And she wrote in the letters, saying, Proclaim a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people:
This command belongs to the time when Elijah was still prophet in Israel, in the later years of Ahab when Elijah and Elisha were laboring together after Elisha's call. Ahab had set his heart on the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite lying hard by his palace, and proposed to buy it or to give another vineyard for it or money in its place. He was by nature covetous, and by following the dictates of his evil heart he came to be fully controlled by selfishness, unable to bear refusal of his wishes and feeling that what he desired should by right be his.
In this wrongdoing he was strengthened and sustained by Jezebel, whose evil influence over him from the first continued and bore fruit in deeds of shame and violence seldom equaled. At her instigation and stirring up he sold himself to work wickedness. To give him the vineyard she devised a wicked plan to which he gave no heed as to means, caring not by what means it was done but blindly and heedlessly following her counsel.
She wrote letters in the king's name, sealed them with his signet, and sent them to the elders and nobles of the city where Naboth lived. In them she ordered that a public fast be proclaimed and that Naboth be set in a prominent place on high among the people. That public honor was only a cover for murder, for two sons of Belial, corrupt men, were to be set against him to bear false witness that he had blasphemed, cursed, God and the king, so that he might be carried out and stoned to death.
The elders and nobles obeyed and carried out what was written, sending the order forward in Ahab's name. Naboth was killed because he would not give up his land, and Ahab went down to take possession of the coveted property thus seized. The seizure was a flagrant evil, met by Elijah with stern rebuke prophesying the doom of Ahab and the doom of all his house. It stands as murder committed to serve a selfish purpose, and as an example of the grave injustice that follows when those in authority fail to establish the facts and to punish the guilty impartially.
This command belongs to the time when Elijah was still prophet in Israel, in the later years of Ahab when Elijah and Elisha were laboring together after Elisha's call. Ahab had set his heart on the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite lying hard by his palace, and proposed to buy it or to give another vineyard for it or money in its place. He was by nature covetous, and by following the dictates of his evil heart he came to be fully controlled by selfishness, unable to bear refusal of his wishes and feeling that what he desired should by right be his.
In this wrongdoing he was strengthened and sustained by Jezebel, whose evil influence over him from the first continued and bore fruit in deeds of shame and violence seldom equaled. At her instigation and stirring up he sold himself to work wickedness. To give him the vineyard she devised a wicked plan to which he gave no heed as to means, caring not by what means it was done but blindly and heedlessly following her counsel.
She wrote letters in the king's name, sealed them with his signet, and sent them to the elders and nobles of the city where Naboth lived. In them she ordered that a public fast be proclaimed and that Naboth be set in a prominent place on high among the people. That public honor was only a cover for murder, for two sons of Belial, corrupt men, were to be set against him to bear false witness that he had blasphemed, cursed, God and the king, so that he might be carried out and stoned to death.
The elders and nobles obeyed and carried out what was written, sending the order forward in Ahab's name. Naboth was killed because he would not give up his land, and Ahab went down to take possession of the coveted property thus seized. The seizure was a flagrant evil, met by Elijah with stern rebuke prophesying the doom of Ahab and the doom of all his house. It stands as murder committed to serve a selfish purpose, and as an example of the grave injustice that follows when those in authority fail to establish the facts and to punish the guilty impartially.