Wednesday Bible Study: Biblical morality

Chapter 21 is another one of those stories that makes you scratch your head about why it ' s in the Bible. I ' m just going to summarize it. This guy Naboth owns a vineyard which, for some reason, Ahab wants. (Remember that two chapters earlier, Ahab was going to be deposed and most of the Israelites killed, but that never happened and we ' ve forgotten all about it.) But Naboth won ' t sell it so Ahab goes to bed and refuses to eat. So Jezebel has a plan: she writes letters telling some local potentates to accuse Naboth of blaspheming against God and the King, and have him stoned to death, and she signs Ahabs name. They do it, and Ahab gets the vineyard. Nice people! I ' ll give God some credit, he doesn ' t like this so he has Elijah track Ahab down and tell him that he and all his family will die and the dogs will lick his blood. Same for Jezebel. But Ahab does the sackcloth and ashes routine so God says okay, I won ' t punish Ahab, but I ' ll punish his son later. Makes perfect sense!21 Now Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard in Jezreel, beside the palace of Ahab king of Samar ′ia.2 And after this Ahab said to Naboth, “Give me your vineyard, that I may have it for a vegetable garden, because it is near my house; and I will give you a better vineyard for it; or, if it seems good to you, I will give you its value in money.”3 But Naboth said to Ahab, “TheLord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers. ”4 And Ahab went int...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs