1 Kings 16

THE figure of Elah, the son and successor of Baasha, is as shadowy in the sacred history as that of Nadab, the son and successor of Jeroboam. Of neither are we told his age at his accession, or any special trait of disposition. Both have short reigns, little if at all exceeding a year; both “continue in the way of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat,” and “provoke God to anger with their vanities;” both, moreover, engage in a war against the Philistines within a short period of their accession; and in both reigns the special scene of the war is the Philistine city of Gibbethon. The only important difference between their histories is, that whereas Nadab put himself at the head of his army and proceeded to encounter the hardships of the siege in person, Elah sent against Gibbethon the captains of his host, Zimri and Omri, while he himself remained in the capital, Tirzah, drinking and revelling in the palace of the steward of his household, a certain Arza. We may assume that Zimri was kept acquainted with the king’s unkindly conduct, and saw in it his own opportunity. The associations of Gibbethon suggested that kings were not unassailable, and the special circumstances of Elah’s position were such as at once to provoke attack and to facilitate it. Zimri, without informing Omri or the army of his intention, withdrew himself from Gibbethon, and, returning to Tirzah, surprised the wretched monarch at his drinking-bout, and assassinated him. Elah, who began to reign in the twenty-sixth year of Asa (1 K. 16 : 8), perished in the same king’s twenty-seventh year (ibid., verse 15), so that he probably did not hold the throne for more than a few months. G. R.

Seven Days, 27th of Asa, of Judah.

ZIMRI, the bold soldier, who, imitating Baasha, brought the second Israelite dynasty to an end by the assassination of its second monarch, proceeded to follow up his first success by a further imitation of his model by destroying all the house of Baasha, not sparing any, either of his kinsfolk or of his close friends. This extreme severity may have rendered him unpopular. At any rate, when the army which was at Gibbethon heard of his insurrection and of the bloody deeds by which he had followed it up, they were so exasperated that they broke out into revolt, refused to acknowledge Zimri as their monarch, and invested Omri, who had been left at Gibbethon in sole command, with the sovereignty. Omri did not hesitate for a moment to accept the rank conferred upon him, and at once took steps to dispossess his rival of the throne. By his orders the army broke up from before Gibbethon, raised the siege, and marching with all speed to Tirzah, besieged the pretender in his capital. Zimri did not dare to venture a battle, but remained within the walls. Within a very short time the defences were forced and the town entered. Brave, fierce, and obstinate to the last degree, Zimri took a desperate resolve, and throwing himself into the royal palace, a sort of fortress within a fortress, he stood at bay, and when further resistance was hopeless, gave orders that the palace should be set on fire and burnt it over his head. It would appear that Zimri, even in his short reign of seven days, found occasion to give formal approval to the religious system of Jeroboam, since it is declared of him (verses 18, 19) that “he died for his sins which he sinned in doing evil in the sight of the Lord, in walking in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin that he did, to make Israel to sin.” G. R.

18. And died.** This word is intimately connected with the verse following. The text conveys clearly that Zimri’s tragical death was a retribution for his sins. Bähr remarks that of Elah and Zimri we learn nothing, apart from the fact that they held to the sin of Jeroboam, except how they died. It is interesting to remember here the aspect these repeated revolutions and assassinations would wear to the kingdom of Judah, then enjoying quietness and prosperity under Asa. We cannot doubt for a moment that they were regarded as so many manifestations of the righteous judgment of God, and as the outcomes of that spirit of insubordination and impiety which, in their eyes, had brought about both the division of the kingdom and the schism in the church. Hammond.

27th to 38th of Asa, of Judah.

21. THEN were the people of Israel divided into two parts: half of the people followed Tibni 22 the son of Ginath, to make him king; and half followed Omri. But the people that followed Omri prevailed against the people that followed Tibni the son of Ginath: so Tibni died, and 23 Omri reigned. In the thirty and first year of Asa king of Judah began Omri to reign over 24 Israel, and reigned twelve years: six years reigned he in Tirzah. And he bought the hill Samaria of Shemer for two talents of silver; and he built on (or fortified) the hill, and called the name of the city which he built, after the name of Shemer, the owner of the hill, 25 Samaria. And Omri did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, and dealt wickedly 26 above all that were before him. For he walked in all the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and in his sins wherewith he made Israel to sin, to provoke the LORD, the God of 27 Israel, to anger with their vanities. Now the rest of the acts of Omri which he did, and his might that he shewed, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of 28 Israel? So Omri slept with his fathers, and was buried in Samaria: and Ahab his son reigned in his stead.

Summary. After a reign of twenty-two years, Jeroboam, the first king of Israel, was succeeded by his son Nadab. A conspiracy, headed by Baasha, general of the army, destroyed the entire family of Jeroboam less than two years after the accession of Nadab.

Baasha reigned twenty-four years, and was succeeded by his son Elah. Within a year this son and the whole family of Baasha were in turn utterly destroyed by Zimri, captain of the palace guard. Seven days Zimri reigned. Besieged by the army under Omri, then in the field, and the capital (Tirzah) taken, Zimri burnt the palace and destroyed himself. Omri, the commanding general, was then chosen by the army to fill the throne. But “half the people” supported Tibni. Four years of struggle ensued, when “Tibni died” and Omri reigned. His entire reign extended twelve years. B.

