King Ahab found a vineyard he liked near his palace and tried to buy it for a vegetable garden. The owner refused to sell it though because it was part of his ancestral plot of land handed down from the origins of Israel. Jezebel had him killed so Ahab could have it anyway. Elijah gets dispatched to meet him as he goes to take possession of the vineyard and tells him some scary stuff about how he and Jezebel are both going to be eaten by dogs. What he says is so jarring that Ahab repents all his evil and pretty much just languishes around his palace sulking.
He must legitimately be sorry (or at least scared) though because God is moved by his repentance and agrees not to destroy his line until his son’s time. His son is no better than he’s been, so God kills them all.
This book ends with an odd little story about the king of Israel and Jehoshephat, the king of Judah, teaming up to take some important land back from Aram. The section headings all say this is talking about Ahab, but the text itself keeps referring to the king in the story only as “the king of Israel.” Either way, all of the king of Israel’s prophets keep telling him about what a great idea it is to attack Aram, but Jehoshephat insists on asking a true prophet of God. The only good one they have there is named Macaiah, but the king of Israel doesn’t like him because he only says bad things about him all the time.
When they bring him out, he tries to fall in line with the other prophets and fawn over how great this victory is going to be, but the kings see through his ruse and coax the truth out of him that he’s had visions of a total defeat and the death of the king of Israel. He gets thrown in prison and mistreated until the king returns safely, but of course the king does not return safely, he’s killed in battle and his blood licked up by dogs.
Maybe we’ll hear more about what happened to Macaiah in second Kings. For right now, I guess we just assume that he eventually died in a horrible Israelite prison :(
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