1 Kings 21:26
And he did very abominably in following idols, according to all things as did the Amorites, whom the LORD cast out before the children of Israel. And he did very abominably in following idols, according to all things as did the Amorites, whom the LORD cast out before the children of Israel.
The verse belongs to the incident of Naboth the Jezreelite, whose vineyard lay beside the king's palace and which Ahab set his heart on possessing for a garden of herbs, proposing to buy it for money or to exchange it for a better vineyard. That incident reveals his dominant, controlling covetousness while Elijah was still prophet in Israel, a selfish spirit that grew and was strengthened under Jezebel's influence and that disastrously influenced the fortunes of the kingdom under his successors.
The verse describes his idolatry as exceptionally, exceedingly and very abominably wicked, in that he followed idols according to all things as did the Amorites, whose practices led the Lord to drive them out and cast them out before Israel. He committed grave evil by following idols and worshiping the gods of the heathen, having been led away from God by Jezebel's influence from the first, which removed the fear of God from his mind and stirred him up to wickedness. His weak moral character and lack of regard for God's mercy and for his duties as Israel's leader made him readily shaped by Jezebel, and in his later years under the evil influence she had exercised over him from the first this bore fruit in deeds of shame and violence seldom equaled in sacred history, so that he sold himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up, and his rule helped lead the nation into apostasy.
Together with the heathen Jezebel he supported the idolatry that seduced the nation, a gigantic evil that Elijah as God's instrument worked to overthrow, and when wicked Ahab seized Naboth's vineyard it was the voice of Elijah that prophesied his doom and the doom of all his house. The verse places his wickedness in the context of God's pronounced judgment on him and his house for selling himself to do evil, a judgment including the destruction of his dynasty; when he humbled himself God delayed that judgment until his son's days, but his humbling did not remove the announced judgment. Though Ahab held very great authority, he remained under God whose sovereignty is supreme, so that even those entrusted with the publishing work who hold as much authority as Ahab held cannot by human judgment, spiritual inexperience, lack of spiritual discernment, or stubborn confederating to drive measures through by finite control set aside God's will, way and counsel, and those who vest control of God's great instrumentality in themselves and place their own mold upon it will answer to a higher authority.