Omri was the sixth king of Israel, and the founder of the fourth dynasty, which lasted for three generations and four kings. His father’s name and tribe are unknown. The twelve years of his reign are probably to be dated from the death of Elah, as his full recognition is placed in the thirty-first year of Asa, and the accession of his son Ahab in the thirty-eighth of Asa; so that his six years’ reign at Tirzah would include the civil war. P. S.—Omri was the first founder of a new dynasty, who had not come to the crown by a revolt against his sovereign and the extermination of his house. It is true that he led the army against Zimri; but in so doing he appeared as the avenger of the king whom Zimri had murdered, and the usurper’s reign of a week was too short to enable his family, if he had any, to establish any influence dangerous to Omri, or to render their extermination politically expedient. However, it came to pass that Omri attained to the throne with comparatively undefiled hands. He was even spared the blood of Zimri, that guilty man having burned the royal palace over his head in Tirzah, which had by this time become the capital. Kitto.

24. Omri builds Samaria and establishes it as the capital.** The hill Samaria, six miles north of Shechem, was a position of peculiar strength and beauty, in a fertile, well-watered region. It continued to be the capital of Israel until it was taken and destroyed by the Assyrian king, when the kingdom itself became forever extinct. Subsequently it was twice repeopled and destroyed. Herod the Great rebuilt it and called it Sebaste. The ruins still remain under the corrupted name Sebasteh. So great was the fame of the city Samaria that ultimately it gave name to the province lying between Judea and Galilee, and to its inhabitants, the Samaritans. B.—There were objections to Tirzah as the capital from its situation, which was neither sufficiently central nor sufficiently strong. Omri cast about for a place, near the middle of the land, which should be strong in a military point of view, capable of being fortified, productive, sufficiently watered, and accessible from the various parts of the kingdom. This he found in the “hill of Shomeron,” a few miles to the northwest of the old capital,

Shechem, which he accordingly purchased, and on which he built his town. G. R.

The situation of this royal city, if less beautiful, is more commanding than that of its sister, Shechem. Nearly in the centre of a basin, about five miles in diameter, rises a flattish, oval-shaped hill, to the height of some three hundred feet. On the summit is a long and nearly level plateau, which breaks down at the sides one hundred feet or more to an irregular terrace or belt of level land; below this the roots of the hill spread off more gradually into the surrounding valleys. The whole is now cultivated in terraces, in the formation of which the stones of the ancient city have been freely used. Groves of luxuriant olives almost cover the southern side and fill the valley below, while single trees and little groups dot the rest. A wide circuit of picturesque mountains encompasses the basin, having only a narrow opening on the west, through which a winter torrent finds its way to the plain of Sharon. Little villages, with their green corn-fields and gray olive groves, stud the dark mountain sides or crown their summits, making the whole landscape one of the richest and most beautiful in Palestine. The modern village of Sebasteh may contain about sixty houses, with a population of four hundred. It stands upon the broad terrace midway up the eastern side of the hill. The view from the top is a noble one, embracing the glens and vales round the hill, the circuit of mountains, a section of the plain of Sharon, and the wide expanse of the Mediterranean. No better site for a capital could have been selected in the length and breadth of Palestine—a strong position, rich environs, central situation, and an elevation sufficient to catch untainted the cool, healthy breezes of the sea. Porter.—It stands some four hundred feet above the valley, the sides of the hill being steep and terraced in every direction for cultivation, or perhaps for defensive purposes; broad and open valleys stretch north and south, and the hill is thus almost isolated. Strategic reasons may be supposed to have dictated the choice of the capital of Omri, for on the north the hill commands the main road to Jezreel over a steep pass, on the west it dominates the road to the coast, and on the east that to the Jordan. Conder.

In B.C. 721 Samaria was taken, after its second three years’ siege, by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, and with its fall closed the history of the kingdom of Israel. It was afterward taken, and its inhabitants transplanted by Alexander the Great. Again, the Jews, under Hyrcanus, nearly destroyed it, and in turn the old inhabitants were re-established by Pompey. Augustus gave it to Herod the Great, who recolonized it, rebuilt it, and added most sumptuous palaces, theatres, temples, stadium, and colonnades, changing its name to Sebaste (i.e., Augusta), in honor of his patron, by the Arabic form of which, Sebustiyeh, it is still known. Tristram.

25-27. The character of Omri and of his reign. Of his five predecessors, the common record is that they sinned and made Israel to sin. Of this man, head of the fourth family that reigned, it is said: Omri wrought evil, and did worse than all before him. Worse did he than Jeroboam and Baasha, in compelling the people to iniquity by framing it into a law. For in Micah 6:16 we are told that the keeping of the statutes of Omri made “Israel a desolation,” referring probably to idol-worship. The noted Moabite Stone contains the name of Omri, and Assyrian inscriptions designate Samaria as the “house or city of Omri.” B.

