What a woman would do for a garden...
A few chapters after the fire from heaven story, the Bible has another tale involving the same cast of characters. This one is perhaps a little less flashy but yet every bit as insightful.
Picking up where we left off last essay, the drama involving Elijah, Ahab, and Jezebel is something of a saga. Today, we’re going to talk about Naboth’s Vineyard. The vineyard was in Jezreel, close to the palace of Ahab. Ahab wanted to use it for a vegetable garden. So, he propositioned Naboth, saying that he’d give him a better vineyard or even pay him whatever he wanted for it.
Naboth rejected this because the land was his familial land going back to when the Israelites first inherited the promised land. So, Ahab went home mad about this. He spent the remainder of the day sulking and refusing to eat. Jezebel heard about this and asked him what his deal was. He told her the story and she told him not to worry about it and that she’d take care of it.
She then proceeded to orchestrate false allegations against Naboth that resulted in him getting stoned to death. Once she received news that her plot had been successfully carried out, she told Ahab about it. He was pretty quick to take possession of the vineyard.
While this was going on, the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite. God told him, “Go down to meet Ahab, king of Israel, who rules in Samaria. He is now in Naboth’s vineyard, where he has gone to take possession of it. Say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Have you not murdered a man and seized his property?’ then say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: In the place where dogs licked up Naboth’s blood, dogs will lick up your blood-yes, yours!’”
So, Elijah headed off to the vineyard. There he found Ahab just as the Lord said he would.
Ahab immediately said, “So you have found me, my enemy!”
Elijah answered, “I have found you, because you have sold yourself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord. He says, ‘I am going to bring disaster on you. I will wipe out your descendants and cut off from Ahab every last male in Israel- slave or free. I will make your house like that of Jeroboam son of Nebat and that of Baasha son of Ahijah, because you have aroused my anger and have caused Israel to sin. And also concerning Jezebel, the Lord says: Dogs will devour Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel. Dogs will eat those belonging to Ahab who die in the city, and birds will feed on those who die in the country.’”
It makes me laugh, but the text notes as an aside, “There was never anyone like Ahab, who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord, urged on by Jezebel his wife. He behaved in the vilest manner by going after idols like the Amorites the Lord drove out before Israel.”
Shockingly, when Ahab heard these words, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and fasted. He lay in sackcloth and went around meekly. In other words, he seemed to repent a bit. So much so that God told Elijah, “Have you noticed how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself, I will not bring this disaster in his day, but I will bring it on his house in the days of his son.”
There are two things I want to note with respect to this story. The first pertains to Jezebel. I intend to write a full essay about her in a couple of weeks. For now, what I’ll say is that she is the archetypical example of a clever narcissistic woman. In the story here, she notices that her husband is down in the dumps. This is an inconvenience to her. We all know how annoying it is to be around someone who’s sad or bummed out. To fix this inconvenience, she finds out what the problem is. She then devises a clever solution to resolve the problem so she can get back to enjoying her life. Pay no heed to the fact that her solution involves having a man stoned to death.
The second thing I’d like to note is how merciful God is. Ahab is an awful person. The text explicitly says that there has never up to this point been someone as evil as him in the eyes of the Lord. Yet, despite that, all Ahab had to do was humble himself before the Lord. And just like that, God in his infinite graciousness, decided to spare Ahab from the consequences of his actions and instead allow the next generation to foot the bill. The fact that the Lord would do this for Ahab gives one hope that perhaps the Lord would be willing to do the same for us. Or rather, this is exactly what he’s done through Jesus, for us, already.
A person can’t help but feel bad for Naboth in all of this. He’s the guy who got stoned over a garden. However, as we’ll see going forward, Ahab and especially Jezabel don’t really get off the hook for it. God is just after all.