40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Kings 20:35-21:16 (Episode 319)

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

A son of a prophet needs to get hit in the face to make a parable convincing and if you're unwilling to strike him, a lion may strike you. Ahab wants a man's vineyard, but he refuses to sell it to him, so the king goes home sad. But Jezebel knows how to get what she wants and it will be bloody. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! Podcast Network Celebration  HWSS National Conference 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube

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welcome to another episode of 40 minutes in the old testament 40 minutes in the old testament is a 1517 podcast network podcast you can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there while you're over there make sure you check out the events page you can now register for the here we still stay in national event in san diego california that takes place in October. You can get all the dates, all the info, the lineup. Chad will be there. I'll be there. It's going to be a great three days, the most beautiful weather in the country, maybe on planet Earth. I don't know. I haven't been everywhere on Earth, but I've been a lot of places in the country, and the weather doesn't get a lot better than San Diego in October. That's

pretty peak U.S. weather. So come hang out with us. It's going to be a good time. Chad, we ended last episode in 1 Kings chapter 20. We're on the tail end. We had some battles. We had Yahweh flex his muscle and show that he was not just simply a god confined to one area, but he could win victories wherever, whenever. And that's what goes down. But then we see a mistake happen, or at least something we assume is going to be a mistake. And by assume, I mean we've read the Bible before, so we know it is. And that is that Ahab decides that he's going to take the Assyrian king call him his brother and uh put it just let him go uh the king makes some promises to him he says sounds like a good deal to me and releases him and that's where we ended it yeah you know

as a general rule uh showing mercy is is great right i think i think everyone would agree with that but there there are occasions when it's directly contrary to to what god says should happen and this is one of those this is one of those cases so the servants of ben hadad said hey we've heard through the grapevine that the kings of Israel are kings of chesed, the kings of loving kindness and mercy. So throw yourself on his mercy. And sure enough, whatever Ahab's motivations might have been, whether they were more financial in shape or more chesed in shape, he let him go. He lets this enemy of God's people go. And as we'll see in verse 35 of 1 Kings 20, that does not go well uh in in the end but the way this comes about you and i were talking about

this before we hit record is rather strange so uh the the two kings have made a covenant with each other ben hadad the king of syria who has attacked more than once the israelites he's free to go now verse 35 picks up the story a certain man of the sons of the prophets sons of the prophets, fairly common Old Testament phrase, just a description of this other called sometimes prophetic guilds. I don't know the best terminology. Many groups of prophets would often be together, and this is one of those. So a certain one of these guys said to his friend at the command of the Lord, so God commanded this guy to say to his friend, punch me in the face, basically. Strike at me. Strike me, please. Not adding the please there

is a bit strange, but anyway, hit me in the face. Strike me, please. Well, the guy says to him, and this, of course, probably makes perfect sense to us. No, the man refused to strike him. I mean, Dan, if you came up to me and said, Chad, hit me as hard as you can in the face. my response would probably be why first of all why secondly no why would i do that uh so this guy basically said that he's like no i'm not gonna do that you know it's like also like if you came up to me and said dan i'm gonna just smack me right across the face my initial response would be like what did you do yeah that's what i mean if it was like a friend i'd be like what are you doing man like because

i would assume that you were telling me like man i'm an idiot just why don't you just slap me right across the face real quick wake me up a little bit this guy you assume that these guys aren't like guys that hang out all the time this is like if uh some local pastor who i don't you know really know walked up to me and said punch me in the face i'll be i'd just be like uh no no no so that's what this guy does refuse to strike him that seems like the right thing to do by the way so yeah i mean it does does seem like the right thing to do um so this guy the one who asked to be hit says to the guy who was supposed to hit him because you have not obeyed the voice of the lord behold as soon as you have gone from me a lion shall strike you down

And sure enough It goes on to say As soon as he departed from him A lion met him And struck him down Now I wonder You do have in the initial thing There's a certain man, son of the prophets

