1 Kings 21 Study Notes

21:1-3 The law had legal provisions that protected the rights of Israelite land-holding families. The land could not be permanently alienated from the family, but it had to be returned either by redemption or by the free return in the Jubilee Year (Lv 25:10). There were no provisions for the selling or exchanging of land such as that which Ahab requested of Naboth. Therefore, Naboth refused to sell his father’s inheritance to the king.

21:4-6 Ahab the mighty warrior pouted because Naboth the farmer had refused his offer. His scruples, as well as his childishness, are somewhat surprising. But his wife had neither.

21:7 If the descriptions of Phoenician royal tyranny given elsewhere are accurate, Jezebel brought an unbridled Phoenician tyranny to Israel.

21:8-12 Jezebel resolved Ahab’s unhappiness with a scheme that involved perverting the law, perjury, and murder. First, she communicated a sense of seriousness by declaring a solemn fast. She then arranged for two wicked men to bring false accusations against Naboth. She knew Israelite law well enough to know that two witnesses were needed (Dt 17:6). Then she had Naboth accused of verbally abusing God and the king.

21:13-14 Jezebel’s evil scheme had been executed. What is not related here, though it clearly happened, is that Naboth’s male heirs were also killed (2Kg 9:25-26). This was necessary since as long as Naboth had surviving heirs, the land belonged to his family.

21:15-16 Ahab’s scruples had disappeared.

21:17-18 The prophet Elijah, who had faded into the background for a while, reenters the story.

21:19-24 The curse pronounced on Ahab came in two different statements. The first was expressed in God’s words to Elijah and described the way dogs would lick up Ahab’s blood in the same place that they licked up Naboth’s blood and the blood of his sons (see note at vv. 13-14). Second, disaster would come on all the males, both slave and free (or as some translations suggest, both “weak and incapacitated”), of Ahab’s house. Dogs and carrion birds would devour their corpses. The statement that dogs would lick Ahab’s blood in the same place that they licked Naboth’s blood did not happen exactly this way. Naboth was killed in Jezreel, and Ahab’s chariot was washed out in Samaria (22:38). However, the Bible implies that this prophecy of Elijah was fulfilled when Joram, Ahab’s son, was left for the dogs on Naboth’s land in Jezreel (2Kg 9:24-26). Iain Provan, on the other hand, points out that v. 19 can also be translated, “Instead of dogs licking up Naboth’s blood, dogs will lick up your blood—yes yours!”

21:25-26 Ahab was not excused of responsibility because his evil was influenced by his wife. See Gn 3:17.

21:27-29 In a surprising acceptance of a very shallow repentance (note Ahab’s continued rebellion in the next chapter), God pronounced that the prophesied destruction on Ahab’s house would happen only after Ahab’s death. We must accept God’s sovereignty on those occasions when he seems harsh by our standards and also when he seems too merciful by our judgment.