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- What attributes of God’s character does this passage reveal?
- How does the passage point to Jesus?
- How should the truth of this passage change me?
- How do the events of today’s reading help you better understand the grand narrative of Scripture?
1 Kings 20
Why did King Ahab so readily agree to give his silver, gold, wives, and children to King Ben-Hadad? My guess is that he thought giving in to Ben-Hadad’s demands would keep the peace. That, my friends, is the definition of appeasement. And guess what? It never works. When you give in to the demands of a bully, they simply demand more. Which is exactly what Ben-Hadad did in this case.
I talk about appeasement quite a bit. Technically it is a foreign policy term, but I think it applies to individuals as well. It isn’t just with regard to bullies, either. There is certainly something to be said for keeping the peace, however we need to understand that there is no satisfying human desire. Therefore, any time the demands of others come from a place of selfishness, giving in to those demands for the purpose of keeping the peace’ will always fail to keep the peace. Instead, it will invariably result in more demands. As the book of Ecclesiastes points out, there is a time for everything under the sun. Thus, there may well be a time when meeting the self-serving demands of others is the right thing to do. Appeasement, however, is never the right goal because peace can never exist where selfishness reigns.
1 Kings 21
I don’t really know what kind of man Naboth was. All I know is that he did not do anything wrong in this incident. As the owner of his vineyard, it was well within his rights to refuse to sell or trade it. Given his reason for refusal, however, my guess is that Naboth was a God-fearing man. As I see it, Naboth did right to refuse Ahab’s demand, even though it was economically fair. There is more to life than money, after all, and valuing his God-given familial inheritance rightly took priority for Naboth. Notice that he didn’t let fear of the king alter his Godly priorities, which would have been appeasement.
As a reward for his potentially righteous resolve, Naboth was stoned. What gives?!? This is a clear case of evil prevailing over good. The bad thing happened to the good person while the good thing happened to the bad. As decent people, we naturally want to know why God lets such things happen. Unfortunately, the text doesn’t exactly give us an answer. So all I can do is look at what I know from the rest of the Bible and attempt to apply it to this story in search of a perspective that fits.
I know that God is both sovereign and good. I also know that true life and death, reward and punishment exist outside of time. From this text I know that Ahab and Jezebel’s victory was short-lived and that they received God’s judgment. It is also evident that this Naboth incident initiated that judgment. Hmm…that is something. Still, why use Naboth to bring judgment on Ahab’s house? Certainly they already had a long enough rap sheet to justify God’s condemnation. Assuming that Naboth was indeed a God-fearing man who acted with righteous intent, all I can say is that, however bad his fate looks, he won in the end. God removed him from an evil environment and brought Naboth into His eternal presence. And Naboth had the honor of giving his life to glorify God and take part in His justice.