1 Kings 21:20

20 And Ahab saith unto Elijah, `Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?' and he saith, `I have found -- because of thy selling thyself to do the evil thing in the eyes of Jehovah;

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 `Rise, go down to meet Ahab king of Israel, who [is] in Samaria, -- lo, in the vineyard of Naboth, whither he hath gone down to possess it,

19 and thou hast spoken unto him, saying, Thus said Jehovah, Hast thou murdered, and also possessed? and thou hast spoken unto him, saying, Thus said Jehovah, In the place where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, do the dogs lick thy blood, even thine.'

20 And Ahab saith unto Elijah, `Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?' and he saith, `I have found -- because of thy selling thyself to do the evil thing in the eyes of Jehovah;

21 lo, I am bringing in unto thee evil, and have taken away thy posterity, and cut off to Ahab those sitting on the wall, and restrained, and left, in Israel,

22 and given up thy house like the house of Jeroboam son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha son of Ahijah, for the provocation with which thou hast provoked [Me], and dost cause Israel to sin.