NABOTH
819
NACHMANIDES
plies that his objection was mingled with a religious scruple at forwariUng the acquisitions of a half-heathen king : ' Jehovah forbid it to me that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee.' Ahab was cowed by this reply; but the proud spirit of his wife, Jezebel, was roused. She and her husband were apparently in the city of Samaria (1 Kings xxi, 18). She took the matter into her own hands, and sent a warrant in Ahab's name, sealed with Ahab's seal, to the elders and no- bles of Jezreel, suggesting the mode of destroying the man who had insulted the royal power. A solemn fast was proclaimed, as on the announcement of some great calamity. Naboth was 'set on high' in the public place of Samaria (the Heb. word which is rendered, here only, 'on high,' is more accurately 'at the head of,' or 'in the chiefest place among' [1 Sam. ix, 22J. The passage is obscured by our ignorance of the nature of the ceremonial in which Naboth was made to take part ; but, in default of this knowledge, we may accept the explanation of Josephus, that an assembly [tKKXt]- (Tt«] was convened, at the head of which Naboth, in virtue of his position, was placed, in order that the charge of blasphemy and the subsequent catastrophe might be more telling) ; two men of worthless charac- ter accused hira of having 'cursed God and the king.' He and his children (2 Kings ix, 26), who else might have succeeded to his father's inheritance, were drag- ged out of the city and despatched the same night. The place of execution there, as at Hebron (2 Sam. iii), was by the large tank, or reservoir, which still remains on the slope of the hill of Samaria, immediatelj' outside the walls. The usual punishment for blasphemy was enforced (Lev. xxiv, 16; Numb, xv, 30). Naboth and his sons were stoned ; their mangled remains were de- voured by the dogs (and swine, Sept.) that prowled under the walls; and the blood from their wounds ran down into the waters of the tank below, which was the common bathing-place of the prostitutes of the city (comp. 1 Kings xxi, 19; xxii, 38, Sept.). Josephus (Ant. viii, 15, 6) makes the execution to have been at Jezreel, where he also places the washing of Ahab's chariot" (Smith). This narrative is remarkable as the only mention in the Scriptures of a woman as able to write, and some have inferred, but needlessly, that the letters mentioned in 1 Kings xxi, 8 must have been written by an amanuensis. The state of female educa- tion in the East has probably always, as now, been such that not one woman in ten thousand could write at all. Coquerel (in the BiograpMe Sacree) thinks that the reason why the children of Naboth perished with him — being perhaps put to death by the creatures of Jeze- bel— was that othenvise the crime would have been useless, as the children would still have been entitled to the father's heritage. But we know not tliat Naboth had any sons ; and if he had sons, and they had been taken off, the estate might still have had an heir. It is not unlikely that a custom like that of escheat in modern times obtained in Israel, giving to the crown the property of persons put to death for treason or blas- phemy. On Naboth's death, accordingly, Ahab obtain- ed possession of his inheritance. The perpetration of this crime brought upon Ahab and Jezebel the severest maledictions, which shortly after were carried into ef- fect. The only tribunal to which he remained account- able pronounced his doom through a prophet. "This was the final step in Ahab's course of wickedness, and as he was in the act of taking possession, Elijah met him and announced the awful doom which awaited him and his queen and children. A kind of repentance on the part of the king led to another announcement of a certain modification of the retribution, which was not to come during Ahab's lifetime. But in that very plot of ground, and apparently quite close to the city, his son, king Jehoram, was met by Jehu, who mortally wounded him with an arrow. The king sank dead in his chariot, and Jehu bade his attendant captain take up the body and cast it into the portion of the tield of
Naboth. As he was doing so he was reminded by Jehu that thej' both had been riding behind Ahab at the time when the Lord laid this burden upon him, ' Surely I have seen yesterday (C^X, yestei-nicjht^ the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons, saith the Lord ; and
1 will requite thee in this plat, saith the Lord' (2 Kings ix, 21-26). This passage seems to imply two circum- stances which are not mentioned in the earlier history : that Naboth's sons were put to death as well as himself, and that Ahab took possession the very day after the judicial murder" (Fairbairn). The English version renders the words thus : " In the place where dogs lick- ed the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine" (1 Kings xxi, 19). But the fulfilment is record- ed as taking place in the pool of Samaria (xxii, 38), " And they washed out the chariot in the pool of Sa- maria, and the dogs licked up his blood." Kimchi ex- plains this by saying that the water of this pool ran to Jezreel ; but Schwarz {Palest, p. 165) identifies Jezreel with Serain, sixteen miles from Sebaste, where the pool stood, and on a higher level. Accordingly, he insists that the rendering "on the spot" is wrong, and that mpMS should be rendered "in place of," i.e. "in pun- ishment for" (comp. Hosea ii, 1). See Kitto, Daily Bible Illusir. ad loc. See Ahab ; Elijah ; Jezebel ; Jezreel.