He says to his fellow Another guy At the command of the Lord Now This reads like the Lord commanded The son of the prophets To say this to him yes what we don't have in the text though is thus sayeth the lord strike me or i i have but i have

to i don't know like i'm maybe i'm just choosing to believe that there was more to this than that that there's an explanation that the word lord has come to me and he said i sure hope that's what it was yeah otherwise i'm like this guy really really got the raw end of this deal he did yeah yeah i'm assuming this is a an abbreviation of their conversation i mean surely more was exchanged between between them and we have that a lot of times in the bible where you have a five-minute conversation shrunk down to two to two sentences so i mean he does say because you have not obeyed me i'm like well surely you must have you know pressed this issue a little bit yeah yeah that's kind of what i'm what i'm assuming hope hoping took place just

because uh yeah if not this does seem like a a bit of a of an over judgment so anyway that's that's what that's what happens uh the guy refused to to strike him and by the way the same hebrew verb is used throughout here nakah which means to hit smite strike so uh because he didn't nakah the prophet when he goes out a lion nakahs him which is not you know typically wouldn't say a lion struck someone we would say he attacked him or bit him or whatever but not not struck but of course that same verb is used in order to underscore what's happening here so you didn't do this and this is all as you as our listeners i'm sure i figured out this is all kind of one of these prophetic parables acted out scenarios that you see a lot of the other prophets doing you know

whether they're building a little model of jerusalem or whether uh you know jeremiah is doing one of his acted-out parables, or Isaiah's walking around naked for a while. The prophets were always kind of doing these strange, eccentric kinds of deals. It's really not a lot different than John the Baptist. He dresses strangely. He has a really weird diet. He lives in a very inhospitable place. So John the Baptist is very much in that stream of strange, eccentric, prophetic activity that his predecessors were. So this is all a setup for what's going to happen in just a minute. But the guy has to get hit first. So the first guy failed. So verse 37 says he moved on. He finds another guy and says to him, same thing, Nakami, so strike me, please.

Now this guy did, whether it was just a different personality or at this time, I mean, it doesn't even say at the command of the Lord, strike me. He just walks up and says, hey, hit me across the face. And the guy does it. He's like, well, I guess if that's what you want, I'll do it. The guy struck him, struck him so hard, in fact, that we're told that he wounded him. Now, you know, he bust his face open, black eye, broke his nose. Who knows?

But anyway, it wasn't just a mild slap. It was a slap that was enough to where he was wounded. So that's the setup. First guy fails. Second guy succeeds. verse 38 picks up the story and we see why this strange prophetic activity was carried out the prophet leaves and he waited for the king by the way so ahab the king here is ahab so he's waiting for the king presumably to get back from everything that he just did with ben hadad the

covenant he made with him so on and so forth so he's coming back the prophet knows where he's going to be coming so he waits waits by the side of the road as it were but he disguises himself He puts something over his eyes. ESV translates this as bandage. Biblical scholars would call this a hopox. Hopox just means, refers to a word that's only used once in the biblical text. So this is one of these Hebrew words, which is a hopox, just meaning it only occurs here in this particular context. So it's a little bit, those kind of words, it's a little bit difficult sometimes.

to know exactly what it was or how to translate it. So ESV has bandage, could have been a scarf or some kind of covering over the head, whatever served to disguise his true identity. So verse 39, the king shows up, passes by, and when he does, this disguised prophet cries out to him this fake scenario. he says oh king your servant went into the middle of the battle so i was i was there kind of you

know he's trying to make it seem like he was at this this battle that took place i went out in the middle of the battle and when i did a soldier turned and brought a man to me so this man was presumably like uh one of the syrian pow so a soldier brings me this syrian pow and he tells me guard this guy. And if he ends up missing, then your life shall be for his life, or else you shall pay a talent of silver. So that's the setup. The prophet is pretending to be somebody else. He's presenting this made-up scenario to the king. And this is the same thing, as you probably figured out, same thing Nathan did with David, right? Nathan did disguise himself, but he did come up with a story. He came up with a story about the rich man and the poor man and

