XXV. THE MARRIAGE OF AHAB AND JEZEBEL

In considering the political and religious condition of the two kingdoms after the division, I have looked at the establishment of the calves at Bethel and Dan by Jeroboam as a great national epoch; as a measure pregnant with consequences far more numerous and more important, fetching a much larger compass, and affecting many more interests, than its author probably contemplated. I have now to fix upon another event, the wide-wasting effects of which I have already hinted as another national crisis, one which, in the end, most materially influenced the fortunes both of Israel and Judah; the thing in itself apparently a trifle; “but God,” says Bishop Hall, “lays small accidents as foundations for greater designs;” I speak of the marriage between Ahab and Jezebel. It is thus announced: “And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshipped him. And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made a grove; and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.” [1 Kings 16:31.] Here we have the beginning of a new and more pestilent idolatry in Israel. This Zidonian queen corrupts the country, to which she is unhappily translated, with her own rooted heathenish abominations; and priests of Baal, and prophets of Baal, being under her own special protection and encouragement, multiply exceedingly; and so seductive did the voluptuous worship prove, that, with the exception of seven thousand persons, all Israel had, more or less, partaken in her sin. Jeroboam’s calf had been a base and sordid representative of God, but a representative still; Jezebel’s Baal was an audacious rival. Nevertheless, Israel could not find in their hearts to put away the God of their fathers altogether; and accordingly we hear Elijah exclaim, “How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” [1 Kings 18:21.] I do not think sufficient notice has been taken of the curious manner in which this sudden ejaculation of the prophet corresponds with a number of unconnected incidents, characteristic of the times, which lie scattered over the Books of Kings and Chronicles. I shall collect a few of them, that it may be seen how well their confronted testimony agrees together, and how strictly, but undesignedly, they all coincide with that state of public opinion upon religious matters which the words of Elijah express—a halting opinion.

Thus, in the scene on Mount Carmel, we find, that after the priests of Baal had in vain besought their god to give proof of himself, and it now became Elijah’s turn to act, “he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down,” [1 Kings 18:30.] as though here, on the top of Carmel, were the remains of an altar to the true God (one of those high places tolerated, however questionably, by some even of the most religious kings), which had been superseded by an altar to Baal, since Ahab’s reign had begun; the prophet not having to build, it seems, but only to renew. And agreeably to this, we have Obadiah, the governor of Ahab’s own house, represented as a man “who feared the Lord greatly, and saved the prophets of the Lord;” he, therefore, no apostate, but Ahab, in consideration of his fidelity, winking at his faith; perhaps, indeed, himself not so much sold to Baal-worship, as sold into the hands of an imperious woman, who would hear of no other. And so “Ahab served Baal a little,” said Jehu, his successor [2 Kings 10:18.] , another of the equivocal tokens of the times; whilst the command of this same Jehu, that the temple of Baal should be searched before the slaughter of the idolaters began, lest there should be there any of the worshippers of the Lord, instead of the worshippers of Baal only, still argues the prevalence of the same half measure of faith. Moreover, the character of the four hundred prophets of Ahab, which, by its contradictions, has so much perplexed the commentators; their number corresponding with that of those who ate at Jezebel’s table; their parable, nevertheless, taken up in the Lord’s name; still their veracity suspected by Jehoshaphat, who asks if “there be no prophet of the Lord besides;” and the mutual ill-will which manifests itself between them and Micaiah; are all very expressive features of the same doubtful mind [1 Kings 18:19; 22:6–24; 2 Chron. 18:10–23.] . Then the pretence by which Ahab, through Jezebel, takes away the life of Naboth, is “blasphemy against God and the king,” against the true God, no doubt, the tyrant availing herself of a clause in the Levitical law [Levit. 24:16.] ; a law which was still, therefore, as it should seem, the law of the land, even in the kingdom of Israel, howbeit standing in the anomalous position of deriving its authority from an acknowledgment of Jehovah alone, and yet left to struggle against the established worship of Baal, too; enough in itself to confound the people, to compromise all religious distinctions, and to ensure a halting creed in whatever nation it obtained. Thus, whilst I see the prophets of the Lord cut off under the warrant of Jezebel, and the government of the Lord virtually renounced; at another time I see, as I have said, a man condemned to death for blasphemy against the Lord, under the warrant of Leviticus; and the two sons of an Israelitish woman sold to her creditor for bondsmen, under the same law [2 Kings 4:1; Levit. 25:39.] ; and the lepers shut out at the gate of Samaria, still under the same [2 Kings 7:3; Levit. 13:46; 14:3; Num. 5:2, 3.] , and contrary, as it should appear, to the Syrian practice; for Naaman, though a leper, does not seem to have been an outcast, but to have had servants about him, and to have executed the king’s commands, and even to have expected Elisha to come out to him, and put his hand upon the place. What can argue the embarrassment under which Israel was labouring in its religious relations more clearly than all this?—the law of Moses acknowledged to be valid, and its provisions enforced, though its claim to the obedience of the people only rested upon having God for its author; that God whom Baal was supplanting. Here, I think, is truth: it would have been little to the purpose to produce flagrant proofs that the worship of God and the worship of Baal prevailed together in Israel; those might have been the result of contrivance; but it is coincidence, and undesigned coincidence, to find a prophet exclaiming, in a moment of zeal, “How long halt ye,” and then to find indications, some of them grounded upon the merest trifles of domestic life, that the people did halt.