Religion & Spirituality
Every king of Israel was ranked and measured against one criteria: their faithfulness to God. All that mattered was whether they lived to lead others to God, and to please God, not their military success, riches, geographical expansion, or political influence. Every bad king fell away from the correct worship of Yahweh and to idolatry, which was the sin of Jeroboam, Israel’s first evil king. Ahab was worse than any king before him, even worse than his wicked father. What made Ahab particularly wicked is that alongside his idolatry, Ahab married a foreign wife (Jezebel) and took the gods of her people. One of these gods was Baal, a storm god which would have been particularly important considering Israel’s environment. Ahab’s sin was that of compromise. He chose to pray to God but also Baal, and to follow the violent, destructive, path of his wife: Jezebel.God cares about our relationship with him, and the way we treat others, particularly the poor and powerless. There is to be no co...