1 Kings 21:22

Ahab then had to listen to as fearful a sentence as was ever passed on a sinner. It was in three parts. (1) "Behold, I will bring disaster on you." He personally must suffer. He came to a miserable end, as we know. (2) His whole family was to be destroyed, like the families of his evil predecessors Jeroboam and Baasha. He had wiped out Naboth's family: God would wipe out his. (3) Jezebel was to be eaten by dogs.

His murderer Zimri at once began to massacre "all the house of Baasha." He spared none, "neither of his relatives nor of his friends." It was complete extermination, just as God had ordained it should be.

Judging by human wisdom and forgetting the fear of Jehovah, he made two golden calves. His aim was to break the strong links of a worship held in common, so that they would no longer tie his subjects to Judah and Jerusalem. He had to set up a new priesthood. He invented everything to do with worship out of his own heart. Israel's sin became an established rule. The phrase "Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin" became the sad title of their first king.

The record adds an extra verse to emphasize that God judged Baasha and his family because of his idolatries and his murder of the house of Jeroboam. God, who looks on the heart, sees him only as an assassin serving his own ambition, killing king Nadab and the whole house of Jeroboam.

Though Jezebel had procured the death of Naboth, Ahab is held responsible for the crime. He let another act under his authority, and he was willing to profit by her wrongdoing, so the Lord charges him with the murder. The murder of Naboth was the occasion of the sentence; but even this foul crime was only the completion of a long guilty course. There was no one like Ahab, who sold himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up. He even matched the Amorites in his wicked excesses — those whom the Lord drove out before the children of Israel. In this way the Lord, for our instruction, will condescend to justify His dealings with Ahab and his house.

The king's heart bows before the word of Jehovah, and the judgment is put off until the days of his son. This is a new proof of God's longsuffering. He is ever ready to accept and respond to any movement of man's heart towards Himself.

At last, after more than fifteen years' delay, the blood of Naboth, crying, like Abel's, for vengeance from the ground, was about to be repaid. God, when judging men, is never in haste. He allowed Jezebel to outlive, not only her husband, but his two successors.