Verses: 29
Is It Read At Synagogue?: No.
Famous Quotes/Phrases: Once again, the biblical text is obsessed wth hating on dogs. The idea, once again expressed multiple times, that Ahab and Jezebel’s blood will be lapped up by dogs, is considered an especially humiliating way to meet their end.
Basic Plot: King Ahab’s next-door neighbor, an ordinary man named Naboth, owns a vineyard. Ahab asks Naboth to give him the vineyard in exchange for a better vineyard or for money. Naboth refuses, sending Ahab into a depressive state. Jezebel arranges two people to give false, damning testimony against Naboth, resulting in his conviction and execution. Ahab takes the vineyard for himself.
Elijah reappears and proclaims that Ahab and his house will be decimated. The king tears his clothing and fasts while sitting in sackcloth. God tells Elijah that, due to Ahab’s repentance, the punishment to his house will happen in his son’s generation.
What’s Strange: Given the evil, authoritarian manner in which Ahab rules, why does Jezebel thwart Naboth through legal means rather than simply having him killed? Douglas A. Knight and Amy-Jill Levine speculate that Naboth’s status within Israelite society would have not been politically savvy. “Naboth is no poor, vulnerable peasant, as some interpreters have viewed him; rather, he belongs to the upper class inasmuch as his valuable vineyard borders on the king’s summer palace grounds,” they write in their book The Meaning of the Bible: What the Jewish Scriptures and Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us. “So Jezebel has to move more carefully to achieve her goal.”
What’s Spectacular: One can’t help but note the parallels between Ahab and David at their worst moments. In II Samuel 12, the prophet Nathan compares David’s murder of Urriah the Hittite and subsequent marriage to his wife Batsheva to a wealthy man who takes a poor man’s one and only animal. Meanwhile, Ahab and Jezebel capture Naboth’s vineyard when they presumably could have purchased a vineyard anywhere else in their kingdom.
The difference is that the text in this chapter points out that this is but one of Ahab’s many sins; indeed, he acts “most abominably” throughout his life. Yet for David, ruthless as he can be in his ascension to power, his sin appears to be his lone repugnant moment. It says a lot about how low an Israelite king can go; David’s worst day is simply a typical day for Ahab and Jezebel. It reminds us that we must never allow a low standard of behavior to become merely ordinary.
Shabbat Shalom!