1 Kings 21:19

And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, thus saith the Lord, hast thou killed, and also taken possession?.... Killed in order to possess, and now taken possession upon the murder; some versions, as

And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the LORD, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession?

Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? Thou hast murdered an innocent and righteous man; and instead of repenting for it, thou hast added another piece of injustice and violence to it, and art going confidently and cheerfully to reap the fruit of thy wickedness. He ascribes Jezebel’ s fact to Ahab, because Jezebel did it by his connivance, and consent, and authority, and for the satisfaction of his inordinate appetite. Quest. How was this prophecy fulfilled, when Ahab’ s blood was not licked in Jezreel, which was in the tribe of Issachar, but in the pool of Samaria, , which was in the tribe of Ephraim? Answ. First, This was done, though not in the same individual place, yet in the same general place, i.e. in the territory of Samaria, within which Jezreel was; and in a place of the same nature, a public and common place; for such was both the place of Naboth’ s execution, and the pool of Samaria. Secondly, This was particularly accomplished in his son Joram, as is affirmed, ,26; whose blood is not improperly called Ahab’ s blood, because children are said to be born of their parents’ blood. See . Object. These words, thy blood, even thine, show that it is meant of Ahab’ s person. Answ. True, the threatening was so directed and designed at first; but afterwards, upon his humiliation, the punishment was transferred from him to his son, as is expressed, . Object. This is said to be fulfilled in Ahab’ s person, . Answ. Either that may be referred to some other prediction or commination not elsewhere mentioned; or rather, it intimates that it was in part and in some sort fulfilled in him, though not so severely and opprobriously, nor with such characters of the curse, as it was in his son; whence he there mentions only the thing, without any regard unto the place here designed. But it may further be observed, that although upon Ahab’ s humiliation the curse here threatened might seem to be wholly translated from his person to his posterity; yet upon Ahab’ s return to sin, in the next chapter, he brings back the curse upon himself, and so it is no wonder if it be in some sort fulfilled in him also. Thirdly, The Hebrew word, rendered in the place where, may be, and is by some learned men, otherwise rendered; either thus instead of this that; that being frequently said to be done in another’ s place which was only done in his stead; or, like as; or, because that. So it doth not design the place, but the cause and reason of this judgment. And in this sense the same word is used .

1 Kings 21:19 And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the LORD, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the LORD, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.Ver. 19. Hast thou killed, and also taken possession?] So Chrysostom thundered against Eudoxia the Empress for seeking after the vineyard of Callitrope, a widow; for the which she banished him, and punished him with hunger and thirst, and various other vexations, to the loss of his life: so that he may well be reckoned among the martyrs. And thou shalt speak unto him.] Not secretly, and in his ear, but openly, and in the hearing of his servants and courtiers; which also he did. In the place where dogs licked, &c.] So Aristobulus, king of Jewry, vomited abundance of blood - and therewith soon after breathed his last - in the very place where he had slain his brother Antigonus, and acknowledged it to be the just hand of God upon himself. So Selymus, the great Turk, struck with a most loathsome and incurable disease, ended his days at Chiurlus with an untimely and tormenting death, where he had joined battle with his own father Bajazet, A.D. 1511; God, as is to be thought, saith the historian, in the same place with revenging hand taking just punishment for his former disloyalty toward his aged father. So the Lady Rochford - who, as it is said, had forged a letter against her own husband and Queen Anne Boleyn, his sister, accusing them of incest, for the which they were both beheaded - was afterwards herself also beheaded in the same place with Queen Katharine Howard, for her deserts, So Babington’ s confederates were executed in Lincoln’ s-Inn-fields, even in the fields where they had often conferred for the execution of their treasons against Queen Elizabeth. So Henry III, king of France, was stabbed to death by a Jacobin friar in that very chamber where he and his bloody brother, Charles IX, had, some few years before, plotted the Parisian massacre. Thus the Jews who had sold Christ for thirty pence - "a goodly price!" - were, at the sack of Jerusalem, sold for thirty a penny, ad illudendum, saith Hegesippus; and in the place where they had cried out, "Crucify him, crucify him," they were miserably cut in pieces by the Roman soldiers. And thus, as one observeth, the Lord Hastings was beheaded at London that very selfsame day twelve months later, yea, the same hour, yea, the same minute, wherein he had conspired the death of the queen’ s children, at Pomefret Castle. Shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine,] sc., As it runneth in the veins of thy son Joram. “ Proiece tela manu sanguis meus … hoc est, O fill mi Iule. ” - Virg. Aeneid, lib. vi.

