1 Kings 16:31, commentary and pictures

Ahab came to the throne two years before the death of Asa, and from the beginning his reign was marked by strange and terrible apostasy. To walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat was to him a light and trivial thing, too small a matter, and he was not content merely to encourage the forms of religious service followed at Bethel and Dan. After that grave wrongdoing he went further and took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Zidonians or Sidonians, who was high priest of Baal, and through that union went and served Baal and worshipped him. He reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal which he built in Samaria.

His course went beyond encouraging other forms of worship to boldly setting aside the worship of Jehovah for Baal worship and leading Israel into the grossest heathenism. Ahab was weak in moral power, without a high sense of sacred things, selfish and unprincipled, without a firm standard of right, and incapable of appreciating God's mercies to His people and his obligation to God as guardian and leader of Israel. Jezebel was a woman of decided character and positive temperament, devoted and given to idolatry, whose determined spirit molded Ahab's character because his weakness made him easy for her to shape, so that she gained more power over the king than God had. Together they became special agents to lead God's people into idolatry and terrible apostasy, illustrating the power of an unconsecrated woman to turn a king and a nation from God.

His rule and his adoption of Baal and Ashtoreth worship put a blighting influence on Israel that drew the nation far from the living God, corrupted their ways before Him, dishonored God, led the nation away from His protection, and brought Israel's spreading apostasy to a crisis and to departure from God, bringing disaster to Ahab and to Israel. After many years of losing reverence and godly fear there was a daily lessening fear of God and the land fell under a dark shadow of apostasy with open blasphemous idolatry where none dared expose their lives by openly opposing the prevailing blasphemy. Images of Baalim and Ashtoreth, altars of Baal, idolatrous priests, multiplied idolatrous temples and consecrated groves holding works of men's hands for worship were conspicuous everywhere, with priests sacrificing to the sun, moon, and stars, the air polluted with the smoke of sacrifices offered to false gods and hill and vale resounding with the drunken cries of a heathen priesthood. In ingratitude the people ascribed God's bounties of running brooks, living waters, dew, and rain that made fields fruitful to the favor of false gods.

Ahab did not walk in the counsel of heaven, though God would have been with him if he had, and his idolatry with Jezebel made the days of Elijah and Elisha dark and troublous with wickedness reaching a fearful pass. Even then God sent His prophets to the nation with warning messages because He always has men He uses in fighting the battles of Zion, seeing the impiety, violence and wickedness that curse the world and choosing men to be bearers of divine wisdom to fight the battles of the Lord. He chose Elijah as a preacher of righteousness ruled and guided by the Holy Spirit who working under God's direction accomplished a grand and noble work, yet king and people refused to heed the warnings through Elijah, followed by drought as judgment that they would not acknowledge. The apostasy brought by Ahab and Jezebel in Elijah's time, when Israel turned to Baal worship and idolatry, is being repeated in the present upon whom the ends of the world are come, giving Elijah's life-work special significance now. The world today has its Ahabs and its Jezebels and the present age is one of idolatry as truly as Elijah's day, for though there may be no outward shrine or image for the eye to rest upon, thousands follow the gods of this world — riches, fame, pleasure, and pleasing fables that permit men to follow the inclinations of the unregenerate heart — and multitudes with a wrong conception of God and His attributes are as truly serving a false god as were the worshipers of Baal, with many who claim to be Christians allied with influences unalterably opposed to God and His truth, turning away from the divine to exalt the human.