1 Kings 21:27 And it came to pass, when Ahab heard those words, that he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth on his flesh, and fasted… I. THE REPENTANCE OF AHAB was awakened by the fearful prediction of coming vengeance, which Elijah delivered at the moment when he had taken possession of Naboth's vineyard. Mark the power of the Divine word. Is it not "like as a fire, saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces"? In the moment of Ahab's humiliation, his remorse was sincere; i.e., his conscience was roused, his fears excited, his sense of God's justice real, and his desire for pardon unfeigned. II. AHAB'S PUNISHMENT WAS SUSPENDED IN HIS OWN DAYS. "Because he humbleth himself before Me, I will not bring the evil in his days." How can this be? It is possible that the God of mercy should show mercy; and that His mercy should rejoice against judgment. The history of our own lives, still spared and still prolonged, notwithstanding our manifold transgressions, is an evidence of this certain truth. And what is the practical result, arising from this combined view of God's mercy and truth? Assuredly, it will cause the contrite to hope, and the careless to fear. The one will recognise, in the sorest visitations that befall him, the hand of a gracious Father who chastens that He may bless; and whose afflictions are strewed upon the path of life, like the arrows of Jonathan before David, not for destruction, but for warning. The other will as surely perceive, that God's word shall not return unto him void; and, that, if it work not his conversion, it must be his condemnation. The threatenings which are revealed, that the sinner may repent, will remain, if he do not repent, to proclaim his fall. III. THE THREATENED EVIL, WHICH WAS SUSPENDED IN THE DAYS OF AHAB, SHOULD, IN HIS SON'S DAYS, BE BROUGHT UPON HIS HOUSE. And here we cannot but call to mind the fact, that, whatever be the difficulties, connected with the view which is here presented to us, of God's moral government, or however weakly we may succeed in explaining them; it is, still, the government of God, of Him who is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works. The matter of fact, in the history before us, came to pass, as it is here predicted. Evil was brought upon Ahab's house, in his son's days Ahaziah, his first successor, soon perished. The next, Jehoram, fell by the arm of Jehu, in the very portion of Naboth's field. The seventy sons in Jezreel, were also slain, in obedience to the commands of Jehu, which he sent to the elders of that city; and, last of all, the same anointed captain, "slew all that remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men, and all his kinsfolk, and his priests, until he left him none remaining." Now, if we examine the sacred narrative which relates these events, we shall find that all these descendants of Ahab walked in his evil ways, and wrought evil in the sight of the Lord. It was not the innocent, then, suffering for the guilty; but the guilty reaping the harvest of his own guilt. And since "known unto God are all his works before the beginning of the world," the whole of this train of wickedness was known likewise, — itself, its causes, and its consequences, — that long process stretching out, from year to year, and from generation to generation, — whose separate and disjointed portions, only, can be discerned by moral intellect, — but the whole of which was, alike, and at the same moment, present to the Eternal Mind. It is difficult for us, in forming our estimate of actions, to preserve this distinction between the occasion which leads to an event, and its immediate effective cause; but a distinction there is, and must be remembered. When a criminal is convicted at the tribunal of an earthly judge, the law, and they who administer it, are the instrumental causes of inflicting the sentence; but the crime committed is the immediate cause which deserves it. We do not confound these things, in our estimate of the dealings between man and man: let us not confound them, therefore, when we are contemplating the revealed dispensations of God to man. But may we not be permitted, in some degree, to trace the course of the Divine counsels, in the present instance? The punishment of Ahab's descendants, we know to have been inflicted under a theocracy, which employed temporal rewards, and temporal punishments, as the instruments of its government. Now, what instrument could be more powerful, in such a case, than the prospect of misery, about to fall upon the children of the sinner, as well as upon himself? His own licentious and hardened passions might make a man insensible to the fear of temporal evil befalling himself; but, when he was assured, as he could not fail to be, by the moral law of Moses, that Divine wrath would visit his iniquity, upon his "children, unto the third and fourth generation," every instinctive feeling of parental kindness and affection would be enlisted on the side of duty, and act as a restraint upon the unruly will. (J. S. M. Anderson, M. A.). Parallel Verses KJV: And it came to pass, when Ahab heard those words, that he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly. |
    |