Biblical History Part 3
Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore
October 2, 2016
Scripture Reading: Nehemiah 13:28
Just like today, the House of Israel also had very corrupt political leaders too. For example, Ahab and his alien wife, Jezebel. King Ahab noticed that there was an extremely good vineyard near his palace that he wanted. So he went to the owner and told him that he would like to either: buy his vineyard with cash or he would replace his vineyard with an equally good one, if he sold his vineyard to him.
The vineyard owner, Naboth, refused both options. Why did he refuse the king? Was Naboth also a Baal worshipper? The Bible doesn’t say, but Naboth did follow God’s Law on inheritance.
Mathew Poole’s Commentary: “For God hath expressly, and for diver’s weighty reasons, forbidden the alienation of lands from the tribes and families to which they were allotted… And although these might have been alienated till the jubilee, yet he durst not sell it to the king for that time; because he supposed that if once it came into the king’s hand, especially to be made a garden of pleasure, and affixed to his palace, neither he nor his posterity could ever recover it again; and so he should both offend God, and wrong his posterity; which being, as it seems, a pious man, he durst not do.”
After being refused, Ahab returns to his palace and lies on his bed and refuses to eat. His wife Jezebel comes in and sees him in this condition and says to him, “Dost thou now govern the kingdom of Israel? Arise, and eat food, and let thine heart be merry. I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth, the Jezreelite” (1 Kings 21:7).
And Jezebel did figure out a way to give her husband Naboth’s vineyard, by planning, plotting and bringing to pass the execution of Naboth.