It must have been early in his reign that Omri, desirous of military fame, invaded the territory of Moab. The Moabites, reduced to subjection by David, and treated with extreme severity, would seem to have recovered their independence at the separation of the Israelites into two hostile kingdoms, and to have maintained it until Omri’s attack upon them. Omri, as we learn from the Moabite Stone, quarrelled with Chemosh-Gad, the father of the Mesha mentioned in 2 K. 3:4. He made his first assault on Medeba, a Moabite city about seven miles to the south of Heshbon, marked by the ruins of the modern Mādeba. Having conquered this place and occupied it, he proceeded to overrun the entire Moabite country, which he subjugated and attached to his own kingdom as a dependency. The Moabite royal family was indeed maintained on the throne and continued to govern the country, but a heavy tribute was required from the nation, which was felt as a grievous “oppression.” Mesha says, “Now Omri, king of Israel, he oppressed Moab many days. His son succeeded him; and he also said, I will oppress Moab.” We do not know the exact amount of tribute during Omri’s reign, but under his son and successor it reached the almost incredible total of one hundred thousand sheep and one hundred thousand lambs annually (2 K. 3:4).

Omri appears also to have carried on a war, but an unsuccessful war, with Syria of Damascus. Its result was the cession to the Damascene kingdom of a number of cities (1 K. 20:34), among them probably Ramoth-Gilead, the most important of the trans-Jordanic towns, and the further grant to the Syrians of a right to “make streets in Samaria.” Such concessions imply a very serious antecedent defeat; and we must thus, in estimating the military talents of this king, set against his Moabite victories, which were no doubt brilliant, the grave losses that he suffered on his northern and northeastern frontier, which must have seriously crippled the strength of his kingdom in that quarter. The religious policy of Omri differed little from that of his predecessor, but was, if anything, characterized by greater thoroughness. He “wrought evil in the eyes of the Lord, and did worse than all that were before him” (verse 25). We hear in later times of the “statutes of Omri” as still kept by the Israelites (Micah 6:16); and we may gather from this that he reduced the calf-worship into a regular formal system, where to all were required to render obedience. It is clear that he adhered to Jeroboam’s system (verse 26), and so rigidly carried it out as to leave a worse name behind him in respect of religion than even the worst of his predecessors. He reigned twelve years, from the twenty-seventh to the thirty-eighth of Asa. During the first six of these years he resided at Tirzah, and during the last six at Samaria. During the first four he contended for the throne with Tibni; during the last eight he was sole monarch. G. R.

Omri’s policy was evidently directed toward obtaining peace for his kingdom, by the cultivation of friendly relations, not only with the kingdom of Judah, but also with other neighboring states. Peace seems to have been concluded, by the sacrifice of certain Israelitish towns, with Damascene Syria, which under the dynasty of the Hadads had become, as Israel had already experienced under Baasha, a formidable power. The marriage of Omri’s son, the weak Ahab, with the Phoenician princess Jezebel, is to be attributed to the above-named political motive. O.

The dynasties that reigned at Samaria have long been swept away; the people over whom they ruled carried into a captivity over which the veil of impenetrable mystery lies. Only the word of the Lord has stood firm and immovable. Of Nadab, of Baasha, of Elah, of Zimri, and of Omri, Scripture has only one and the same thing to say: that they walked in the way and in the sin of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, “wherewith he made Israel to sin, to provoke Jehovah, the God of Israel, to anger.” And over each and all did the same judgment sweep. And yet there were more grievous sins to follow and more terrible judgments to come. A. E.

The historic connections of Mesha, king of Moab, with Israel have received a most remarkable confirmation by the discovery in 1869 of what is generally known as “the Moabite Stone.” This is a pillar or monumental stone about three feet nine inches in length, two feet four inches in breadth, and one foot two inches in thickness. It is undoubtedly an official monument commemorating the emancipation of Moab from an oppressive subjection during about forty years to the kings of Israel. The language is fundamentally Hebrew, no word occurring of which the root does not exist in the Hebrew Scriptures. “It reads (says M. de Vogue) like a page of the Hebrew Scriptures.” “The form of the letters is the oldest known to any written language. The Pentateuch was no doubt written in such letters in the time of Moses; Solomon and Hiram corresponded with each other in such characters.” At the time it was copied enough was still legible to show that Moab had been in subjection to Israel, and had achieved her independence, and that the reigning monarch under whom her independence was achieved bore the name Mesha. It began thus:

“I, Mesha, am son of Chemosh-gad king of Moab, the Dibonite. My father reigned over Moab thirty years, and I reigned after my father. And I erected this stone to Chemosh at Karcha [a stone of] salvation, for he saved me from all despoilers and let me see my desire upon all my enemies, and Omri, king of Israel, who oppressed Moab many days, for Chemosh was angry with his land. His son succeeded him, and he also said, I will oppress Moab.”

Its tone throughout is remarkably religious—in the sense of recognizing the fortunes of his kingdom, good or ill, as determined by his national god Chemosh. It is chiefly occupied with his special exploits in war and in the rebuilding of cities. A large number of proper names—i.e., of great kings, and of cities—appear on this stone—names which occur also in the Hebrew Scriptures—the number supposed to be satisfactorily identified being twenty-three, and, conjecturally, some others. It is generally admitted that this Moabite Stone brings to light the oldest extant specimen of alphabetic writing. It records the military achievements of Mesha, king of Moab, for a period of forty years or more, from about B.C. 925. This would fix the date of this writing not later than B.C. 885—contemporary with the accession of Jehu, the death of Ahaziah, king of Judah, and of Jehoram, of Israel. H. C.

