1 Kings: Walk Before Me FaithfullySample

Bad things happen to good people, yet God is still sovereign. Believers need to keep both these truths in mind. 

Naboth, a devout man, rightly refuses the demand to sell his ancestral inheritance to the king. The law requires that land stays within its tribal inheritance unless in circumstances such as extreme poverty, but even then land would be restored in the jubilee year (Leviticus 25:25–28). So Naboth’s brave words to the king could be read as an implied criticism to the powerful and greedy king. 

Pathetically, the king sulks (v. 4b). Even his wife, the evil Jezebel, ridicules him: ‘Is that how you act as king over Israel?’ (v. 7). She promises to get the land for him and Ahab asks no questions. 

Jezebel sets up a kangaroo court, but with two scoundrels because the law requires two witnesses to put someone to death. Here is evil, small-minded greed and gross injustice to the full. There is no record of any defence from Naboth. He is stoned to death outside the city. 

Note the rush of activity: ‘As soon as Jezebel heard …’ (v. 15), ‘as soon as Ahab heard …’ (v. 16, ESV). No time is wasted; unadulterated and immoral greed pounces. The king takes the land of a good man. 

Israel is reaching the depths of depravity as the idolatry of Jezebel’s Baal worship bursts into full-blown immorality. Idolatry always promotes immorality in the end. Despite all the prophets, Israel’s leadership remains defiant to the living God. 

This world is not perfect and we ought not to expect that God will protect Christians from all evil in this life. God could have intervened to prevent Naboth’s death, but didn’t. If we say that God is good when a life is spared or evil is thwarted, does that imply that God is not good when a life is not spared? Sometimes Christians find the evil of this world unsettling to their faith in God’s sovereign goodness. However, the wording of the Lord’s Prayer – ‘deliver us from the evil one’ (Matthew 5:13) – has a longer-term perspective: that through the evil on earth, we may enjoy the freedom from evil in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus, the perfect one, endured evil, even to death, so we may live.

Reflection

What evil have you been a victim of and how did it challenge your trust in God?