1 Kings 21:20

20 And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O my enemy? And he answered, I have found thee because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the LORD.

1 Kings 21:20 Meaning and Commentary

1 Kings 21:20

And Ahab said to Elijah, hast thou found me, O mine enemy?
&c.] So he reckoned him, because he dealt faithfully with him, and reproved him for his sins, and denounced the judgments of God upon him for them:

and he answered, I have found thee;
as a thief, a robber and plunderer, in another's vineyard; he had found out his sin in murdering Naboth, and unjustly possessing his vineyard, which was revealed to him by the Lord; and now was come as his enemy, as he called him, as being against him, his adversary, not that he hated his person, but his ways and works:

because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord;
had given up himself wholly to his lusts, was abandoned to them, and as much under the power of them as a man is that has sold himself to another to be his slave; and which he served openly, publicly in the sight of the omniscient God, and in defiance of him. Abarbinel gives another sense of the word we render "sold thyself", that he "made himself strange", as if he was ignorant, and did not know what Jezebel had done; whereas he knew fully the whole truth of the matter, and that Naboth was killed through her contrivance, and by her management purposely; and so he did evil in the sight of that God that knows all things, pretending he was ignorant when he was not, and this Elijah found out by divine revelation; so the word is used in ( Genesis 42:6 ) ( 2 Kings 12:5 2 Kings 12:7 ) , but the former sense is best, as appears from ( 1 Kings 21:25 ) .

1 Kings 21:20 In-Context

18 Arise, go down to meet Ahab, king of Israel, who is in Samaria; behold, he is in the vineyard of Naboth, where he is gone down to possess it.
19 And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus hath the LORD said, Hast thou murdered and also taken possession? And thou shalt speak unto him again, saying, Thus hath the LORD said, In the same place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall the dogs also lick thy blood, even thine.
20 And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O my enemy? And he answered, I have found thee because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the LORD.
21 Behold, I will bring evil upon thee and will burn away thy posterity and will cut off from Ahab him that pisses against the wall and he that is kept and he that is left in Israel.
22 And I will make thy house like the house of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat and like the house of Baasha, the son of Ahijah, for the provocation with which thou hast provoked me to anger and made Israel to sin.
The Jubilee Bible (from the Scriptures of the Reformation), edited by Russell M. Stendal, Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2010