Tuesday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 1 Kings 21:17-29

Our reading today follows immediately on yesterday’s passage. We see Ahab now pay the price for the murder of Naboth.

Ahab has just been told by his wife that Naboth is now dead, so he immediately goes down to the vineyard he coveted so much to take it over. But just then Elijah is receiving instructions from the Lord to go and confront the king in the vineyard. He is given a strong message to pass on to Ahab:

Thus says the Lord: Have you killed and also taken possession? You shall say to him: Thus says the Lord: In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will also lick up your blood.

Ahab had not directly killed Naboth, but he had cooperated fully in the murder and theft planned by his wife, and as king, the ultimate responsibility was with him.

In fact, Ahab’s repentance for his actions, which will be mentioned in a moment, brought about a postponement of this prophecy. Instead, it will be the body of his son Joram which will be thrown on the field of Naboth.

More than that, Ahab is told that all his male descendants, free or slave, will be wiped out. Their bodies will either be eaten by dogs or by carrion-eating birds. The body of Jezebel, too, will be eaten by dogs. Elijah is told by God:

Anyone belonging to Ahab who dies in the city the dogs shall eat, and anyone of his who dies in the open country the birds of the air shall eat.

These were terrible indignities as dogs were symbolical of all that was unclean and defiled. We remember the poor man Lazarus in the house of the rich man. The level of Lazarus’ helpless destitution was indicated by dogs coming to lick his sores. He did not even have the strength to drive them away; meanwhile the rich man sat there doing nothing.

As Elijah pronounces God’s sentence, note the similarity with the episode of Nathan and David (where David is accused of the death of Uriah after his adultery with Bathsheba). On each occasion Yahweh defends the helpless against the powerful and, as in the case of David, there is the same reprieve for the repentant offender who is punished only through his son. But there are differences, too. David’s dynasty retains the divine promise, whereas Ahab’s is “consumed”. Nathan remains David’s prophet and blesses Solomon, but Elijah is Ahab’s “enemy”.

In addition to this murder, we are told that Ahab was responsible for all kinds of abominations, connected with the idolatrous practices of the Canaanites, under the pernicious influence of his wife. He became no different from the Amorites, a reference to the idolatrous peoples of Canaan before the Israelites arrived.

To his credit, after hearing the condemnation of Elijah, Ahab deeply repents of what he has done. He rends his garments, puts on sackcloth and walks in the slow steps of the repentant person.

Because of this, the punishments against his family would be postponed until after he died. He was, in fact, killed in battle at Ramoth Gilead and, after his body was brought to Samaria, dogs licked the blood that was being washed from his chariot. His son Joram was killed and the body thrown into Naboth’s field—just as Elijah had foretold.

Reflecting on this story we can say two things. First, our wrongdoings carry with them unavoidable punishments, built into the very nature of evil actions. And second, no matter how serious our faults, God’s compassion and forgiveness awaits those who genuinely repent and change their ways.

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Monday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 1 Kings 21:1-16

Today we have the story of Naboth’s vineyard—an example of corrupt and shameless use of power. The main characters are King Ahab and his Sidonian wife, Jezebel. We have seen both of them before and the general impression is that Ahab is weak, while his wife is corrupt and ruthless. It was she who introduced the worship of Baal into Israel and had wanted to avenge the execution of the Baal priests by killing Elijah.

The story begins on a reasonable enough note. King Ahab asks Naboth to exchange his vineyard which adjoins the king’s property for another one or, alternatively, to be given its value in money. This property was in Jezreel, where Ahab had a second palace, in addition to his main one in Samaria.

In spite of his position, the king could not confiscate land. The king’s power in Israel was limited by the Law, so Ahab was unable simply to take over privately held land (as was customary with Canaanite kings, not to mention some kings and governments in our own time!).

Naboth, however, refused because the ownership of the land was a sacred tradition handed down through generations. Naboth’s refusal to dispose of his land was based on the conviction that the land belonged to the Lord and that a perpetual lease had been given to each Israelite family. This was to be jealously preserved as the family’s permanent inheritance in the promised land. (One of the central issues in the ongoing strife between Israelis and Palestinians today is precisely who has prior right to the ownership of the land, especially where outsiders had come in and taken it over.)

Ahab, like many people of power when they do not get their way, went into a sullen depression and refused even to eat. In some ways, of course, his behaviour arose out of his respect—or his fear—of the Law which he did not want to violate.

His wife, Jezebel, however, saw things differently. As a Canaanite, she was not used to seeing kingly power challenged and she satirically mocked her husband’s weakness. “Do you now govern Israel?”—a sarcastic remark of incredulity spoken by one accustomed to the dictatorial practices of Phoenician and Canaanite kings, who would not hesitate a moment to use their power to satisfy personal interests—something we see all too often even in our time. She tells him:

Get up, eat some food, and be cheerful; I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.

Writing in the king’s name, she shamelessly sent off letters to the aristocracy and the leaders of the people ordering them to proclaim a fast (as if there had been a national calamity) and to put Naboth on trial (as its cause), accusing him of cursing God and the king, both charges carrying the punishment of death by stoning. In effect, the leaders of the community become collaborators in the crime; they could very well have known or suspected the real circumstances.

In addition, they were told to produce two witnesses (as required by law) to make the charges stick where a capital offence was involved. These “scoundrels” were to give false testimony in order to give a veneer of legality to the proceedings. Naboth was to be accused of cursing both God and king, for which the mandatory sentence was stoning. It seems also that the possessions of those condemned to death went to the king—the main purpose of the whole charade.

It is possible that there may, in fact, have been some form of calamity at the time, such as a drought or famine, which gave Jezebel the excuse to get rid of Naboth. She wanted to create the impression that a disaster threatened the people, a disaster which would only be averted if they would humble themselves before the Lord and remove any person whose sin had brought God’s judgement on them.

Everything was done to the letter as Jezebel, in the name of the king, had ordered. The two witnesses gave their false testimony and Naboth was stoned outside Jezreel, as the law required (recall that Jesus, too, was brought outside the city for his execution). From references in the Second Book of Kings, it seems that Naboth was actually stoned on his own land and his sons were stoned with him. This eliminated the heirs who might make claim to the land, thus leaving it for the king to take over.

With the vineyard now ownerless, Jezebel told her husband, as king, to exercise his right and take it over for himself. The reading ends with Ahab going down to Naboth’s vineyard to take it over but, as we shall see in tomorrow’s reading, there is an unpleasant surprise in store for him.

This story has overtones of the trial and death of Jesus much later on. Jesus himself, in a parable, will tell of tenants who will take over a vineyard and kill the son of the owner. Jesus, too, will be accused of cursing God and the Roman emperor and will be executed—not by stoning, but by death on a cross. In his case, too, scoundrels will be brought forward to make charges of blasphemy against God and sacrilege against the Temple. And like Naboth, the execution will take place outside the city.

We need to be constantly on our guard that people are not falsely accused even if it is ‘only’ a matter of gossip, but even more so if it is a serious matter. And we might ask to what lengths we would be prepared to go simply to have something we want but do not need.

We too live in a world where there is a great deal of scapegoating (the ‘blame culture’) and corrupt justice at many levels of public and private life. Let us not be part of it in any way.

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