that all sin purchased pleasure by inflictions of agony; but I do say, that all sin purchases pleasure by loss of peace. The silence of a seared conscience is not peace. For peace you want something more than that a conscience shall be dumb. For peace you want something more than that you shall be able to live without the daily sense and sting of sin. You want not only the negative absence of pain, but the positive presence of a tranquillising guest in your heart-that conscience of yours testifying with you, blessing you in its witness, and shedding abroad rest and comfort. It is easy to kill a conscience-after a fashion at least. It is easy to stifle it. It is easy to come to that depth of wrongdoing that one gets used to it, and does it without caring. But oh! that cold vacuum, that dead absence in such a spirit of all healthy self-communing, that painful suspicion, ‘If I look into myself, and be quiet for a little while, and take stock of my own character, and see what I am, the balance will be on the wrong side,’-that is not peace. As the old historian says about the Roman armies that marched through a country, burning and destroying every living thing, ‘They make a solitude, and they call it peace.’ And so men do with their consciences. They stifle them, sear them, forcibly silence them, somehow or other; and then, when there is a dead stillness in the heart, broken by no voice of either approbation or blame, but doleful like the unnatural quiet of a deserted city, then they call that peace, and the man’s uncontrolled passions and unbridled desires dwell solitary in the fortress of his own spirit! You may almost attain to that. Do you think it is a goal to be set before you as an ideal of human nature? The loss of peace is certain-the presence of agony is most likely-from every act of sin.
And so, it is not only a crime that men commit when they do wrong, but it is a blunder. Sin is not only guilt, but it is a mistake. ‘The game is not worth the candle,’ according to the French proverb. The thing that you buy is not worth the price you pay for it. Sin is like a great forest-tree that we may sometimes see standing up green in its leafy beauty, and spreading a broad shadow over half a field; but when we get round on the other side, there is a great dark hollow in the very heart of it, and corruption is at work there. It is like the poison-tree in travellers’ stories, tempting weary men to rest beneath its thick foliage, and insinuating death into the limbs that relax in the fatal coolness of its shade. It is like the apples of Sodom, fair to look upon, but turning to acrid ashes on the unwary lips. It is like the magician’s rod that we read about in old books. There it lies; and if, tempted by its glitter, or fascinated by the power that it proffers you, you take it in your hand, the thing starts into a serpent with erected crest and sparkling eye, and plunges its quick barb into the hand that holds it, and sends poison through all the veins. Do not touch it, my brother! Every sin buys pleasure at the price of peace. Elijah is always waiting at the gate of the ill-gotten possession.
II. In the second place, Sin is blind to its true friends and its real foes.
‘Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?’ Elijah was the best friend that Ahab had in his kingdom. And that Jezebel there, the wife of his bosom, whom he loved and thanked for this new toy, she was the worst foe that hell could have sent him. Ay, and so it is always. The faithful rebuker, the merciful inflicter of pain, is the truest friend of the wrongdoer. The worst enemy of the sinful heart is the voice that either tempts it into sin, or lulls it into self-complacency. And this is one of the most certain workings of evil desires in our spirits, that they pervert for us all the relations of things, that they make us blind to all the moral truths of God’s universe. Sin is blind as to itself, blind as to its own consequences, blind as to who are its friends and who are its foes, blind as to earth, blind as to another world, blind as to God. The man who walks in the ‘vain show’ of transgression, whose heart is set upon evil,-he fancies that ashes are bread, and stones gold {as in the old fairy story}; and, on the other hand, he thinks that the true sweet is the bitter, and turns away from God’s angels and God’s prophets, with, ‘Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?’ That is the reason, my friend, of not a little of the infidelity that haunts this world-that sin, perverted and blinded, stumbles about in its darkness, and mistakes the face of the friend for the face of the foe. God sends you in mercy a conscience to prick and sting you that you may be kept right; and you think that it is your enemy. God sends in His mercy the discipline of life, pains and sorrows, to draw us away from the wrong, to make us believe that the right in this world and the next is life, and that holiness is happiness for evermore. And then, when, having done wrong, God’s merciful messenger of a sharp sorrow finds us out, we say, ‘Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?’ and begin to wonder about the mysteries of Providence, and how it comes that there is evil in the creation of a good God. Why, physical evil is the best friend of the man that is subject to moral evil. Sorrow is the truest blessing to a sinner. The best thing that can befall any of us is that God shall not let us alone in any wrong course, without making us feel His rod, without hedging up our way with thorns, and sending us by His grace into a better one. There is no mystery in sorrow. There is a mystery in sin; but sorrow following on the back of sin is the true friend, and not the enemy, of the wrong-doing spirit.
And then, again, God sends us a gospel full of dark words about evil. It deals with that fact of sin, as no other system ever did. There is no book like the Bible for these two things,-for the lofty notion that it has about what man may be and ought to be; and for the low notion that it has of what man is. It does not degrade human nature, because it tells us the truth about human nature as it is. Its darkest and bitterest sayings about transgression, they are veiled promises, my brother. It does not make the consequences of sin which it writes down. You and I make them for ourselves, and it tells us of them. Did the lighthouse make the rock that it stands on? Is it to be blamed for the shipwreck? If a man will go full tilt against the thing that he knows will ruin him, what is the right name for him who hedges it up with a prickly fence of thorns, and puts a great light above it, and writes below, ‘If thou comest here thou diest’? Is that the work of an enemy? And yet that is why people talk about the gloomy views of the gospel, about the narrow spirit of Christianity, about the harsh things that are here! The Bible did not make hell. The Bible did not make sin the parent of sorrow. The Bible did not make it certain that ‘every transgression and disobedience’ should reap its ‘just recompense of reward.’ We are the causes of their coming upon ourselves; and the Bible but proclaims the end to which the paths of sin must lead, and beseechingly calls to us all, ‘Turn ye, turn ye! why will ye die?’ And yet when it comes to you, how many of you turn away from it, and say, ‘It is mine enemy’! How many shrink from its merciful knife, that cuts into all the wounds of the festering spirit! How many of you feel as if ‘the truth that is in Jesus’ was a hard and bitter truth; when all the while its very heart’s blood is love, and the very secret of its message is the tenderest compassion, the most yearning sympathy, for every soul amongst us!
Ay, and more than that:-sin makes us fancy that God Himself is our enemy; and sin makes that thought of God that ought to be most blessed and most sweet to us, the terror of our souls. You have the power, my friend, by your own wrongdoing, of perverting the whole universe, and, worst of all, of distorting the image of the merciful Father, of the loving God. God loves. God is the Father. God watches over us. God will not let us alone when we transgress, God in His love has appointed that sin shall breed sorrow. But we-we do wrong; and then, for God’s Providence, and God’s Gospel, and God’s Son, and God Himself, there rises up in our hearts a hostile feeling, and we think that He is turned to be our enemy, and fights against us! But oh! He only fights against us that we may submit to, and love, Him. Will you, then, have it that God’s highest mercy should be your greatest sorrow, that your truest friend should be your worst foe? You can make the choice. To you God and His truth are like that ark of His covenant which to Dagon and the Philistines was a curse, but to the house of Obededom was a blessing. He and His gospel are to you like that pillar that was darkness and trouble to the hosts of the Egyptians, but light by night to His children. To you, my brother, the gospel may be either ‘the savour of life unto life, or the savour of death unto death!’ If He comes to you with rebuke, and meets you when you are at the very door of your sin, and busy with your transgression,-usher Him in, and thank Him, and bless Him for words of threatening, for merciful severity, for conviction of sin;-because conviction of sin is the work of the Comforter; and all the threatenings and all the pains that follow and track, like swift hounds, the committer of evil, are sent by Him who loves too wisely not to punish transgression, and loves too well to punish without warning, and desires only when He punishes that we should turn from our evil way, and escape the condemnation. An enemy, or a friend,-which is God in His truth to you?
III. Lastly, the sin which mistakes the friendly appeal for an enemy, lays up for itself a terrible retribution. Elijah comes to Jezreel and prophesies the fall of Ahab. The next peal, the next flash, fulfil the prediction. There, where he did the wrong, he suffered. In Jezreel, Ahab died. In Jezreel, Jezebel died. That plain was the battlefield for the subsequent discomfiture of Israel. Over and over again there encamped upon it the hosts of the spoilers. Over and over again its soil ran red with the blood of the children of Israel; and at last, in the destruction of the kingdom, Naboth was avenged and God’s word fulfilled. The threatened evil was foretold that it might lead the king to repentance, and that thus it might never need to be more than a threat. But, though Ahab was partially penitent, and partially listened to the prophet’s voice, yet for all that, he went on in his evil way. Therefore the merciful threatening becomes a stern prophecy, and is fulfilled to the very letter.
So, when God’s message comes to us, friends, if we listen not to it, and turn not to its gentle rebuke, Oh! then we gather up for ourselves an awful futurity of judgment, when threatening will darken into punishment, and the voice that rebuked will swell into the voice of final condemnation. 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. My friend, 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.’ Ah, my friend! if that were all we had to say, it might well stiffen us into stony despair. Thank God-thank God! such an issue is not inevitable. Christ speaks to you. Christ is your Friend. He loves you, and He speaks to you now-speaks to you of your danger, but in order that you may never rush into it and be engulfed by it; speaks to you of your sin, but in order that you may say to Him, ‘Take Thou it away, O merciful Lord’; speaks to you of justice, but in order that you may never sink beneath the weight of His stroke; speaks to you of love, in order that you may know, and fully know, the depth of His graciousness. When He says to you, ‘I love thee; love thou Me: I have died for thee; trust Me, live by Me, and live for Me, ‘will you not say to Him, ‘My Friend, my Brother, my Lord, and my God’?
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv19, 21, 23 Have you killed and also taken possession?
Have you killed and also taken possession?
Yahweh asks this question to scold Ahab. AT: "You have killed Naboth and stolen his vineyard!" (See: Rhetorical Question)
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your blood, yes, your blood
This is repeated for emphasis.
Have you found me, my enemy?
Ahab uses this question to express anger toward Elijah. That Elijah "found" Ahab likely refers to Elijah discovering Ahab's actions, not to finding his physical location. AT: "You have found me, my enemy!" or "You have discovered what I have done, my enemy!" (See: Rhetorical Question and Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
you have sold yourself to do what is evil
A person being committed to doing what is evil is spoken of as if that person had sold himself to evil. AT: "you have dedicated yourself to doing what is evil" (See: Metaphor)
what is evil in the sight of Yahweh
The phrase, "in the sight of" refers to someone's opinion. See how you translated this in 1 Kings 11:6. AT: "what Yahweh considers to be evil" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
Yahweh
blood
adversary
evil
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.