Ahab answered, "Hast thou found me (met with me), O mine enemy?" (not, hast thou ever found me thine enemy? - Vulg., Luth.) i.e., dost thou come to meet me again, mine enemy? He calls Elijah his enemy, to take the sting from the prophet's threat as an utterance caused by personal enmity. But Elijah fearlessly replied, "I have found (thee), because thou sellest thyself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord." He then announced to him, in 1 Kings 21:21, 1 Kings 21:22, the extermination of his house, and to Jezebel, as the principal sinner, the most ignominious end (1 Kings 21:23). הרע לעשׂות חתמכּר to sell one's self to do evil, i.e., to give one's self to evil so as to have no will of one's own, to make one's self the slave of evil (cf. 1 Kings 21:25, 2 Kings 17:17). The consequence of this is πεπρᾶσθαι ὑπὸ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν (Romans 7:14), sin exercising unlimited power over the man who gives himself up to it as a slave. For 1 Kings 21:21, 1 Kings 21:22, see 1 Kings 14:10-11; 1 Kings 15:29-30; 1 Kings 16:3, 1 Kings 16:12-13. The threat concerning Jezebel (1 Kings 21:23) was literally fulfilled, according to 2 Kings 9:30. חל, written defectively for חיל, as in 2 Samuel 20:15, is properly the open space by the town-wall, pomoerium. Instead of בּחל we have בּחלק in the repetition of this threat in 2 Kings 9:10, 2 Kings 9:36-37, and consequently Thenius and others propose to alter the חל here. But there is no necessity for this, as בּחלק, on the portion, i.e., the town-land, of Jezreel (not, in the field at Jezreel), is only a more general epithet denoting the locality, and חל is proved to be the original word by the lxx.

1 Kings 21:27 Parallel Commentaries

he rent

Genesis 37:34 And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth on his loins, and mourned for his son many days.

2 Kings 6:30 And it came to pass, when the king heard the words of the woman, that he rent his clothes; and he passed by on the wall...

2 Kings 18:37 Then came Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, which was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder...

Jonah 3:6 For word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth...

lay in sackcloth

2 Samuel 12:17 And the elders of his house arose, and went to him, to raise him up from the earth: but he would not...

Job 16:15 I have sewed sackcloth on my skin, and defiled my horn in the dust.

Isaiah 22:12 And in that day did the Lord GOD of hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth:

Isaiah 58:5-8 Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush...

Joel 1:13 Gird yourselves, and lament, you priests: howl, you ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth...

went softly

Isaiah 38:15 What shall I say? he has both spoken to me, and himself has done it: I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul.