Ahab

• Ahab

124:6.3Be­fore reach­ing the Jezreel junc­tion, and as they jour­neyed on, very soon, on the left, they passed the an­cient vil­lage of Shunem, and Je­sus heard again about the most beau­ti­ful maiden of all Is­rael who once lived there and also about the won­der­ful works El­isha per­formed there. In pass­ing by Jezreel, Je­sus’ par­ents re­counted the do­ings of Ahab and Jezebel and the ex­ploits of Jehu. In pass­ing around Mount Gil­boa, they talked much about Saul, who took his life on the slopes of this moun­tain, King David, and the as­so­ci­a­tions of this his­toric spot.

123:5.12Naz­a­reth was one of the twenty-four priest cen­ters of the He­brew na­tion. But the Galilean priest­hood was more lib­eral in the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the tra­di­tional laws than were the Judean scribes and rab­bis. And at Naz­a­reth they were also more lib­eral re­gard­ing the ob­ser­vance of the Sab­bath. It was there­fore the cus­tom for Joseph to take Je­sus out for walks on Sab­bath af­ter­noons, one of their fa­vorite jaunts be­ing to climb the high hill near their home, from which they could ob­tain a panoramic view of all Gal­i­lee. To the north­west, on clear days, they could see the long ridge of Mount Carmel run­ning down to the sea; and many times Je­sus heard his fa­ther re­late the story of Eli­jah, one of the first of that long line of He­brew proph­ets, who re­proved Ahab and ex­posed the priests of Baal. To the north Mount Her­mon raised its snowy peak in ma­jes­tic splen­dor and mo­nop­o­lized the sky­line, al­most 3,000 feet of the up­per slopes glis­ten­ing white with per­pet­ual snow. Far to the east they could dis­cern the Jor­dan val­ley and, far be­yond, the rocky hills of Moab. Also to the south and the east, when the sun shone upon their mar­ble walls, they could see the Greco-Ro­man cities of the De­capo­lis, with their am­phithe­aters and pre­ten­tious tem­ples. And when they lin­gered to­ward the go­ing down of the sun, to the west they could make out the sail­ing ves­sels on the dis­tant Med­i­ter­ra­nean.

97:3.6Eli­jah shifted the Yah­weh-Baal con­tro­versy from the land is­sue to the re­li­gious as­pect of He­brew and Ca­naan­ite ide­olo­gies. When Ahab mur­dered the Naboths in the in­trigue to get pos­ses­sion of their land, Eli­jah made a moral is­sue out of the olden land mores and launched his vig­or­ous cam­paign against the Ba­al­ites. This was also a fight of the coun­try folk against dom­i­na­tion by the cities. It was chiefly un­der Eli­jah that Yah­weh be­came Elo­him. The prophet be­gan as an agrar­ian re­former and ended up by ex­alt­ing De­ity. Baals were many, Yah­weh was one—mono­the­ism won over poly­the­ism.

97:9.19New trou­ble started when King Ahab tried to buy land from Naboth. His Phoeni­cian wife forged Ahab’s name to pa­pers di­rect­ing that Naboth’s land be con­fis­cated on the charge that he had blas­phemed the names of “Elo­him and the king.” He and his sons were promptly ex­e­cuted. The vig­or­ous Eli­jah ap­peared on the scene de­nounc­ing Ahab for the mur­der of the Naboths. Thus Eli­jah, one of the great­est of the proph­ets, be­gan his teach­ing as a de­fender of the old land mores as against the land-sell­ing at­ti­tude of the Baalim, against the at­tempt of the cities to dom­i­nate the coun­try. But the re­form did not suc­ceed un­til the coun­try land­lord Jehu joined forces with the gypsy chief­tain Je­honadab to de­stroy the proph­ets (real es­tate agents) of Baal at Samaria.

97:9.18There were ups and downs—wars be­tween Is­rael and Ju­dah. Af­ter four years of civil war and three dy­nas­ties, Is­rael fell un­der the rule of city despots who be­gan to trade in land. Even King Omri at­tempted to buy She­mer’s es­tate. But the end drew on apace when Shal­maneser III de­cided to con­trol the Med­i­ter­ra­nean coast. King Ahab of Ephraim gath­ered ten other groups and re­sisted at Karkar; the bat­tle was a draw. The As­syr­ian was stopped but the al­lies were dec­i­mated. This great fight is not even men­tioned in the Old Tes­ta­ment.