Payday Someday # 2

Payday Someday # 2

I introduce you to Elijah, the Tishbite, prophet of God at a time when by tens of thousands of thousands the people had forsaken God's covenants, thrown down God's altars, slain God's prophets with the sword (1 Kings 19:10). The prophet knowing much of the glorious past of the now apostate nation, must have been filled with horror when he learned of the rank heathenism, fierce cruelties and reeking licenticusness of Ahab's idolatrous capital. Holy anger burned within him like an unquenchable Vesuvius. He wore the roughest kind of cloths, but he had underneath these cloths a righteous and courageous heart. He ate bird's food and widow's fare, but he was a great physical and spiritual athlete. He was God's tall cedar that wrestled with the paganistic cyciones of his day without bending or breaking. He was God's granite wall that stood up and out against the rising tides of the apostasy of his day. Though much alone, he was sometimes attended by the invisible hosts of God. He grieved only when God's cause seemed tottering. He passed from earth without dying - into celestial glory. Every where courage is admired and manhood honored and service appreciated, he is honored as one of earth's greatest heroes and one of heaven's greatest saints. He was a seer who saw clearly. He was a great heart who felt deeply. He was a hero who dared valiantly.

And now with the introduction of these four characters - Naboth, the devout Jezreelite - Ahab, the vile human toad who squatted befoulingly on the throne of the nation - Jezebel, the beautiful adder beside the toad - and Elijah, the prophet of the living God. I bring you the tragedy of "Payday Someday."

The Real Estate Request

"Give me thy vineyard."

And it came to pass after these things, that Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard, which was in Jezreel, hard by the palace of Ahab king of Sarmaria. And Ahab spake unto Naboth, saying, Give me thy vineyard, that I may have it for a garden of herbs, because it is near unto my house, and I will give thee for it a better vineyard than it, or, if it seems good to thee, I will give the worth of it in money (1 Kings 21:1, 2).

Thus far Ahab was quite within his rights. No intention of cheating Naboth out of his vineyard or of killing him to get it. Honestly did he offer to give him its worth in money. Honestly did he offer him a better vineyard for it. Perfectly fair and square was Ahab in this request and, under circumstances, ordinary, one would have expected Naboth to put away any mere sentimental attachment which he had for his ancestral inheritance in order that he might please the king of his nation -especially when the king's aim was not to defraud or rob him. Ahab had not, however, counted upon the reluctance of all Jews to part with their inheritance of land. By peculiar tenure every Israelite held his land, and to all land-holding transactions there was another party, even God, "who made the heavens and the earth." Throughout Judah and Israel, Jehovah was the read owner of the soil; and every tribe received its territory and every family its inheritance by lot from Him, with the added condition that the land should not be sold forever.

"The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me...So shall not the inheritance of the children of Israel remove from tribe to tribe; for every one of the children of Israel shall keep himself to the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers...but every one of the tribes of the children of Israel shall keep himself to his own inheritance (Lev. 25:23; Num. 36:7, 9).

Thus we see that the permanent sale of the paternal inheritance was forbidden by law. Ahab forgot - if he had ever really known it - that for Naboth to sell for money or to swap for a better vineyard his little vineyard would seem to that good man like a denial of his allegiance to the true religion when jubilee restoration was neglected in such idolatrous times.

So, though he was Ahab's nearest neighbor, Naboth, with religious scruples blended with the pride of ancestry, stood firmly on his rights - and, with an expression of horror on his face with tones of terror in his words, refused to sell or swap his vineyard to the king. Feeling that he must prefer the duty he owed to God to any danger that might arise from man, he made firm refusal. With much fear or God and little fear of man, he said: "The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee" (1 Kings 21:3).

True to the religious teachings of his father with loyalty to the covenant God of Israel, he believed that he held the land in fee simple from God. His father and grandfather and doubtless grandfather's father, had owned the land before him. All the memories of childhood were tangled in its grapevines. His father's hands, folded now in the dust of death, had used the pruning blade among the branches, and because of this every branch and vine was dear. The ties of sentiment, of religion and of family pride bound and endeared him to the place. So his refusal to sell was quick, firm, final and courteous. Then, too, doubtless working or resting or strolling as he often did in his vineyard hard by the king's castle, Naboth had glimpses of strange and alien sights in the palace. He had seen with his own eyes what orgies idolatry led to when the queen was at home in her palace in Jezreel; and Naboth, deeply pious, felt smirched and hurt at the very request. He felt that his little plot of ground, so rich in prayer and fellowship, so sanctified with sweet and holy memories, would be tainted and befouled and cursed forever if it came into the hands of Jezebel. So with "the courage of a bird that dares the wild sea," he took his stand against the king's proposal.

And that brings us to the second scene in this tragedy. It is:

The Pouting Potentate

~R. G. Lee~

(continued with # 3)