1 Kings 16 Study Notes

16:23 The formal opener for Omri is unremarkable for such a great political figure.

16:24 The purchase of a new capital, Samaria, was Omri’s outstanding achievement. Omri, like David, exercised personal ownership of his new capital.

16:25 Omri followed the pattern of Jeroboam’s false cult, which led Israel into false worship. Omri’s full, negative impact became clear only with the introduction of Baal-melkart (see note at vv. 23-28) into Israel. Despite his encouragement of idolatry, Omri established the power that restored wealth and empire to the two good kings of Judah.

16:26-28 These verses are Omri’s closer, but again, they give an incomplete picture of Omri’s spiritual importance. All the attention given to Ahab and the career of Elijah in the following chapters is an indirect reaction to Omri. Ahab and Jezebel were the rulers whom Elijah opposed, but the setting in which he opposed them and their Baalism was the product of Omri’s policies. In God’s economy, all of Omri’s secular greatness amounted to nothing.

16:29-22:40 This section focuses on the reign of Ahab. Despite his succumbing to Jezebel’s influence, Ahab was a capable warrior. His military career was marked by amazing highs and lows. At one time he was so firmly under the domination of Ben-hadad of Damascus (chap. 20) that only divine intervention delivered him from destruction, but then Assyrian records reveal that Ahab led the largest contingent of chariots against Assyria at the battle of Qarqar (853 BC), where the regional allies turned back a serious Assyrian invasion.

16:29-30 Ahab’s opener makes two points: the date when he became king and how long he ruled. The evaluation reports that Ahab was the worst king Israel had up until that time. Jeroboam had set up an illegal cultic apparatus for serving the Lord, and this was enough to make him the archetypal representative of a bad king.

16:31-33 Ahab was even worse than Jeroboam. He not only followed Jeroboam’s false worship, he, with Jezebel, went beyond Jeroboam in introducing into Israel the worship of Baal-melkart (see note at vv. 23-28). The altar for Baal and the Asherah pole, the symbol of his female consort, brought this powerful fertility cult to Israel.

16:34 Recording the rebuilding or refortifying of Jericho at this point identified it as a work of Ahab. This in turn illustrated the long reach of Ahab’s foreign policy. A probable goal of this operation was to rebuild the fortifications, both of Jericho and of points further south in the Arabah, that protected the trade routes from Eloth. There is no evidence that either Omri or Ahab pushed these trade connections any further south. The deaths of the sons of Hiel could have been viewed as either the impact of an effective curse (Jos 6:26) or a human sacrifice to neutralize the curse.