Then they sent to Jezebel, saying, Naboth is stoned, and is dead.
The verse concerns a vineyard belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite that lay hard by the palace, which Ahab set his heart on possessing for a garden of herbs because it was near his house. He proposed to buy it or to give another piece of land in exchange, offering a better vineyard for it or its worth in money, which Naboth refused to give up. That refusal was followed by Naboth being stoned and killed, and the killing enabled Ahab to take the land he coveted.
The verse reports the completion of Jezebel's plot with the message that Naboth is stoned and is dead, after the city's elders and nobles carried out her instructions. They used two false witnesses to accuse Naboth of blaspheming God and the king, and on that false accusation he was stoned to death. His stoning cleared the way for Ahab to take the coveted vineyard.
The incident belongs to the later years of Ahab's life while Elijah was still a prophet in Israel. It came after Elijah had overthrown gigantic evils and given a decided check to the idolatry supported by Ahab and the heathen Jezebel that had seduced the nation, after Baal's prophets had been slain, and when the whole people had been deeply stirred with many returning to the worship of God. It reveals Ahab as fully controlled by the spirit of selfishness through a naturally covetous disposition strengthened and sustained in wrongdoing by Jezebel, who had exercised evil influence over him from the first. He followed the dictates of his evil heart and could brook no refusal of his wishes, feeling that the things he desired should by right be his. He sold himself to work wickedness as stirred up by his wife, bearing fruit in deeds of shame and violence seldom equaled in sacred history and revealing the dominant trait that disastrously influenced the fortunes of the kingdom under his successors.
That seizure after Naboth was stoned and dead was a flagrant evil that required stern rebuke, so that the voice of Elijah as God's instrument prophesied in response the doom of Ahab and the doom of all his house. The story illustrates how selfish desire for another person's property can lead to bloodshed and injustice. The murder was a grave abuse of justice, showing that those responsible for making and carrying out the law are bound to establish the facts and punish the guilty with impartiality, and that neglecting justice or shielding wrongdoers makes them share in the guilt.
The verse concerns a vineyard belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite that lay hard by the palace, which Ahab set his heart on possessing for a garden of herbs because it was near his house. He proposed to buy it or to give another piece of land in exchange, offering a better vineyard for it or its worth in money, which Naboth refused to give up. That refusal was followed by Naboth being stoned and killed, and the killing enabled Ahab to take the land he coveted.
The verse reports the completion of Jezebel's plot with the message that Naboth is stoned and is dead, after the city's elders and nobles carried out her instructions. They used two false witnesses to accuse Naboth of blaspheming God and the king, and on that false accusation he was stoned to death. His stoning cleared the way for Ahab to take the coveted vineyard.
The incident belongs to the later years of Ahab's life while Elijah was still a prophet in Israel. It came after Elijah had overthrown gigantic evils and given a decided check to the idolatry supported by Ahab and the heathen Jezebel that had seduced the nation, after Baal's prophets had been slain, and when the whole people had been deeply stirred with many returning to the worship of God. It reveals Ahab as fully controlled by the spirit of selfishness through a naturally covetous disposition strengthened and sustained in wrongdoing by Jezebel, who had exercised evil influence over him from the first. He followed the dictates of his evil heart and could brook no refusal of his wishes, feeling that the things he desired should by right be his. He sold himself to work wickedness as stirred up by his wife, bearing fruit in deeds of shame and violence seldom equaled in sacred history and revealing the dominant trait that disastrously influenced the fortunes of the kingdom under his successors.
That seizure after Naboth was stoned and dead was a flagrant evil that required stern rebuke, so that the voice of Elijah as God's instrument prophesied in response the doom of Ahab and the doom of all his house. The story illustrates how selfish desire for another person's property can lead to bloodshed and injustice. The murder was a grave abuse of justice, showing that those responsible for making and carrying out the law are bound to establish the facts and punish the guilty with impartiality, and that neglecting justice or shielding wrongdoers makes them share in the guilt.