1 Kings 21.16-19:
| 21.16ויהי כשמע אחאב כי מת נבות | This is when Achavα hears Navothβ dies.γ |
|---|---|
| ויקם אחאב לרדת אל כרם | Achav gets up to go down to the garden |
| נבות היזרעאלי | of Navoth the Itzre’eliδ |
| לרשתו׃ | to occupy it. |
| 21.17ויהי דבר יהוה | This is Yahweh’s word |
| אל אליהו התשבי לאמר׃ | to Eliyahu the Tishbi,ε saying, |
| 21.18קום רד לקראת אחאב מלך ישראל | “Rise. Go down to meet Achav, king of Isra’el, |
| אשר בשמרון | who is in Shomron.ζ |
| הנה בכרם נבות | Look in the garden of Navoth.η |
| אשר ירד שם לרשתו׃ | He goes down there to possess it. |
| 21.19ודברת אליו לאמר | Give this message to him, saying, |
| כה אמר יהוה | ‘Yahweh says this: |
| הרצחת וגם ירשת | You murder, then you occupy?’ |
| ודברת אליו לאמר | Give this message to him, saying, |
| כה אמר יהוה | ‘Yahweh says this: |
| במקום אשר לקקו הכלבים את דם נבות | In the spot where dogs lick Navoth’s blood, |
| ילקו הכלבים את דמך | the dogs lick your blood. |
| גם אתה׃ | Yes, yours.’ ” |
As I said last time, Ahab has no legal claim on Naboth’s garden. He is simply stealing it. The only way he could take possession of it is to either declare God’s Law invalid or null—something that no one except dispensationalists have the gall to do—or to sneak down there while everyone’s still off at Naboth’s stoning, and move the boundary markers before anyone notices. (Moving boundary markers puts a curse on you, by the way—Dt 27.17.)
Because ancient Hebrew doesn’t have verb tenses as we know them, we really don’t know how much time elapsed between Naboth’s death and when Ahab came to seize the garden. Possibly they happened in the space of an hour; Ahab was in his garden minutes after Naboth drew a last breath, taking advantage of the fact that Naboth—and Naboth’s family—weren’t there to stop him.
But also within the space of this time, God tapped Elijah with a message.
We haven’t seen Elijah for a few chapters. Really, what got me studying 1 Kings lately is Elijah’s presence in them, but Elijah sat out chapter 20. What he’s been up to, I’ll discuss in the next passage. Meanwhile he’s in Samaria, or even Jezreel, and God instantly clues him in on what Ahab has been up to.
Elijah might have been in the area when Naboth was killed—he might have even seen part of it—but Jezebel had covered her tracks; there was nothing to indicate that Naboth’s death was connected to Ahab. As far as anyone could tell, Naboth was killed because he was present at a pagan fast, was accused of worshipping the wrong god, and the mob took over from there. The revelation that Ahab was behind it—and his motivation, to get a garden—wasn’t something one could easily figure out, even if he were a courtier, as Elijah might possibly have been.
This message gets more detailed in the next verses, but the upshot is the same: Ahab conspired to commit murder; Ahab is going to die for this, in a similar and possibly ironic way.
Application. God may be slow to punish, but He wastes no time in calling people on their sin. We’ve all experienced the instantaneous pangs of conscience when we’ve done something wrong, and—even though we may have rationalized it away as best we can—the very reason we’re trying to rationalize it is because the Holy Spirit is poking us where we’re sensitive.
And when we deny His correction—as Ahab did—He may very well move on to bring a third party into it. (This is, after all, following Jesus’s procedure in Mt 18; the Holy Spirit follows the same procedure.) Elijah gets involved in it only because Ahab isn’t listening. Others will likewise get into what we might call “our business” because we’re not listening to the Spirit’s correction. Such stuff is never solely “our business”—sin violates both God and God’s universe, throws creation into upheaval, and needs to be dealt with.
α. Ahab.
β. Naboth.
γ. Usu. “It is, when Achab hears Navoth dies...”
δ. Or “Naboth of Jezreel.”
ε. Or “Elijah of Tishbe.”
ζ. Samaria.
η. Or, “Look: He’s in the garden of Naboth, which...”
