1 Kings 21:4
And Ahab came into his house heavy and displeased because of the word which Naboth the Jezreelite had spoken to him: for he had said, I will not give thee the inheritance of my fathers. And he laid him down upon his bed, and turned away his face, and would eat no bread.
This took place in the later years of Ahab's life, while Elijah was still a prophet in Israel. He had set his heart on possessing the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite because it lay hard by his palace, and he wanted it for a garden of herbs because it was near his house. He proposed to buy it for its worth in money or to give a better vineyard in exchange for it.
Naboth refused to give or surrender the inheritance of his fathers, his ancestral land. Under Israel's law that paternal inheritance was protected from permanent transfer.
Because he could not obtain the vineyard he desired, Ahab came home heavy and displeased, sullen, resentful, despondent, distressed and miserable. He laid himself on his bed, turned away his face, and would eat no food. This was because his selfish will had been crossed.
His heavy displeasure reveals a naturally covetous disposition grown into being fully controlled by selfishness. He could brook no refusal of his wishes, and felt that the things he desired should by right be his. He selfishly expected to obtain whatever he wanted, so his grief was selfish frustration over not getting what he wanted.
His course shows him following the dictates of his evil heart while strengthened and sustained in wrongdoing by Jezebel. Her evil influence over him from the first continued and bore fruit in deeds of shame and violence seldom equaled. In this he appears as selling himself to work wickedness as stirred up by his wife. His sullenness sets the stage for Jezebel to comfort him by promising to secure the vineyard.
The desire to obtain the vineyard led through fraud and bloodshed to Naboth's murder for a selfish purpose. Ahab had Naboth killed and took the vineyard. The passage thus serves as an example of selfishly coveting land.
That seizure of Naboth's vineyard was a flagrant evil for which Elijah prophesied the doom of Ahab and the doom of all his house. Ahab's dominant trait of covetous selfishness disastrously affected the fortunes of the kingdom under his successors.