Ahab’s Last Battle (22:1–40)

Ramoth Gilead (22:3). This passage takes on added importance when understood within its historical and regional context. Ramoth Gilead (Tell Ramith, thirty-six miles north of Amman, Jordan) was occupied by Israelites when they arrived in Transjordan. It was an all-important city on the Transjordanian highway that connected Arabia and Aram. From this site a convenient ridge descended to the Jordan Valley and over to Jezreel and Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley. The Aramean conquest of the city represents yet another volley in their trade war with Israel and shows that the treaty of Aphek did not last very long at all.398

Ruins of Ramoth Gilead

Todd Bolen/www.BiblePlaces.com

First seek the counsel of the LORD (22:5). Texts as early as the early third millennium B.C. record royal consultation with professional seers before battle. Many of the prophetic terms and procedures described in the Mari archive have close parallels in the Bible.399 This archive includes many prophetic warnings or approvals of the king’s military and political plans. A ninth-century B.C. inscription of King Zakkur of Hamath describes the assurances he received from Baal Shamayim, his patron deity, during a siege. His seers and diviners said, “Don’t be afraid! Since I have made you king I will stand beside you!”400 The rhetoric and vocabulary of these prophets is similar to prophetic utterances in the biblical books of Kings and Chronicles. Ahab and Jehoshaphat were no doubt hoping for such assurance.401

Zakkur Stele

Rama/Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of the Louvre

Sitting on their thrones at the threshing floor by the entrance of the gate of Samaria (22:10). The entrance to the city offered more space than the palace courtyard and was in any event associated with legal and religious proclamation. An almost identical scene is described in the Ugaritic Legend of Aqhat. King Danʾel is “upright, sitting before the gate … on the threshing floor, judging the cause of the widow.”402 As in the biblical text the prophets invoked the subsequent action or prepared the king for it whether it was to be negative or positive.

Ruler’s podium in the gate at Dan

Kim Walton

Discoveries at the gate of Tel Dan in northern Israel are also of value in understanding this passage. The open space at the entrance to the city is covered with flagstones with standing stones in one corner, indicating religious activity near the gate. In the passageway between the outer and inner gateway is a stone platform with decorated stone bases at its four corners. This appears to have been a canopied structure under which the king sat, or perhaps the image of a god.403 The Balawat gates in the palace of the ninth-century Assyrian king Shalmaneser III depict a similar canopy in a royal throne scene. Examples of “royal robes” are also depicted on the top tier of the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser and on an ivory plaque from Megiddo (see 10:18–21).404 This entire scene, therefore, reflects a common ancient Near Eastern pattern of public, prophetic consultation before battle.

Standing stones in the gateway at Dan

Kim Walton

Zedekiah son of Kenaanah had made iron horns (22:11). This symbolic action evokes images of power and domination. Bulls and their horns are used as metaphors for the king’s power in Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts and iconography.405 The same image shows the power of the gods.406 In the Ugaritic myths the patron deity El is described as a strong bull calf, “the bull, the gracious one,” and in one Mesopotamian text the goddess Ninlil gores her enemies “with her strong horns.”407

Attack Ramoth Gilead … for the LORD will give it into the king’s hand (22:12). The unanimous answer of the prophets did not match the dire situation that Ahab and Jehoshaphat faced. The prophets of Mari likewise inclined to offer their king Zimri Lim an overly positive assessment of the situation.408 Ahab’s admonition to Micaiah (22:16) indicates that he, like Zimri Lim a millennium before, had his doubts about prophetic consensus. Assurance of well-being was a standard greeting in ancient correspondence to kings and noblemen, as in this word to an overlord: “May the gods guard you, may they keep you well.”409

I saw all Israel scattered on the hills like sheep without a shepherd (22:17). The concept of shepherd-king is as ubiquitous in the ancient Near Eastern world as it is in the Bible.410 The monarchs of Assyria, for example, were described as unrivalled princes who shepherded their people.411 A well-known Babylonian proverb further exemplifies the nexus between king and shepherd: “A people without a king (is like) a sheep without a shepherd.”412

All the host of heaven standing around him (22:19). These images fit comfortably within the religious traditions of the Egypt, Syrian, and Mesopotamia, where the gods are seen as sitting in their heavenly council before the throne of El.413 From the Sumerian creation myth of Enuma Elish to the divine assembly recorded in the Ugaritic Legend of Keret and the enthronement rituals of Emar, the dazzling images of the heavenly throne are remarkably similar to one another and to the biblical accounts (cf. 6:23–28; 10:18–21).414

Spirit came forward (22:21). There are ancient precedents for deities and spirits offering guidance to the king in this manner. In the Legend of Keret it is the patriarch of the gods, El himself, who blesses the human and sends a message to him.415

Slapped Micaiah in the face (22:24). The inappropriateness of this action is attested in the Code of Hammurabi itself. Although it dates to the prior millennium and is a product of Babylonian culture, this law code has much in common with the biblical law codes. Hammurabi’s codes list a series of fines for striking a commoner or one above or below one’s own social status. The penalty for striking a fellow commoner was ten shekels of silver and the cost of a medical treatment.416

Put this fellow in prison (22:27). In the Mari letters prisoners describe the king’s practice of confining them for some time before deciding their fate, and this may be the case in this verse as well.417 Identical harsh treatment and meager rations are afforded a prisoner in a fourth-century liturgical text from Egypt written in Aramaic: “Let them be brought down from the dining hall to the dungeon and allotted bread and water.”418

Between the sections of his armor (22:34). An identical scene replete with detailed relief of pierced armor is recorded on panel of Thutmose III’s chariot dating to the sixteenth century B.C.419 Interconnected scales of armor have been excavated at various Late Bronze and Iron Age sites.420 These can be reconstructed into sleeveless vests of interconnected plates.

Scale armor

Mark Borisuk/www.BiblePlaces.com

Inlaid with ivory (22:39). Ivory was a prized symbol of wealth. It was typically used for the manufacture of combs, cosmetic boxes, small tools, and handles, as well as inlay in furniture. Excavators at Samaria found hundreds of ivory pieces in a large burnt building that may be the palace described here.421 The intricate images of architecture, lions and bulls, cherubs, lotus flowers, mythical scenes, and women were common in the Levant, Cyprus, and particularly in Phoenicia.422 These finds are a concrete manifestation of the syncretistic and excessive practices of Ahab described in 1 Kings. A house with ivory paneled walls would have represented opulence and indulgence taken to unprecedented levels. Further evidence of great wealth among the kingdom’s aristocracy was uncovered at Shechem. There a large house with wealthy contents is a good parallel to Ahab’s ivory house.423

Cities he fortified (22:39). Ahab’s fortified cities included Hazor, Megiddo, Jezreel, Tirzah, Samaria, and many others that have been excavated in recent years. They exhibit a common architectural pattern of wealthy houses, solid walls, and four-chambered gates.424 One of the best-preserved administrative buildings can be seen at Dothan. It functioned as a regional center for taxation and distribution and contained hundreds of storage vessels of equal measure. The building was destroyed by Hazael at the end of the ninth century B.C.425

Woman from Megiddo made of carved ivory.

Kim Walton, courtesy of the Oriental Institute Museum

Ahab rested with his fathers (1 Kings 22:40). See comment on 11:43.