the little lamb that the rich man took. Of course, this was intended for David to hear and then for David to pronounce a judgment, a judgment that was actually against himself. Now, same thing's going to happen here. So the setup is this guy's disguised. He tells this story about being in this battle. And then what happens when he's told to guard this guy? Well, the disguised prophet goes on. I was there, but I got busy more or less. I got distracted. I was busy here. I was busy there. And next thing I know, I turn around and this POW that I'd been charged with keeping there with me, guarding, he'd taken off. He was gone. And so that's the end of this scenario that the disguised prophet tells to tells to the king the king having heard this responds to him basically

well you've decided your own fate so shall your judgment be you yourself have decided it in other words you are going to have to face the consequences of your own actions here's what the soldier told you to do and you didn't do it you were supposed to you had this enemy right in your in your hands You were guarding him. He was like right there. And you let him go. You weren't being faithful in the commission that you were given. And as a result of that, you're going to have to face the consequences of what you've what you've done. And the presumption is that those consequences will be your life or his life. A talent of silver is a lot of silver for just a regular guy to have. A talent is about 75 pounds of silver. So no regular soldier is going to have that just laying around.

So your life or his life or pay a talent of silver is another way of saying you're going to die. That's going to be the penalty that is required of you not fulfilling your duty. now with ahab having said that it's it's this same parallel situation to when after nathan told david about the rich man and the poor man and the ulam then david said that guy's gonna gonna suffer he deserves to die but here's here's what he's gonna have to to pay to make up for what he's done that's the same thing ahab has done he's pronounced judgment against what he thinks is a real person. But in this hypothetical story, he is, of course, the person. He's the one who was supposed to be guarding this POW, not let him get away. And then that's exactly what he turned

around and did. So at this point, after the king says, so shall your judgment be, you yourself have decided it verse 41 picks up the story the prophet rapidly hurriedly took the bandage away from his eyes or the covering from his face or whatever this was so he he took away his disguise and the king of israel that is ahab recognized him as one of the prophets how i don't know i mean was there some sort of marking that that he had uh that he actually do you actually like know this guy he knew him by sight. He knew that he was one of the prophets. Whatever. He knows who he actually is now, once the disguise is removed. And when he recognizes him, the prophet goes on to say, thus says Yahweh, because you have let go out of your hand the man whom I had devoted to destruction.

We'll return to that in just a minute. Because you let this guy go that I had devoted to harem, to destruction therefore your life shall be for his life and your people for his people and after this was said then verse 43 which is the end of this chapter says that the king of israel went to his house vexed and sullen and came to came to samaria we'll also want to return to the vex and sullen in just a minute so in our previous podcast i talked about how everything that was happening was a parallel situation to what happened in the book of Joshua when the Israelites took Jericho. So they circled the city of Jericho seven times. This standoff before the battle between the Israelites and the Syrians took seven days. What happens when the battle ensues?

Well, the Israelites kill a bunch of the Syrians, and then also a bunch of the Syrians flee into the city of Aphek, and the walls kill tons of these of the enemy, just like the walls of Jericho fell down. Now, if you think about what happened in the book of Joshua, what followed the description of the conquest of Jericho? Well, then you have that whole terrible story of how Achan, having taken some stuff that was, and this is the important parallel, stuff that was devoted to destruction, the stuff that was harem, because he took some of that, Israel suffered defeat subsequently in their battle against that little town of Ai. And then the end of that story is, of course, you have the casting of lots, and gradually the numbers go down until you finally

realize the guilty party is Achan himself, and then he is subsequently executed because he had troubled Israel. So what's happening here is basically you had a king, a foreign king, ben hadad who was to be devoted to destruction he was to be haram he was to be destroyed and instead of doing that ahab let him go so just like uh back in uh the book of joshua aiken violate the the laws of haram so now this king has violated the same laws of of haram so we have we have the jericho this is such a cool thing that the bible does and so often we'll take a scenario from the past uh which is a kind of a typical scenario a type and then it will repeat that in different form taking you know certain parallel structures from it certain parallel themes and

