Thoughts on 1 Kings 21

Today’s reading: 1 Kings 21; Titus 1-2

I have never really considered before how much Ahab killing Naboth for his vineyard mirrors David killing Uriah for his wife.

I think part of the reason I have never noticed this parallel before is that I get distracted by how much Ahab is just acting like a petulant, spoiled child. When he goes to Naboth for his vineyard, he starts off reasonably enough, offering to buy it or trade it for an even nicer vineyard, but then starts sulking and even refuses to eat when Naboth doesn’t want to so easily give up his family inheritance. This tells you something about how easy life must have been for Ahab up to this point, that when someone won’t just immediately roll over and give him what he wants he responds like you would expect a three year old to respond.

The other part of it though is that it is Jezebel, not Ahab, who has Naboth killed. However, it’s clear from the account that Ahab was far from an innocent bystander. He knows how his wife operates, and he doesn’t question it when she says she will deliver Naboth’s vineyard to him. This plot was not carried out secretly like David’s plot against Uriah was, but unabashedly involved the leaders of Naboth’s city openly bringing false charges against him. And when Jezebel tells Ahab that Naboth is dead and he can go claim the vineyard, Ahab isn’t surprised or curious how he died, as though he had expected that his wife was going to go haggle for the property, he is giddy to have his new toy and runs off to play with it. This is why God sends Elijah to Ahab to call him out for having killed Naboth even though it was Jezebel that orchestrated the murder.

So both men, David and Ahab, use their position as king to kill one of their subjects in order to “legitimately” take what belonged to them, and to each man God sends a prophet to rebuke them for their abuse of power.

What I think is amazing about our God though in this is that He accepts both men’s repentance for their sin. For David, this feels more reasonable; David was a man after God’s own heart, seeking to follow the Lord personally and to lead Israel to follow the Lord as well; so this could be “written off” as a mistake in the midst of an otherwise faithful life, and so it makes sense that God would accept his repentance. But for Ahab… why would God accept his repentance?? He has never cared about being faithful to God personally, and he has led Israel to abandon Yahweh in favor of Baal. What credit has Ahab accrued with the Lord that He would be willing to accept his repentance?

This is the way we tend to think, isn’t it? That we have to do enough to earn God’s favor that He will be willing to overlook or forgive our failures? Or that if we generally live a decent life, surely one “mishap” won’t derail things? But the teaching of the Bible, the gospel, is so much more radical than that. In Jesus, we can have forgiveness for our sins, not on the basis of having done enough good works to gain God’s favor or earn His forgiveness, but purely on the basis of His great love for us. This is why Paul can say in Romans 5, “ God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Isaiah tells us that, in comparison to the righteousness of God, even our best works would count as nothing more than dirty rags (literally menestral rags). So while it is easy to look at David’s faithfulness and Ahab’s faithlessness and conclude that one is more worthy of God’s forgiveness than the other, that is simply not true. None of us, no matter how personally faithful or righteous we may be, deserves forgiveness at all, and yet, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

None of this is to say that Ahab’s faithlessness and rebellion was without consequence. Ahab led Israel astray into apostasy more than any king before him, leading countless Israelites to their destruction. The ramifications of his rebellion echoed for generations and cannot be understated. And yet, so great is the mercy of God that when Ahab repented, He relented of the calamity that He was bringing upon him. Just like Jonah with the Assyrians, Elijah didn’t pronounce upon Ahab a conditional judgement if he failed to repent, but simply the coming judgement of God for his sins. But also just like the Assyrians in Nineveh, Ahab repented nonetheless and was shown the same mercy because we have a God who considers judgement His “strange work,” but delights to show mercy to the repentant.

Praise God for His undeserved mercy upon such hopeless sinners as us!