It was from the Phœnicians that the Israelites and the nations round about them received their alphabet. This alphabet was of Egyptian origin. As far back as the monuments of Egypt carry us, we find the Egyptians using their hieroglyphics to express not only ideas and syllables, but also the letters of an alphabet. Even in the remote epoch of the second dynasty they already possessed an alphabet in which the twenty-one simple sounds of the language were represented by special hieroglyphic pictures. These pictures, however, were employed only on the public monuments; for books and letters and business transactions the Egyptians made use of a running hand, in which the original pictures had undergone great transformations. This running hand is termed “hieratic,” and it was from the hieratic forms of the Egyptian letters that the Phœnician letters were derived. The Phœnician alphabet passed first from the Phœnicians to the Greeks, then from the Greeks to the Romans, and finally from the Romans to the nations of modern Europe. But before the alphabet was communicated to Greece by the Phœnician traders, it had already been adopted by their Semitic kinsmen in Western Asia. Excavations in Palestine and the country east of the Jordan would doubtless bring to light inscriptions compiled in it much older than the oldest which we at present know. Only a few years ago the gap between the time when the Phœnicians first borrowed their new alphabet and the time to which the earliest texts written in it belonged was very great indeed. But during the last fifteen years discoveries have been made which help to fill it up, and prove to us at the same time what may be found if we will only seek. One of these discoveries is that of the famous Moabite Stone. In the summer of 1869, Dr. Klein, a German missionary, while travelling in what was once the land of Moab, discovered a most curious relic of antiquity among the ruins of Dhibān, the ancient Dibon. This relic was a stone of black basalt, rounded at the top, two feet broad and nearly four feet high. Across it ran an inscription of thirty-four lines in the letters of the Phœnician alphabet. Dr. Klein unfortunately contented himself with copying a few words, and endeavoring to secure the monument for the Berlin Museum. Things always move slowly in the East, and it was not until a year later that the negotiations for the purchase of the stone were completed between the Prussian Government on the one side and the Arabs and Turkish pashas on the other. At length, however, all was arranged, and it was agreed that the stone should be handed over to the Germans for the sum of £80. At this moment M. Clermont-Ganneau, a member of the French Consulate at Jerusalem, with lamentable indiscretion, sent men to take squeezes of the inscription, and offered no less than £375 for the stone itself. At once the cupidity of both Arabs and pashas was aroused; the Governor of Nablus demanded the treasure for himself, while the Arabs, fearing it might be taken from them, put a fire under it, poured cold water over it, broke it in pieces, and distributed the fragments as charms among the different families of the tribe. Thanks to M. Clermont-Ganneau, most of these fragments have now been recovered, and the stone, once more put together, may be seen in the Museum of the Louvre at Paris. The fragments have been fitted into their proper places by the help of the imperfect squeezes taken before the monument was broken. When the inscription came to be read, it turned out to be a record of Mesha, king of Moab, of whom we are told in 2 Kings 3 that after Ahab’s death he “rebelled against the king of Israel,” and was vainly besieged in his capital Kirharaseth by the combined armies of Israel, Judah and Edom. The whole inscription reads like a chapter from one of the historical books of the Old Testament. Not only are the phrases the same, but the words and grammatical forms are, with one or two exceptions, all found in scriptural Hebrew. The covenant name of the God of Israel (Jehovah) occurs in the inscription, spelt in exactly the same way as in the Old Testament. Sayce.

The reference to Chemosh, the national deity of Moab, is quite in harmony with the Bible allusion to Chemosh as the abomination of Moab (1 K. 11:7); and the whole inscription betokens the long subjection of Moab, and the final triumph of the Moabites. For sixty-five years there is in the Bible no further notice of the Moabites—not until after Elisha’s death, when, as we are told, “the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year” (2 K. 13:20). The silence of Scripture on this subject is itself an acknowledgment of the Moabitish success and independence. The inscription further gives an account of Mesha’s tritriumph, and of his reorganizing and strengthening his long-oppressed and sorely wasted kingdom. This testimony is altogether singular, and cannot be set aside or modified by any possible ingenuity of mere criticism. W. Fraser.

