Ahab And Jezebel Series

Ahab and Jezebel

According to the Hebrew Bible, Ahab was the seventh king of Israel, the son and successor of King Omri, and the husband of Jezebel of Sidon. The Hebrew Bible presents Ahab as a wicked king.

Died 852 BC · Ramoth-Gilead, Syria

Father Omri

Reign 871 – 852 BC

Burial Samaria, Kingdom of Israel

The Evilest People in the Bible!

Who are the most corrupt and evil people in the Bible (not including Satan or any other demons)? While Scripture contains many individuals who have done their share of wrong, some became quite good at doing what was wrong.

King Ahab is arguably the evilest king of the Northern Ten Tribes of Israel. He was the first Israelite king to marry a heathen (non-Israel) woman, the beautiful but devilish Jezebel. Together they became one of the most sinful couples in Biblical history. Ahab built an altar, in the capital city of Samaria, to his wife's pagan God.

Ahab, aided by Jezebel, helped lead the people into idolatry and set the stage for the nation's later captivity. Elijah the Prophet confronted him several times for his bad behavior (see 1Kings 17 - 18).

Jezebel not only fed and cared for the more than 800 false prophets, but she also had the evil tenacity to vow she would have Elijah murdered (1Kings 18 - 19). She also arranged the cold-blooded murder of a vineyard owner named Naboth in order to seize his land (1Kings 21).

Ahab made an altar for Baal in the house of Baal that he had built in Samaria, and he also made a grove which was also a wicked thing to do.

Ahab was an able and energetic warrior. His victories over the Syrians pushed the borders of his kingdom to the border of Damascus. Success, however, made him greedy for still more.

Who was King Ahab in the Bible?

ANSWER: Ahab was one in a line of increasingly evil kings in Israel's history, starting with the reign of Jeroboam. King Ahab "did more evil in the eyes of the LORD than any of those before him" (1 Kings 16:30). Among the events chronicled in Ahab's life that led to his downfall was his marriage to an evil woman named Jezebel, who had a particular hatred for God's people (1 Kings 18:4). Because of his marriage to a pagan woman, Ahab devoted himself to the worship of the false gods Baal and Asherah in Israel (1 Kings 16:31–33).

The evil of King Ahab was countered by the Prophet Elijah, who warned Ahab of coming judgment if he did not obey the Lord. Ahab blamed Elijah for bringing trouble to Israel (1 Kings 18:17), but Ahab's promotion of idolatry was the cause of the three-and-a-half-year famine (verse 18). In a dramatic confrontation between Elijah and Ahab's false prophets, God proved to Israel that He, not Baal, was the true God (1 Kings 18:16–39). All of Ahab's men of Baal were killed that day (verse 40).

King Ahab also disobeyed the Lord's direct command to destroy Ben-Hadad, the king of Aram. God set it up so Ahab would lead Israel to victory, but Ahab made a treaty with the king he was supposed to kill (1 Kings 20). "Therefore," God told Ahab through an unnamed prophet, "it is your life for his life, your people for his people" (verse 42).

The event that sealed Ahab's doom was his murder of an innocent man (1 Kings 21). Ahab coveted a vineyard belonging to a man named Naboth. The king offered to buy the vineyard, but Naboth refused because the Law forbade him to sell it (1 Kings 21:2–3; cf. Leviticus 25:23). While Ahab sulked about it in his palace, his wife arranged Naboth's murder. Once the vineyard's owner was out of the way, King Ahab took the vineyard for himself. Elijah came to Ahab and told him the Lord would deal with him by cutting off all his descendants. Also, Ahab himself would suffer a shameful fate: "In the place where dogs licked up Naboth's blood, dogs will lick up your blood—yes, yours!" (1 Kings 21:19). Upon hearing this, Ahab "tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and fasted. He lay in sackcloth and went around meekly" (verse 27). In response to Ahab's repentance, God mercifully postponed the destruction of Ahab's dynasty until after Ahab was dead (verse 29).

The prophesied judgment against Ahab came true precisely as Elijah predicted. God used Ahab's false prophets to entice him into going to the battle at Ramoth-Gilead, where he was hit by a "random" arrow and slowly bled to death in his chariot. Later, "they washed the chariot at a pool in Samaria (where the prostitutes bathed), and the dogs licked up his blood, as the word of the Lord had declared" (1 Kings 22:38). After Ahab's death, Jehu killed Jezebel (2 Kings 9) and all of Ahab's descendants (2 Kings 10).