And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD above all that were before him.
Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord above all kings who were before him, including his father Omri, and his reign was perverted and surpassing in apostasy. Under him Israel departed from God and corrupted their ways before Him, entering deep corruption and rebellion against God. His surpassing evil meant treating the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat as a light thing and then going further. He took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and served and worshiped Baal. He built a house or temple for Baal in Samaria with an altar in it, made a grove, and provoked the Lord God of Israel to anger more than all the kings of Israel before him.
The root of his course was weakness in moral power. He was selfish and unprincipled, without a high sense of sacred things and with no high standard of right-doing. He was incapable of appreciating God's mercies to his people and his own obligation to God as guardian and leader of Israel, the chosen people. His marriage to Jezebel was decisive, for she was an idolatrous woman of decided character and positive temperament, devoted to idolatry. Her determined spirit easily molded his character, with results disastrous both to himself and to the nation, making them both special agents of Satan to lead God's people into idolatry and terrible apostasy.
Under his rule the fear of God grew daily less in Israel, and the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth spread until Israel widely followed Baal, with heathen worship carried to high places. Blasphemous tokens of blind idolatry stood openly with none daring to oppose them. Altars of Baal, priests of Baal sacrificing to the sun, moon and stars, consecrated temples and groves where the work of men's hands was worshiped were conspicuous everywhere, and altars of idolatry were raised throughout the land. All Heaven's bounties — the running brooks, streams of living waters, gentle dew and showers of rain that refreshed the earth and made fields bring forth abundantly — were ascribed to the favor of their gods with no gratitude to the Giver. The apostasy forfeited Jehovah's protecting care and dishonored Israel's God before the heathen. It grew so deep and widespread that prophets and other faithful servants were killed and severe judgments were needed to fulfill God's purposes for Israel.
The verse thus describes the dark and troublous time of Elijah and Elisha, when wickedness reached a fearful pass of impiety and violence. Yet God did not abandon the people but sent His prophets to the nation with messages of warning. He still had men to fight the battles of Zion as bearers of divine wisdom, choosing Elijah as a Spirit-ruled and Spirit-guided preacher of righteousness who stood for the right and, working under God's direction, accomplished a grand and noble work. That history is being repeated, for the present age has its Ahabs and its Jezebels and is as verily idolatrous as the age in which Elijah lived. Its idolatry has no outward shrine or image for the eye but consists in following the gods of riches, fame, pleasure, and pleasing fables that permit men to follow the inclinations of the unregenerate heart, so that multitudes with a wrong conception of God and His attributes are as truly serving a false god as were the worshipers of Baal, and many who claim to be Christians have allied themselves with influences unalterably opposed to God and His truth and are thus led to turn away from the divine and to exalt the human.
Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord above all kings who were before him, including his father Omri, and his reign was perverted and surpassing in apostasy. Under him Israel departed from God and corrupted their ways before Him, entering deep corruption and rebellion against God. His surpassing evil meant treating the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat as a light thing and then going further. He took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and served and worshiped Baal. He built a house or temple for Baal in Samaria with an altar in it, made a grove, and provoked the Lord God of Israel to anger more than all the kings of Israel before him.
The root of his course was weakness in moral power. He was selfish and unprincipled, without a high sense of sacred things and with no high standard of right-doing. He was incapable of appreciating God's mercies to his people and his own obligation to God as guardian and leader of Israel, the chosen people. His marriage to Jezebel was decisive, for she was an idolatrous woman of decided character and positive temperament, devoted to idolatry. Her determined spirit easily molded his character, with results disastrous both to himself and to the nation, making them both special agents of Satan to lead God's people into idolatry and terrible apostasy.
Under his rule the fear of God grew daily less in Israel, and the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth spread until Israel widely followed Baal, with heathen worship carried to high places. Blasphemous tokens of blind idolatry stood openly with none daring to oppose them. Altars of Baal, priests of Baal sacrificing to the sun, moon and stars, consecrated temples and groves where the work of men's hands was worshiped were conspicuous everywhere, and altars of idolatry were raised throughout the land. All Heaven's bounties — the running brooks, streams of living waters, gentle dew and showers of rain that refreshed the earth and made fields bring forth abundantly — were ascribed to the favor of their gods with no gratitude to the Giver. The apostasy forfeited Jehovah's protecting care and dishonored Israel's God before the heathen. It grew so deep and widespread that prophets and other faithful servants were killed and severe judgments were needed to fulfill God's purposes for Israel.
The verse thus describes the dark and troublous time of Elijah and Elisha, when wickedness reached a fearful pass of impiety and violence. Yet God did not abandon the people but sent His prophets to the nation with messages of warning. He still had men to fight the battles of Zion as bearers of divine wisdom, choosing Elijah as a Spirit-ruled and Spirit-guided preacher of righteousness who stood for the right and, working under God's direction, accomplished a grand and noble work. That history is being repeated, for the present age has its Ahabs and its Jezebels and is as verily idolatrous as the age in which Elijah lived. Its idolatry has no outward shrine or image for the eye but consists in following the gods of riches, fame, pleasure, and pleasing fables that permit men to follow the inclinations of the unregenerate heart, so that multitudes with a wrong conception of God and His attributes are as truly serving a false god as were the worshipers of Baal, and many who claim to be Christians have allied themselves with influences unalterably opposed to God and His truth and are thus led to turn away from the divine and to exalt the human.