But the inscription of Mesha does not merely confirm and illustrate Scripture. Like the monument erected by Shishak at Karnak, it gives us much additional information with respect to events only lightly touched on in the Bible, helping to fill out the very brief narrative of the writer of Kings. We learn from it that the Moabites, who were reduced to subjection by David (2 Sam. 8:2; 1 Chron. 18:2), and were no doubt among the tributaries of Solomon (1 K. 4:21, 24; 2 Chron. 9:23-26), regained their liberty before the accession of Omri; that Omri reconquered them early in his reign, and put a yoke upon them which was regarded as oppressive; that Ahab, Omri’s son, who succeeded him, continued this oppression; that it lasted for a period which might be called, roundly, “forty years;” that at length Mesha, the Moabite tributary king, who had succeeded his father in the sovereignty, regarding himself as divinely commissioned by his god, Chemosh, rebelled; that a war of independence followed with varied success, but that ultimately Mesha prevailed, recovered the various strongholds which the Israelites had fortified in his territory, and established his sway over the whole Moabite country. While thus employed we find that he not only made himself master of Moab proper, but also took possession of a number of towns which, at the occupation of the Holy Land, had been seized and peopled by the Reubenites and Gadites—e.g., Baal-Meon, Medeba, Kirjathaim, Ataroth, Nebo, Dibon, and Jahaz. The result was that Moab, on its re-establishment as an independent kingdom, was very much more powerful than it had ever been before the time of David, and became one of the most dreaded enemies of the Jews and Israelites during the later period of the two monarchies. Hence the numerous denunciations of the Moabites by the prophets of the later kingdoms, as Isaiah, Amos, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, who view Moab as one of the strongest and bitterest antagonists of the chosen people. G. R.

The ancient south road from Heshbon to Petra next passes Dibon, now Dhiban, about three and one half miles north of the Arnon, one of the most celebrated of the Reubenite cities, and now further remarkable for the discovery of the Moabite Stone. Originally belonging to Moab, it had been conquered by

Sihon (Num. 21 : 20), and fell to Israel on his destruction. It was first rebuilt and occupied by Gad, but finally allotted to Reuben from its situation. At the period of the later prophets, like the rest of the district, it had been resumed by Moab, and is mentioned by Isaiah and Jeremiah in their denunciations of that people. Tristram.

38th of Asa to 18th of Jehoshaphat, of Judah.

16 : 29 AND in the thirty and eighth year of Asa king of Judah began Ahab the son of Omri to reign over Israel : and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty and 30 two years. And Ahab the son of Omri did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD 31 above all that were before him. And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel the daughter 32 of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshipped him. And 33 he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made the Asherah ; and Ahab did yet more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to 34 anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him. In his days did Hiel the Beth-elite build Jericho : he laid the foundation thereof with the loss of Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof with the loss of his youngest son Segub ; according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by the hand of Joshua the son of Nun.

THE REIGN OF AHAB. With the accession of Ahab a new main section of our history begins—the section which has its close in the destruction of the house of Omri by Jehu, as related in 2 Kings 10. And this reign is recorded at unusual length ; in fact, it occupies nearly all the remaining portion of this volume, whereas the reigns of preceding kings have in several instances been dismissed in a few verses. It owes this distinction to the ministry of the great prophet Elijah by which it was marked, and, indeed, was profoundly influenced ; but this ministry, it must be remembered, was necessitated by the critical circumstances of the time. No one can fail to see that this was one of the veritable turning-points of Jewish history. One of the real “decisive battles of the world”—that between the Lord and Baal—was then fought out. No wonder that our historian felt constrained to chronicle at length the transactions of a reign so pregnant both with good and evil for the people of the Lord and for the faith with which they had been put in trust. Indeed, the same guiding principle which led him to devote so many of his pages to the reign of Solomon, when the theocratic kingdom was at its highest, impelled him to linger over the reign of Ahab when religion was at its lowest ebb. The secular historian, too often like the sun-dial which “counts no hours save those serene,” draws a veil over the time of his country’s decadence, or touches its misfortunes with a light hand. It is only in the inspired records that we have an impartial register both of the glory and shame of a commonwealth. Hammond.

29. The accession of Ahab, and the period of his reign. The son of Omri, his reign began in the thirty-eighth year of Asa’s reign over Judah. This good King Asa had governed Judah in peace, while six kings of Israel had died after troublous reigns, two of them slain by their successors. Ahab’s reign of twenty-two years is more fully recorded than any other of the kings of Israel. The incidents of his history show that he had a strong character ; that he was an able ruler, a brave and skilful commander, a kingly esthetic, inasmuch as in one of many newly founded cities he built for himself an ivory palace, and incurred the guilt of murder that his gardens in Jezreel might be enlarged and beautified. Although more daringly wicked even than Jeroboam, yet he had periods of penitence under the appeals and threatenings of Jehovah.

30-33. Ahab’s extreme provocation of the God of Israel. These verses sum up the points of this provocation, far exceeding the sins of Jeroboam. The image-worship set up by Jeroboam was a breach of the Second Commandment, for it was professedly designed to retain the worship of Jehovah under the form of a golden calf, itself a counterfeit presentment of the symbolic Shekinah. But Ahab, “as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam,” added the yet more heinous sin of trampling under foot the First Commandment, that foremost, central principle which lay at the foundation of all reverence and obedience, the sole worship of the one only living Jehovah. Openly and utterly he renounced all allegiance to the true God, the God of Israel, “and went and served Baal, and worshipped him.” This was the master-crime of this boldest and guiltiest of Israel’s monarchs. This defiant rejection of the true God he dared to carry out by displacing the remaining semblance of His worship, and by erecting in its stead an altar and temple for Baal in Samaria. B.

