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In power and wealth, Ahab, king of Samaria, outstripped his friend Jehoshaphat, for Ahab is one of that small number of kings who have ruled over the whole world. (31) No less than two hundred and fifty-two kingdoms acknowledged his dominion. (32) As for his wealth, it was so abundant that each of his hundred and forty children possessed several ivory palaces, summer and winter residences. (33) But what gives Ahab his prominence among the Jewish kings is neither his power nor his wealth, but his sinful conduct. For him the gravest transgressions committed by Jeroboam were slight peccadilloes. At his order the gates of Samaria bore the inscription: “Ahab denies the God of Israel.” He was so devoted to idolatry, to which he was led astray by his wife Jezebel, that the fields of Palestine were full of idols. But he was not wholly wicked, he possessed some good qualities. He was liberal toward scholars, and he showed great reverence for the Torah, which he studied zealously. When Ben-hadad exacted all he possessed his wealth, his wives, his children he acceded to his demands regarding everything except the Torah; that he refused peremptorily to surrender. (34) In the war that followed between himself and the Syrians, he was so indignant at the presumptuousness of the Aramean upstart that he himself saddled his warhorse for the battle. His zeal was rewarded by God; he gained a brilliant victory in a battle in which no less than a hundred thousand of the Syrians were slain, as the prophet Micaiah had foretold to him. (35) The same seer (36) admonished him not to deal gently with Ben-hadad. God’s word to him had been: “Know that I had to set many a pitfall and trap to deliver him into thy hand. If thou lettest him escape, thy life will be forfeit for his.” (37)
Nevertheless the disastrous end of Ahab is not to be ascribed to his disregard of the prophet’s warning for he finally liberated Ben-hahad, but chiefly to the murder of his kinsman Naboth, whose execution on the charge of treason he had ordered, so that he might put himself in possession of Naboth’s wealth. (38) His victim was a pious man, and in the habit of going on pilgrimages to Jerusalem on the festivals. As he was a great singer, his presence in the Holy City attracted many other pilgrims thither. Once Naboth failed to go on his customary pilgrimage. Then it was that his false conviction took place a very severe punishment for the transgression, but not wholly unjustifiable. (39) Under Jehoshaphat’s influence and counsel, Ahab did penance for his crime, and the punishment God meted out to him was thereby mitigated to the extent that his dynasty was not cut off from the throne at this death. (40) In the heavenly court of justice, (41) at Ahab’s trial, the accusing witnesses and his defenders exactly balanced each other in number and statements, until the spirit of Naboth appeared and turned the scale against Ahab. The spirit of Naboth it had been, too, that had let astray the prophets of Ahab, making them all use the very same words in prophesying a victory at Ramothgilead. This literal unanimity aroused Jehoshaphat’s suspicion, and caused him to ask for “a prophet of the Lord,” for the rule is: “The same thought is revealed to many prophets, but no two prophets express it in the same words.” (42) Jehoshaphat’s mistrust was justified by the issue of war. Ahab was slain in a miraculous way by Naaman, at the time only a common soldier of the rank and file. God permitted Naaman’s missile to penetrate Ahab’s armor, though the latter was harder than the former. (43)
The mourning for Ahab was so great that the memory of it reached posterity. (44) The funeral procession was unusually impressive; no less than thirty-six thousand warriors, their shoulders bared, marched before his bier. (45) ….
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