repeat that again to show well to show it depends on the situation here it shows that Achan that Ahab rather is another Achan and what happened early in Israel's history is being repeated here later in in israel's history so that the the whole typology there between what happened at jericho what happens here is brought is brought full circle and the result is that the king of israel goes to his house vexed and sullen other translations have that he was uh sullen and angry resentful and sullen the king james has that he was heavy and displeased i'm not sure why they translated as heavy, but you get the point. The reason I accent that is because in just a few more verses, when we transition into chapter 21, we're going to hear that Ahab once more was

vexed and sullen, except it's going to be a different reason. It's going to involve a vineyard in the next story. But you're beginning to kind of get the impression of to learn more about Ahab's personality and how he reacts to situations. It's easy to think that when Jesus gets on the scene that he invents parables. It's like some kind of new thing that God is doing once you have the Messiah around. But you have multiple examples in the Old Testament where God will take typically a prophet and put a parable in his mouth. Now, this particular parable, God seemed real committed to. And this prophet really needed someone to sell it for him.

So yeah, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not sure he, you know, I suppose he could have used the ancient equivalent of makeup to make it look like he, uh, he was wounded, but he really wanted to have a wound to, to make it, to make it, make it real. Uh, so anyway, yeah, that was the, that was the parable. That was the parabolic action leading the whole purpose of that, of course, was to lead to, to, to this. So that takes us through the end of chapter 20, uh, in which, as I mentioned at the beginning of last episode, Elijah is totally absent.

We have a whole lot of other prophets, also called men of God or sons of the prophets. They're there doing their thing, relaying the words of the Lord, sometimes hitting each other, confronting the king. So Elijah, as important as he is, is certainly not the only person that God is using during this time period. Now, we're going to step into chapter 21, and we will once more meet Elijah. He's going to show up, but not at first. At first, we're going to have a story about an individual who owns a vineyard in a place called Jezreel. And we're going to hear more about Ahab. We're also going to hear more about what kind of woman we're dealing with here with Jezebel and the influence that she has.

And this is a pretty neat thing, too. that sometimes you'll have like a a small story in the bible that is representative or symbolic of a larger reality and that's what we're going to see here we're going to see how the the vineyard and what's called a vegetable garden here how these are are symbolic of bigger realities for israel and for egypt so they can set up here what's uh what's going to happen chapter 21 starts out talking about Naboth, that guy we have not met before. He's from Jezreel, and so he's a Jezreelite, and he has his vineyard in Jezreel, and it's beside the palace of Ahab, king of Samaria. So you kind of have a rich man, poor man, or not poor man, but big man, little man, powerful man,

not powerful man set up here. And Ahab knows that Naboth is the owner of this vineyard, but he wants it. So Ahab goes to Naboth and he says, give me your vineyard that I may have it for a vegetable garden because it's near my house and I'll give you a better vineyard for it. Or if it seems good to you, I will give you its value in money. Now, if we come at this from a modern modern perspective, we might say to ourselves, well, that sounds like a reasonable request, right? I mean, we are buying and selling property all the time, and this is the king after all. So if the king says, I want to buy your property, it's probably a good idea just to go ahead and sell your property. Now, if we look at this from an Israelite perspective,

the request that Ahab makes of Naboth goes against everything that is important for the Israelites with regard to land. So first of all, God is the owner of all the land. Even after Israel is given it as their inheritance, God remains the owner of the entire northern and southern kingdom. God is the owner of the land. He allows his people to live on it and to work it. And then he, of course, divides it up during the time of Joshua, giving to certain tribes, certain areas, and then families and clans take certain possessions of the land. So the land is to remain in a family in perpetuity. You don't sell your land, in other words. Even if, say, you fall on hard times and you just don't have any way to support yourself. And so you could temporarily

allow another person to farm your land for for a while but then when either the sabbath year comes or the jubilee year comes the land reverts to you that's when all that's it's when all that's forgiven all that to say that when naboth responds to him which is verse three the lord forbid that i should give you the inheritance of my fathers so when naboth responds to ahab in that way it basically says, not just no thank you, but God forbid, the Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers. He is not, from an Israelite perspective, he's not giving an unreasonable response. He's giving an orthodox, biblically-based, traditional response to what to him would have been a ludicrous request. There's no way he's going to give up his vineyard to Ahab.