31. Ahab, king of Israel, is represented as having sought to strengthen himself by a marriage with a foreign princess, and as having made choice for the purpose of “Jezebel, daughter of Eth-baal, king of the Zidonians.”** Here not only have we a genuine Phœnician name, but we have the name of a king who is proved by the Tyrian history of Menander to have been seated upon the throne exactly at this time. Eithobalus, the priest of Ashtaroth (or Venus), who by the murder of his predecessor, Pheles, became king of Tyre, mounted the throne just fifty years after the death of Hiram, the contemporary of Solomon. Ahab mounted the throne of Israel fifteen or twenty years later, and was thus the younger contemporary of Eithobalus, or Eth-baal, who continued to reign at Tyre during a considerable portion of Ahab’s reign in Israel. G. R.

Ahab had the Divine law before him (Ex. 34:16), which distinctly forbade union with the Canaanites. Such a marriage was unprecedented in the kingdom of Israel, and was the more fatal because of the character of the queen, the Lady Macbeth of Scripture. She was reckless, fanatical and cruel, with a temper as vindictive as her will was resolute. Her husband became a tool in her hands. He could not foresee all the issues of his choice, but he knew the choice was sinful. P. C.

Hitherto the worship of Jehovah, though in an idolatrous form, had still been the national religion; but now the worship of Baal and Ashera was, at the instigation of the queen, set up in its stead, a temple built for Baal in Samaria itself, and (see especially 18:19) a vast number of the prophets of Baal and Ashera maintained among the people. Against the prophets of Jehovah, moreover, who must at that time have been numerous, a sanguinary persecution arose (verses 4, 13), and they were put to death whenever the queen could lay hands on them. Under these circumstances the people remained passive: they halted between two opinions, as Elijah expressed it—i.e., they thought the worship of Jehovah and Baal compatible. At this period the conflict with triumphant heathenism was waged by the individual in whom was reflected the full glory of Old Testament prophetship—viz., Elijah the Tishbite, “the Prophet of Fire, whose word burnt like a torch” (as the son of Sirach describes him, 48:1), and whose very name “Jehovah is my God” testified against the apostate and irresolute race. O.

Ahab represents the culminating point of the perversity of the kingdom of Israel. At once more able and more profane than his predecessors, he fostered to an unprecedented degree the corruption of morals, private and public injustice, and idolatrous practices. Ahab, prompted by Jezebel, became the more dangerous enemy of the cause of God. At this period of the national history arose the greatest of the prophets, Elijah, who well bore out his name—the strength of God—and who was the faithful type of John the Baptist, the immediate forerunner of Christ. In the coming of Elijah at such a crisis, we have an illustration of a general and permanent rule of God’s kingdom. The excess of evil calls out the strongest manifestations of good. Never was the power of Satan more rampant than at the time when the Son of God appeared upon earth. So in the end of time, the day of Antichrist will be also the day in which Christ will intervene most directly in the great drama of history. E. de P.

33. The Asherah.** This was probably a wooden image or symbol of Ashtaroth or Astarte, the chief female deity, as Baal (the Sungod) was the chief male deity of the Phœnicians. By the Assyrians they were called Bel and Ishtar. As the sun represented Baal or Bel, the Moon or the planet Venus was the emblem of Ashtaroth. Every conceivable measure and method of licentiousness and cruelty were associated with the ritual and the temple-worship of these imaginary deities. And all these revolting and infamous rites Ahab established in his own capital city, from whence the corruption was easily diffused throughout the nation of Israel. And this he did when “he took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal,” the Phœnician king. Wife and worship, matched in the extreme of wickedness and infamy, he enthroned with himself; kindred sources of evil and agencies of destruction to the moral life and to the very continuance of the nation. Nor, as we read the story, was Ahab the mere weak compliant instrument of this imperious, fierce, vindictive woman, his chosen partner. Rather was Jezebel so chosen because her wilful, haughty, impious spirit so exactly responded to his own. Many other wives had he, but Jezebel alone shared his throne and his counsels to the end, because of her oneness of nature, her reckless defiance of all Divine authority, and impious disregard of all right and purity and truth. Thus it was, by his own contempt of Jehovah in setting up a system of shameless idolatry, and by infusing this spirit of idolatry by example and authority in the practice and hearts of the whole people, that “Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.” B.

It was the first time that a king of Israel had allied himself by marriage with a heathen princess; and the alliance was in this case of a peculiarly disastrous kind. Jezebel has stamped her name on history as the representative of all that is designing, crafty, malicious, revengeful, and cruel. She is the first great instigator of persecution against the saints of God. Guided by no principle, restrained by no fear of either God or man, passionate in her attachment to her heathen worship, she spared no pains to maintain idolatry around her in all its splendor. Four hundred and fifty prophets ministered under her care to Baal, besides four hundred prophets of the groves which ate at her table (chap. 18 : 19). The idolatry, too, was of the most debased and sensual kind. The worship of Baal was combined with that of Ashtaroth, sometimes understood to be the moon, at other times to be the planet Venus. But whichever of the two she was, there can be no doubt as to the effect upon the people. W. Milligan.