(19) Hast thou killed, and also taken possession?—The stern, indignant brevity of the accusation, at once shaming the subterfuge by which Ahab shifts his guilt to Jezebel, and unmasking the real object of the whole crime, leaves the king speechless as to defence, unable to stay the sentence which at once follows. The marked particularity and emphasis of that sentence, “In the place where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine,” preclude all explanations, which would seek its fulfilment in the fate of Jehoram (2 Kings 9:25); nor can such explanations be justified by reference to 1 Kings 21:29, for it is not this part of the sentence which is deferred by Ahab’s repentance. (See Note on 1 Kings 22:38.)

Verse 19. In the place where dogs licked, c.] It is in vain to look for a literal fulfillment of this prediction. Thus it would have been fulfilled, but the humiliation of Ahab induced the merciful God to say, I will not bring the evil in his days, but in the days of his son, 1Kg 21:29. Now dogs did lick the blood of Ahab but it was at the pool of Samaria, where his chariot and his armour were washed, after he had received his death wound at Ramoth-gilead; but some think this was the place where Naboth was stoned: see 1Kg 22:38. And how literally the prediction concerning his son was fulfilled, see 2Kg 9:25, where we find that the body of Jehoram his son, just then slain by an arrow that had passed through his heart, was thrown into the portion of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite; and there, doubtless, the dogs licked his blood, if they did not even devour his body. There is a similar idea of the propriety of punishment overtaking the culprit in the place where he had committed the crime, expressed by Orestes to AEgisthus, SOPH. Elect. 1495. ______ Χωρειδ ' ενθαπερκατεκτανες Πατερατοναμον, ὡςενταυτῳθανῃς. ______ Go where thou slew'st my father, That in the self-same place thou too may'st die.

19. Hast thou killed, and also taken possession?] The guilt of all that had been done is at once laid at Ahab’s door. He had neither known nor cared to know (as it seems) what Jezebel’s plans were and only thought of the end which they accomplished. He was willing by taking possession to reap the advantage, as he thought it; God lays on him the first penalty. and thou shalt speak unto him, saying] The LXX. omits these words. See above on 1 Kings 21:15. In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth] From the history of Ahab’s death, in 1 Kings 22:38, it appears that his blood was thus licked by the dogs, not at Jezreel, but near Samaria. The best explanation of this is that the word ‘place’ does not here mean ‘precise locality’. Naboth’s blood was shed outside the gate of Jezreel, and the pool of Samaria, from the description in the next chapter, and from what we know of the conduits and reservoirs of Eastern cities, was apparently outside the gate of that city. Thus there was a similarity between the two cases. We must also bear in mind that the sentence on Ahab was modified and its exact fulfilment deferred. When Jehoram was killed (2 Kings 9:25) a much more definite phrase is used for the place where his body was cast out. There it is, ‘in the portion of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite’. Instead of ‘dogs’ simply, the LXX. (Vat.) has ‘the swine and the dogs’ and (Alex.) ‘the dogs and the swine’. It is not easy to decide how the swine came to be mentioned in the Greek Versions, but as neither text makes any mention of them in the second part of this clause, the words must be taken as the insertion of some one who desired to give a touch of greater horror to the picture. The Vat. LXX. adds to the close of this verse ‘and the harlots shall wash in thy blood’, and in 1 Kings 22:38 both Alex. and Vat. have the statement that this was done. Moreover the true rendering in that place, of the words which in A.V. read, ‘and they washed his armour’, is ‘Now the harlots washed themselves there’. See notes on 1 Kings 22:38.

Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? - These words rebuke especially Ahab’s indecent haste. He went to Jezreel the very day after Naboth’s execution 2 Kings 9:26. The prophecy following had a double fulfillment.

19. Hast thou killed — This interrogative form of expression is here equivalent to an emphatic affirmation.