Now, the second part about this that is very significant is that the Hebrew words that are translated here as vegetable garden, Gan Yarak, that phrase only occurs one other place in the entire Bible. It occurs in Deuteronomy 11.10, where Egypt is called the vegetable garden. So the only two places in the entire Old Testament where Gan Yarak, a vegetable garden, occur is here, and then in Deuteronomy 11.10, where Egypt is connected with the vegetable garden. Now, over and over in the Old Testament, a vineyard is symbolic of Israel. So when Ahab goes to Naboth, he doesn't just say, give me your vineyard because I'm really into growing grapes and I want to make my own wine and blah, blah, blah. No, he wants to completely transform the vineyard into a vegetable garden. So what is happening here and what's the bigger story here?

Well, I think the bigger story, and I'm the only one who says this, there's multiple commentators who say this as well, that the bigger story that's represented by this smaller story is that Ahab is wanting to transform Israel, the vineyard, into Egypt, the vegetable garden. And this, of course, rings true with everything else that we know about what Ahab has been doing, Ahab along with Jezebel. What are they trying to do? Well, they're certainly trying to kind of re-Canaanize the land by introducing the worship of Baal and Asherah. But at the same time, they're also turning this land into another Egypt. It's into another place of captivity and idolatry. So when you're reading this story, the story certainly has a message just on its surface, but you can also see it in the bigger

picture of what's going on with this Egyptifying of Israel, as well as the canonization of israel the vegetable garden of egypt is where you know when you had the people of israel talking about all those leaks and onions that they were wanting to get their hands on yeah that's it yeah yeah i was wanting the the flesh spots of egypt and then leaks and onions and all that other good stuff that they that they missed while they were living on manna and quail and water from a rock in the wilderness. So that's a request, and that's Naboth's response. Basically, no way. God forbid that I should do that. Verse 4 tells us Ahab's response to Naboth's no. He goes to his house, and he is, here's our phrase again that we heard at the very end of chapter 20, vexed and

sullen. He was resentful and sullen. However you want to translate it, it communicates the same thing. He's basically becoming a big crybaby. He's going to pout about this. So he goes to his home, vexed and solemn because of what Naboth, the Jesuit lad, had said to him. For he said, I won't give you the inheritance of my fathers. And so what? This is such a pitiful scene. He's so childish. He goes to his house, gets in bed. He turns his face away and refuses to eat. yeah this is this is wild i mean also i mean this guy basically just told him like hey man you know i can't do that i mean the sort of the lord forbid is saying hey that would be i you're asking me to do something that god would not want me to do

there's nothing to do with this other vineyard being better and or you give me you know paying me above market value for it it's no it has nothing to do with whether i'm getting a good deal here. It's like, you know, I can't do that. You're asking me to do something that I ought not do. Yeah. I mean, this is a kind of a crass example, I suppose, but imagine, uh, somebody comes to a church and says, you know, I, I want to buy your, uh, I want to buy your church building and I'm going to turn it into a, I want to turn it into a strip club. Well, it's not unreasonable for the people to say, uh, no, God forbid that that, that that should happen. You know, this, that's what, that's not what this, that's what this, this building is

four and then he says no no you don't understand like i just really love the location i'm going to give you a better church building across town yeah you still be like yeah i don't think i can do it though no i really really don't think that's good that's going to happen and so nabos response is uh is completely reasonable and biblical and then ahab's response is completely childish and juvenile goes to his house lays on his bed turns his face away wanted any food so we do get i mean we're getting as we go through this a bigger picture of the a clearer picture of the personality of of ahab he does you know one thing i've noticed he does have a tendency to do whatever someone tells him to do you picked up on that so when elijah tells him to do something he does it uh

When the sons of the prophets in the last chapter told him to do something, he did it. And he doesn't, in this case, I mean, he is the king. So I would assume that if he really wanted that vineyard, then he could have just taken it by force. But he doesn't do that. He actually listens to what Naboth has to say. And in verse 5, when his wife shows up, he's going to do what she says. so he is you almost get the impression that he is one of these he's one of these people who uh is such a uh an over pleaser that he's willing to basically do whatever the people who are around

him are are urging him urging him to do so he doesn't certainly doesn't come across as even just kind of on the human level as a as a strong leader so he's in bed no food turning his face away, his wife shows up. So she says to him, basically, what in the world is going on? Why is your spirit so vexed that you're not even eating? And he says to her, here's what happened. I spoke to Naboth, the Jezreelite, and I told him, give me your vineyard for money or else, if it pleases you, I'll give you another vineyard for it. And he answered, I will not give you my vineyard. So he basically just tells her the story. In fact, when he gives Naboth's answer, he does change it. That is kind of a significant alteration. He doesn't say to his wife that Naboth

responded, the Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers. When he's talking to his wife, he only says, the words he puts in Naboth's mouth is, I will not give you my vineyard. So he switches it around. He makes it seem as if Naboth is just kind of being stubborn, mulish about this. Verse 7 says that Jezebel responded to him, do you now govern Israel? In other words, aren't you king? Arise, eat bread, and let your heart be cheerful. I, and in Hebrew that is emphatic, so we would better translate it, I myself. I myself will give you the vineyard of Naboth, the Jezreelite. So how's she going to do that? She has a plan. Verse 8 says that she took a pen and paper, no doubt ink and a scroll,

she wrote letters in Ahab's name. So she's the queen, but she is writing this as if Ahab has written it. And she put his seal on it. And then she sent these letters to the elders and leaders who lived with Naboth in his city. And what did these letters say? Here's what they wrote. proclaim a fast, set Naboth at the head of the people, and then set two worthless men opposite him. This is a phrase that we've encountered before, the put two sons of Belial. Belial meaning kind of evil or worthless. Belial in time came to be another word for the Satan, for the devil. So set two sons of Baaliel, two evil guys, worthless fellow, liars opposite him and let them bring a charge against Naboth saying, you have cursed God and the king.

Then take him out and stone him to death. Now, imagine you are the recipient of these letters. The, you know, the, the, the, the postman shows up, says, Hey, I got a letter here for you. hands it to you it's it's from it's from king ahab it's got his seal on it you think oh this this must be important so everybody gathers around they have like a council city council meeting and we got a letter we gotta we gotta we gotta read this letter so they open it up and you read that inside there now they don't know it's from jezebel they know it's from they think it's from ahab she's written this in his in his name and you're basically to you have supposed to have a fast and put Naboth at the head of everybody else. And then while all this

is going on, I want you to hire two good for nothings. And they're going to bring this false accusation against Naboth. And then after that happens, you're going to publicly execute him for a crime he did not commit. Can you imagine reading that letter from purportedly from King Ahab? How are you going to react to that? I mean, there's a lot of ways you could react to that. But the fact is, we'll see in a second, that they carried out tells you the level of injustice that has seeped down from Jezebel and Ahab all the way to these local leaders as well. This is one of those times where worthless men seems like the exact appropriate description of what you're looking for to carry this out. Yeah, you're looking for two lying lowlifes, basically. yeah i mean so this isn't just a uh a lie this is a lie that's going to lead to someone being

murdered more or less it's it's they're going all in here and it's going to require the the so it's going to require the not just one person to be in on this there's going to be a whole lot of people who are in on what is actually supposed to go down well after they read the letter the men of the city the elders and the leaders who lived in the city so multiple people who lived in jezreel did just what she said they did as jezebel had sent word to them as it was written in the letters that she sent to them they proclaimed a fast they invited naboth they put him at the head of the people and then they found these two sons of baliel these two worthless guys and they came in they sat i guess one at his right one at his left so they could you know act as if they heard him

