Quick Note – 1 Kings 16:29-34 – An Evil King but a Good Lesson

1 Kings 16:29-34 – “29 In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab the son of Omri began to reign over Israel, and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty-two years. 30 And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him. 31 And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshiped him. 32 He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he built in Samaria. 33 And Ahab made an Asherah. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. 34 In his days Hiel of Bethel built Jericho. He laid its foundation at the cost of Abiram his firstborn, and set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke by Joshua the son of Nun.”

A nation can rise and fall by its leaders, so it is important that good and righteous leaders are chosen to lead a nation.  Being that I was born in the United States and this year is an election year, I have the opportunity to vote for who will be the President of my country for the next four years.  I will also be able to vote for other officials like Congressman and senators, who will help make the laws for the next two or six years.  Therefore, my vote through who I help elect will affect whether this nation will grow or decline.  My vote really matters, and being a Christian, I should support a person that I believe will help lead this nation closer rather than farther away from God. 

In ancient Israel though, the person who led the nation was not selected through a democratic vote.  Instead, it was determined either by the blood lineage or the defeat of the previous king.  If the current king ruled with a strong arm and his subjects did not rebel against him, then usually his son would be the next king.  On the other hand, if his subjects did lead a rebellion and one of his generals defeated and killed him, then that general would become the king.  This second way was the one by which the father of the king in our passage today became the ruler.  Omri was a general in the army of the previous king of Israel.  After one of the king’s subjects Zimri assassinated the king and tried to usurp the throne underhandedly, Omri’s soldiers selected him to be king instead.  Knowing he had the support of his soldiers, Omri then went and killed Zimri and established his rule.  King Omri was a strong ruler, so he was able to establish his kingdom for his son, Ahab, which is who we will focus on today. 

King Ahab is described as an evil king, a king who was more evil than those who were before him.  So you may be asking, “What can we learn from such an evil person?  Why would I highlight a man as bad as this?”  And my answer would be that we can learn from the mistakes that people make in the Bible just as much as we can learn from those who do right.  By looking at King Ahab’s life and how he reflected that of a bad ruler, we can learn how we should live our lives and how we should look for rulers who do not embody the characteristics of Ahab.  So let’s dive in for our short lesson today.  There are four key characteristics that we can see that made Ahab a king who did more to provoke the Lord to anger than any previous king before him.

1.  He took previous sins lightly and did not learn from them.

King Ahab was the son of King Omri, who was considered an evil king.  Verse 25 of this chapter states that “Omri did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and did more evil than all who were before him.”  That means King Ahab’s father was already considered the worse of the worse and yet King Ahab did worse than him.  And if you trace back the kings before Omri, each one is described as evil and doing something that would provoke the LORD to anger.  This was the reason why the Northern Kingdom of Israel at that time was so tumultuous.  King after king was being placed on the throne and usurped, because each king did as he pleased rather than seeking the approval of God.  Unlike David, who was considered a man after God’s own heart, whose kingdom was then established by God, the kings of Israel sinned and incurred God’s wrath.  After seeing all this though, King Ahab refused to learn from the mistakes of the rulers before him and decided to double-down on the sin.  Rather than learning, he took their sins lightly (vs. 31) and provoked God even more.  History is written down so that we can learn from the achievements but also the mistakes of the past.  Yet history constantly repeats itself, because we as human beings refuse to learn from those mistakes.  As Christians, we should be careful to study the mistakes that were made in the past and do the opposite instead.  There are countless stories of people who fell in the Bible.  These stories were written so that we as Christians would be on guard against them and not fall into them as well.  So let us not take sin lightly and let us learn from those mistakes and do better.

2.  He associated with sinners who would lead him astray.

King Ahab made a crucial mistake early in his reign – he married Jezebel the daughter of a foreign king who worshipped other gods.  Like King Solomon, by marrying a foreign wife, he was led to worship other gods as well, eventually setting up a temple and altar for Baal.  He would also then worship Asherah, which was another foreign god at the time.  If Ahab had surrounded himself with good and righteous counsel who would advise him to follow God and seek His commandments, he likely would have, because if you read about Ahab and his personality in other passages, it sounds like he is a person who is the product of those around him.  But because he associated with sinners, he was led to sin.  1 Corinthians 15:33 states, “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals.’”  This is exactly what happened with Ahab.  We must be wary of the people we hang around and spend time with for they can either lift us up or lead us astray.  Iron sharpens iron.  So let us surround ourselves with those who seek after God. 

3.  He worshipped idols.

King Ahab did exactly what the other kings before him did – he worshipped other gods instead of the God of Israel.  Jeroboam, a king of Israel a few generations earlier, established false gods that looked like calves in the cities of Dan and Bethel.  He then told the people of Israel to worship these false gods.  Not only did Ahab keep this tradition, he added to it by establishing worship to Baal (by building his temple and altar in one of the primary cities in the Northern Kingdom) and to Asherah.  We may mock King Ahab and look upon him as a fool because of what he did here, but we must be careful to perform some introspection and see if we have done the same thing in our hearts.  Our hearts are the Temple of the Living God, but have we put an idol in its place.  The idol does not need to be some golden or wooden statue, it could be money, our family, our friends, or our career.  If we put anything before God, we have created and are worshipping an idol.  Let us correct this and remove any idols that we are worshipping.

4.  He allowed others to sin around him. 

Lastly, it is interesting that the writer of the book of Kings mentions that Jericho was rebuilt during the reign of King Ahab.  This may not seem like an important detail, but it is incredibly significant.  The reason is because Jericho was never to be rebuilt again.  Joshua had laid a curse on anybody who would rebuild the city when it was first conquered by the people of Israel entering into Canaan in Joshua 6 – “Cursed before the Lord is the one who undertakes to rebuild this city, Jericho: ‘At the cost of his firstborn son he will lay its foundations; at the cost of his youngest he will set up its gates.’”  Nobody dared to rebuild the city likely because of this curse, but when King Ahab reigned, we hear about how Hiel of Bethel decided to rebuild Jericho.  He did this at the cost of his firstborn and his youngest son.  Hiel willingly defied God even though he knew it could cost him his children.  How decrepit of a generation and people that would be willing to sacrifice their children for their own gain!  King Ahab did not stop him, even though, he was the king.  He did not fight back or reject what was done but likely supported him in doing so.  And even if he didn’t support him, he didn’t stop it.  We must be careful not to support evil or even just be silent in the face of it.  We must stand up to what is evil and stop it. 

King Ahab was an evil ruler over Israel, and the people of Israel would eventually fall for his sin.  They would experience a famine for three years for their sin.  They would lose to many enemies.  They would eventually suffer the wrath of God.  All because an evil king allowed for evil to continue in his country.  But even with all this wrongdoing, he did leave us something important – a lesson of what not to do.  Let us be careful not to act like Ahab lest we be remembered for being worse than all those who were before us.