{"id":62947,"date":"2019-09-16T13:44:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T10:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=62947"},"modified":"2023-04-10T17:29:57","modified_gmt":"2023-04-10T14:29:57","slug":"did-the-king-have-eminent-domain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/did-the-king-have-eminent-domain\/","title":{"rendered":"Did The King Have Eminent Domain?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[927,835,414,503],"acf":{"old_id":"62947","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":36277,"related_cahpter":"308","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Some rabbis thought so; the Bible clearly does not...","content":"

Ahab and Jezebel\u2019s judicial murder of Naboth in order to seize his vineyard is arguably the most heinous act of tyranny in the books of Kings. Because Naboth wouldn\u2019t sell him his ancestral vineyard that Ahab coveted, the king and queen had Naboth framed on false charges and stoned to death.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet there is a strong strand of Jewish thought and law about the monarchy suggesting that Ahab had a right to Naboth\u2019s field. Back when the people came to Samuel demanding that he appoint a king, the prophet gave a long description of the rapacious ways of kings including this: \u201che will seize your choice fields vineyards and olive groves and give them to his courtiers\u201d (I Samuel 8:14).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wasn\u2019t Ahab just behaving exactly in the way that Samuel had predicted?<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a fundamental dispute in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 20a) about how to understand Samuel\u2019s speech. The talmudic sage Shmuel opined that the king is actually allowed to do all that the prophet Samuel details. This includes the exercising of the right of eminent domain over people\u2019s land. Rav disagreed, arguing that the Samuel (who was clearly not a fan of monarchy) was not giving normative assent to the king\u2019s exploiting these sweeping prerogatives, but rather was warning the people: \u201cthis is how kings act: are you really sure you want one?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It is fascinating then, that in our chapter, as Rav Elchanan Samet shows, nobody thinks that Ahab has a right to take Naboth\u2019s vineyard. The text therefore helps us understand how the relationship between land, people and king were actually understood. First, note that when Ahab importunes Naboth to sell his vineyard, the latter replies, \u201cThe Lord forbid that I should give up what I inherited from my fathers!\u201d (v.3) Naboth\u2019s outrage at the idea suggests a self-evident presumption that people should retain their ancestral land and that this trumped any claim of the king\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

Next, it was evident to the actors in the story that Ahab could not simply kick Naboth off his land by force but could only get what he wanted by subterfuge. The seizure needs a veneer of legal process, without which it would have been seen as blatant tyranny. The elders and nobles who are complicit in the plot do too. No one questions why it is necessary to go to these lengths of deception to take Naboth\u2019s property. Even Jezebel a daughter of the Phoenician king who was apparently not subject to such niceties of due process realizes that in Israel, the king cannot simply take what he wants by force.<\/span><\/p>\n

This broad, shared understanding of the limits to kings\u2019 legitimate power shows how remarkably deep-rooted was the biblical conception of each family\u2019s inalienable attachment to their own land, reinforced, for example by the laws of shmita and the Jubilee. In smashing this consensus, Ahab and Jezebel\u2019s tyranny was all the more egregious.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":62948,"id":62948,"title":"1kings21-Eminent-Domain","filename":"1kings21-Eminent-Domain.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings21-Eminent-Domain.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/did-the-king-have-eminent-domain\/1kings21-eminent-domain\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"1kings21-eminent-domain","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":62947,"date":"2019-09-16 10:43:49","modified":"2019-09-16 10:43:57","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":724,"height":437,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings21-Eminent-Domain-150x150.jpg","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings21-Eminent-Domain-300x181.jpg","medium-width":300,"medium-height":181,"medium_large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings21-Eminent-Domain.jpg","medium_large-width":724,"medium_large-height":437,"large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings21-Eminent-Domain.jpg","large-width":724,"large-height":437,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings21-Eminent-Domain.jpg","1536x1536-width":724,"1536x1536-height":437,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings21-Eminent-Domain.jpg","2048x2048-width":724,"2048x2048-height":437,"post_full_size":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings21-Eminent-Domain.jpg","post_full_size-width":724,"post_full_size-height":437,"home_baner":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings21-Eminent-Domain-696x420.jpg","home_baner-width":696,"home_baner-height":420}},"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"Did The King Have Eminent Domain?","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"Some rabbis thought so; 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