say what he never said. And then the worthless men brought a charge against Naboth in the presence of the people. Presumably this happened while the fast was going on. And they said Naboth cursed God and the king. So they bring the charge to bring the false accusation. And what happens to Naboth? Well, exactly what Jezebel wanted to happen. They took him outside the city and they stoned him to death with stones and then they sent their own letter they sent word to jezebel saying naboth has been stoned he is dead in other words mission accomplished we did exactly what you wanted us to do this has to be the most confusing thing ever if you're naboth and you're like no you have no idea what's going on here you're just sitting there and all of a sudden these two guys

accuse you of saying something and yeah it's got to be one of the strangest scenarios either i mean like, and what can you say? Well, first of all, as, as we, we see in the new Testament and old Testament, everything has to be confirmed by the testimony of two or three witnesses. That's why they didn't just get one son of Baaliel. They had to have two witnesses who both of course are saying the same thing that you supposedly, you supposedly said. I don't know, maybe, uh, maybe Naboth figured things out pretty quickly. Uh, when this was, especially the part about cursing the king he had to have known at least that king ahab was not happy with him uh he might not have thought that that the king was synced to to this level and in some ways i suppose passively the king did it

was really not his idea it was it was jezebel's idea that this that this take place but maybe while he was being drug out to be executed he realized exactly what was was taking place yeah first of all this if you weren't sure that jezebel was kind of terrible uh now you know definitively that she's terrible yeah all doubts have been removed and you know this is this was not ahab's idea i think it's interesting that she didn't say i've got a plan let me relay it to you i think there's a there's a decent chance that ahab's like we're not doing that yeah yeah i think so i mean if he didn't act to in some way take the vineyard when when naboth refused i find it hard to believe that he would have actively come up with some sort of

demonic plan like jezebel did to make sure the vineyard was going to be his like i said he's too he's too submissive a character a personality he uh he's gonna he's gonna sulk about it it's going to go home and refuse to eat because he's so so sad he's acting as though there's nothing he could do yes he's acting powerless which is is what jezebel basically accuses him of he's like she's like are you are you the king or what are you governing this nation or what and that means that the implication of that is that in her world if you're the leader then you're going to get whatever you want yeah whatever it takes yeah and at this point in the story uh this would be on jezebel but what's going to happen next puts it on ahab because his response is not the response

that you need no no his he he did have a chance i suppose he couldn't make it right for naboth but he could have at least proceeded in a way that was right after this but that is not uh not what happened. So verse 15 picks it up. As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned and was dead, Jezebel said to Ahab, arise, take, so get out of your bed, take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused to give you for money, for Naboth is not alive, but dead. And as soon as Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, Ahab arose to go down to the vineyard of Naboth, the Jezreelite, to take possession of it. So he hears the message, and he goes to receive that, which had been to take that, take possession of it, which had been refused to him.

So that kind of sets up everything that's going to lead into what is next. You almost wonder, did she even tell him how this went down? She's just like, hey, guess what? That guy's dead you should go take that vineyard and and as they have doing this sort of like i don't even want to know i'm just going to go ahead and just take it i don't want to know how this convenient death occurred it does make you wonder yeah he knows when not to ask questions that he does not want to know he knows not to ask questions he doesn't want to hear the answer to yeah uh ignorance is is going to be his his best card to play at this point and and also So the fact that he was able to take possession of this vineyard could be, and we're uncertain about this, but it could be in conformity with the laws of other nations that we do know about, that an executed criminal, that their property went to the state, more or less.

So we do know from the legal codes of other nations that executed criminals, their family lost all right to whatever possessions they had. And so in this case, the state, that is Ahab and Jezebel, are going to seize this property. And it's so nice and convenient. It's right beside his palace, right? And that's where we're going to have to end it this week. We will see next week how God responds to this. see if God holds Jezebel responsible or Ahab responsible, or both. We'll see how that goes, but we will have to wait until next week, and we will get to see Elijah again, finally. We've had a little break, but Elijah is going to return, so that'll be next week. Chad, I'll see you then.

All right, see you then. .