The immediate consequence of this ill-fated union was, that the religion of Jezebel became the worship of the land of Israel. Ahab built in Samaria a temple to “the Baal”—the Sungod (the producing principle in Nature)—in which he erected not only an altar, but, as we gather from 2 K. 3 : 2 ; 10 : 27, also one of those pillars which were distinctive of its vile services. As usual, where these rites were fully carried out, he also “made the Asherah”—Astarte, the Moon-goddess (the receptive principle in Nature)—so that the Phœnician worship was now established in its entirety. As we infer from later notices, there was a “vestry” attached to these temples, where special festive garments, worn on great occasions, were kept (2 K. 10 : 22). Ahab—or perhaps rather Jezebel—appointed not less than four hundred and fifty priests of Baal and four hundred of Asherah, who were supported by the bounty of the queen. The forced introduction of this new worship led to a systematic persecution of the prophets, and even of the openly professed worshippers of Jehovah, which had their complete extermination for its object. A. E.

“The change from a symbolical worship of the One True God, with the innocent rites of sacrifice and prayer, to the cruel and licentious worship of the Phœnician divinities, was,” as Dean Stanley observes, “a prodigious step downward, and left traces in Northern Palestine which no subsequent reformations were able to obliterate.” “In earlier times,” says Döllinger, “Baal had been worshipped without an image in Tyre and its colonies; but for a long time now his worship had grown into an idolatry of the most wanton character, directed by a numerous priesthood, who had their headquarters at Tyre. As the people of Asia distinguished, properly speaking, only two deities of nature, a male and a female, so Baal was of an elemental and sidereal character at once. As the former he was god of the creative power, bringing all things to life everywhere, and, in particular, god of fire; but he was Sungod besides, and, as such, to human lineaments he added the crown of rays about the head peculiar to this god. In the one quality as well as in the other, he was represented at the same time as sovereign of the heavens (Baal-samin) and of the earth by him impregnated. The Canaanitish Moloch (king) was not essentially different from Baal, but the same god in his terrible and destroying aspect, the god of consuming fire, the burning sun who smites the land with unfruitfulness and pestilence, dries up the springs, and begets poisonous winds (Jer. 32 : 35 ; 19 : 5). In the Astarte (Ashtaroth) of the Western Asiatics we recognize that great nature-goddess standing by Baal’s side, who is the regent of the stars, the Queen of Heaven, and goddess of the moon, the mother of life, and deity of woman’s fecundity.” G. R.

34. The rebuilding of Jericho by Hiel, and its predicted consequences fulfilled. To prove that “the Lord is not slack concerning His promise,” to attest to all in after time the certainty of God’s threatened judgments, however long the interval between the utterance and the fulfilment, is the object of this brief record. A curse had been pronounced by Joshua four hundred and forty years before upon the man who should rebuild the walls of Jericho after they had miraculously fallen and thus given entrance to the besieging host of Israel. Hiel, a native of Bethel, under the infection of idolatry, no longer believing in the God of Israel, deliberately disregarded the Divine judgment announced by Joshua. That judgment was now fulfilled in punishment of this daring rebuilder of an accursed city. In a manner which is not related, his eldest and youngest sons perished, one at the outset, the other at the completion of the rebuilding of the walls of Jericho. And a fearful warning it was to the whole nation, not to despise the long suffering and patience of God. But the nation heeded not the warning. B.

The reign of Ahab must be regarded as, on the whole, a time of material prosperity for Israel. Besides the two triumphs over Syria we find the kingdom otherwise advancing in wealth and consequence. New towns of importance arose both in the north and in the south, as Jezreel in the Esdraélon plain, and Jericho, low down in the Ghor or Jordan valley. Joshua had in the olden time laid a curse on the man who should rebuild this city (Josh. 6 : 26)—the first in Canaan to resist Israel—and the menace had been effective for centuries; but in Ahab’s reign a certain Hiel, a native of Bethel, set the curse at naught, and raised Jericho from its ruins, paying, however, in the deaths of two of his sons, the penalty affixed prophetically. The site of Jericho was most favorable, and the “city of palm-trees” soon became a flourishing place, but was not for a long time of the same importance as Jezreel. Jezreel, “planted on a gentle eminence, in the very centre of the rich plain, commanding the view of Carmel on the west and of the valley of the Jordan on the east,” was made a royal residence; strengthened with walls and towers; adorned with a palace, a temple, and perhaps an “ivory house;” and continued till the end of the dynasty the ordinary seat of the court and place of abode of the sovereign. Following in the footsteps of his father Omri, his aim was to increase at once the internal dignity and the external prosperity of Israel. He loved peace and the arts of peace. His fame as a builder of cities and of palaces received particular notice in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel (1 K. 22 : 39). Among the latter was his new palace at Jezreel, which, with its extensive gardens, was to prove so fatal a spot in the history of his family; while either there or at Samaria he erected for himself that “ivory house” which appears to have attracted, in a greater than ordinary degree, the admiration of men. Ewald remarks that “in the time of Solomon ivory was first used for a chair of state; Ahab decorated with it an entire house.” To nothing, however, does Ahab appear to have devoted himself more than to extending the commercial prosperity of Israel, and it was in connection with this that the weaker side of his character and the more evil influences of his reign appeared. He was thus led to draw closer the bonds of friendship between himself and the powerful Phœnicians in the West. His marriage with Jezebel is in no small degree to be traced to the same cause. G. R.

