1 Kings 21:29
Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me? because he humbleth himself before me, I will not bring the evil in his days: but in his son’s days will I bring the evil upon his house. Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me? because he humbleth himself before me, I will not bring the evil in his days: but in his son’s days will I bring the evil upon his house.
This word belongs to the account of Ahab's covetousness while Elijah was still a prophet in Israel. Ahab was naturally covetous, and, strengthened and sustained in wrongdoing by Jezebel, he followed his evil heart until he was fully controlled by selfishness and could not bear to be refused. He felt that the things he desired should by right be his. It belongs to the later years of his life, when Jezebel's evil influence over him from the first still continued and bore fruit in deeds of shame and violence seldom equaled in sacred history, for he sold himself to work wickedness as Jezebel stirred him up.
His dominant trait of covetousness disastrously influenced the fortunes of the kingdom under his successors. The trait was revealed when he set his heart on possessing the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite that lay hard by the palace, wanting it for a garden of herbs because it was near his house, and proposed to buy it for money or to give a better vineyard in exchange. After Ahab seized Naboth's vineyard, Elijah's prophecy announced doom upon wicked Ahab and upon all his house. After hearing the judgment, Ahab humbled himself before God by fasting, wearing sackcloth, and going softly. His humbling also included tearing his clothes.
Because he humbled himself, God delayed the announced evil so that it would not come in Ahab's days or lifetime but would come upon his house in his son's days. The judgment on his house was postponed, not withdrawn. Even a man with as much authority as Ahab remains under God, whose sovereignty is supreme above every position and responsibility, so those entrusted with large interests in God's work cannot gather control into their own hands and drive measures by human judgment, for God is above them and they are accountable to Him.