{"id":62633,"date":"2019-09-09T09:12:56","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T06:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=62633"},"modified":"2023-04-04T09:36:45","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T06:36:45","slug":"ahab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/ahab\/","title":{"rendered":"Ahab"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The conclusion of our chapter relates the beginning of the reign of Ahab over the Northern Kingdom of Israel (I Kings 16:28-33). We are immediately told that he \u201cdid more to vex the Lord, the God of Israel, than all the kings of Israel who preceded him\u201d (verse 33).<\/span><\/p>\n

Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:2 includes Ahab among those three kings and four commoners who have no share in the world to come. According to the early medieval mystical Midrash Konen, Ahab is confined in the fifth rung of Hell along with 10,000 myriads of heathen, under the supervision of the Angel Oniel, who flogs all of them but Ahab, because his forefathers answered \u201cWe will do and we will obey\u201d at the Giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai (see Exodus 24:7).<\/span><\/p>\n

An extended discussion of King Ahab in Talmud Bavli Sanhedrin 102b begins with a midrashic etymology of his name in Hebrew, Ahav, which can be understood as made up of two words: \u201cAh\u201d-Woe! and \u201cAv\u201d \u2013 Father indicating that Ahab was a \u201cWoeful Father\u201d to idolatry. Ahab\u2019s sins of idol worship were even worse than those of Jeroboam. According to Yehudah Halevi in his Kuzari 4:14, the prophets of Ahab were the prophets of Baal and their worshippers were absolute idolaters, while the prophets of Jeroboam were the prophets of the God of Israel. The two golden calves that Jeroboam set up at Bethel and Dan were intended solely for the worship of God, while Ahab\u2019s altars were intended solely for the worship of Baal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Talmud, referring to Hosea 12:12 \u201ctheir altars were heaped on the furrows of the field\u201d, goes on to state that there was not a single furrow in Israel on which Ahab did not set up an idol and bow down to it. The Talmud then suggests that, though Ahab was so evil, he merited to reign for twenty-two years, because he honored\u00a0 the Torah by refusing to give it to Ben-Hadad (see I Kings 20:9) \u2013 and the Torah that was given in Hebrew which uses an alphabet of twenty-two letters. Because he supported Torah Scholars with his vast wealth, half his many sins were forgiven. Finally, the Talmud suggests that Ahab did not deserve a place in the world to come because he wrote on the doors of Samaria, his capital: \u201cAhab has denied the God of Israel\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Significantly, King Ahab of Israel is mentioned by name as “A-ha-ab-bu Sir-ila-a-a” in the Kurkh Monolith of the Assyrian King, Shalmaneser III (859\u2013824 BC), which includes a description of the Battle of Qarqar fought in 853 BCE.<\/span><\/p>\n

King Ahab lives on as the main protagonist in Herman Melville’s novel, Moby-Dick (1851). There Ahab is portrayed as the monomaniacal captain of the whaling ship Pequod. The novel is the story of Ahab\u2019s obsessive pursuit of the elusive white whale, Moby-Dick, who, for Ahab, is the very personification of cosmic Evil.<\/span><\/p>\n

Image: Shalmaneser III’s (859\u2013824 BCE) Kurkh Monolith (which names King Ahab), c. 853 BCE \/ wikimedia <\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":62634,"id":62634,"title":"1kings16-Karkar","filename":"1kings16-Karkar.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings16-Karkar.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/ahab\/1kings16-karkar\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"1kings16-karkar","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":62633,"date":"2019-09-09 06:12:31","modified":"2019-09-09 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