Points of Special Instruction. The first respects the eminent fitness of the negative or prohibitory form of the Ten Commandments. They all exactly match man’s case, in striking at the fact and the very forms of actual human transgression. Thou shalt have no other gods; thou shalt not make graven images! What a comment upon the necessity and fitness of these Divine commands is contained in the entire history of this kingdom of Israel!

This history further shows that the first and second Commandments are the vital and essential ones. In their negative form they imply the controlling presence of that love to God which Christ affirmed to be the first and great Commandment. The worship of God in spirit and truth is the foremost simplest outflow of supreme love to Him. Neglect of such worship attends upon the want or withdrawal of love. And neglect leads, through disregard and disobedience, to positive rejection, and the enthronement of some other object of love and worship. Rejection soon transforms indifference to hate, and disobedience to revolt and defiance. And defiance is the forerunner of final destruction. So was it with Ahab. So will it be with every one who disregards and disobeys the great Commandment of love to God in Christ; with every one who allows an idolatrous affection for any being or object to displace supreme devotion to Him. Though the time of image-worship has passed, subtler forms of idolatrous affection abide as the chief sources of peril, as occasions and means of spiritual downfall and ruin. This lesson of the history always and sadly needs our pondering.

Idolatry substituted a false for a true conception of the nature, the relations, and the requirements of God. Its effect was to pervert the reason, to stupefy the conscience, to nullify the force of law, and obliterate all sense of duty toward God; and thus of necessity to exclude all idea of obligation between man and man. Its natural outcome could only be a character altogether vicious, a life wholly beast-like, mastered by self-seeking and malevolence, by rapacity and strife, by lust and cruelty. Such was the outcome of Ahab’s daring and defiant introduction of Baal-worship among the people of Israel. How enormous, then, his sin and guilt, and how immeasurable the abhorrence of such iniquity on the part of a God immaculately pure! B.

Family life is closely linked with religious life. Unequal yoking with unbelievers is as bad for religion as it often is for domestic quiet. A Jezebel can do much mischief to a family into which she comes—to the whole circle, be it wide or narrow, which is cursed by her activity. She may be “clever,” of high standing, of influential connections, of great force, very attractive, on her own lines very generous and public-spirited (see how bountifully Jezebel provided for her priests and her worship); but she is a curse, and the consequences to those submitting to her influence can only be bad. Let the young be profoundly thankful where God has given them Christian parents. And let them aim at the perpetuation of a godly family life. The violation of this principle brought Ahab and his family, including Jezebel, to desolation. J. Hall.

In their successive and similar careers, Jeroboam, Omri, and Ahab strongly emphasize the inevitable and downward progress of the wicked in iniquity. Omri walked in the sin of Jeroboam, went farther in the practice of evil. He “wrought evil in the eyes of the Lord.” Although he evinced judgment and taste in the building of Samaria, and the fruits of his energy and enterprise were many, yet in his own inner life as seen by the omniscient Lord, and in his defilement of the nation’s worship, he wrought only evil, and that to the end. Ever accumulating guilt for himself, he transmitted, through the force of example and training, yet more fearful guilt and misery to his son after him. Jeroboam was notably wicked in that he first “made Israel to sin.” Omri was “worse than all before him.” And Ahab went far in advance of Omri his father. Each carried the whole nation down into deeper corruption, and involved it in final utter destruction. Thus it was in this ancient, true, and typical history. Thus it is in current history, personal and national. Sin is invariably progressive, and the progress ends inevitably in ruin.

Jehovah’s relations and dealings with the nation Israel are simply an illustration of his relations and dealings with every other nation. The principles directing and governing His action toward communities or peoples are always and everywhere the same. Outward national prosperity He has ever conditioned upon national morality; and true morality, personal and national, springs solely from a pure religion, a religion based upon divinely instituted laws and worship. Obedience and reverence toward God, grateful service and worshipful devotion, joined with righteous, unselfish, and helpful dealing toward men, comprise the fundamental conditions upon which depend the prospering favor of God, alike upon nations and individuals. Again and again throughout the Old Testament histories does He expressly affirm these principles to rulers and peoples, pre-eminently to the successive kings of Judah and Israel. And not only the entire record of the Israelitish people, from Moses to the latest monarch of Judah, but the whole subsequent history of nations affords an unbroken comment upon the absolute truthfulness of these principles. Let then the sense of obligation to God be habitually cherished, and let His law of righteous and truthful living, of unselfish and helpful dealing, be the rule of personal and national action. And let the practice of a pure, heartfelt scriptural worship be more and more widely extended over our vast inheritance. So shall the prospering favor of God, already so richly realized, be perpetuated and increased with our swiftly multiplying numbers. B.

ELIJAH ANNOUNCES DROUGHT TO AHAB; RETIRES TO THE BROOK CHERITH, THEN TO ZAREPHATH. THE WIDOW’S TRUSTFUL FIDELITY; HER CHILD RESTORED.