What Naboth Teaches Us Today Part I
The story of Naboth’s vineyard is a towering, uncompromising witness to the pertinence of YHWH to socioeconomic matters. The narrative is so towering and so uncompromising that we may take it as a paradigmatic tale that functions as a lens for the interpretation of many other texts (I find this paradigmatic witness so important that it is my intention to write, after this one, three additional expositions of this text).
The story is located amid the cluster of narratives that feature Elijah and Elisha, two outsized characters who take up a lot of space in Israel’s imagination. These stories are set in the midst of the Omri dynasty, a regime in Northern Israel that exercised significant power in international politics at the time (876-842 BCE). It is striking that this cluster of narratives concerning these two figures occupies nearly one-third of the entire books of I and II Kings. They lie outside the domain of the royal regime and reflect a different social location, a different epistemology, and a different socioeconomic passion.
They articulate a social reality and a social possibility that lie beyond the control or even understanding of the royal regime.
The plot of the story is quite clear and simple. It concerns Naboth who owned and cared for a vineyard in the area of Samaria, the capitol city of Northern Israel (we may refer to Isaiah 5:2 for evidence for how a vineyard was attentively cared for). Naboth was a smalltime property owner who belonged to his land as much as his land belonged to him. He identifies his vineyard as “my ancestral inheritance.” The phrase suggests that Naboth’s economic horizon was that of tribal Israel, a system of property that antedated the monarchy (the same notion of ancestral inheritance is operative in the narrative of Jeremiah 32).
Naboth’s socioeconomic purview is quite local. He would likely have maintained distance from the royal economy and would have resented any intrusion of that economy into his steady, stable agricultural practice that was modest but adequate for him. Naboth speaks only once in this narrative. When he speaks, it is in order to refuse the proposal of King Ahab to trade another property for his vineyard because his vineyard is convenient for the king. His response is terse and to the point (v. 4).
The counter-character to Naboth in this narrative is King Ahab who is the son of Omri, the second ruler of the dynasty. Because of the capacity of the dynasty to participate in international politics and economics, it is not a surprise that Ahab thinks of property according to the rules of trade. He regards any property, including Naboth’s vineyard, as a tradable commodity available for buying and selling. He does not intend to cheat or muscle Naboth, but offers Naboth good value in a trade. It is clear, however, that he has no interest in or appreciation for the ancient tribal assumptions about the land, because such assumptions mean that property cannot be bought and sold; it can only be treasured and cared for.
Thus, the issue is joined between Naboth and Ahab, between peasant farmer and king.
But the issue is also joined between two very different notions of property. For Naboth, his property is an “inheritance;” for Ahab, the same property is a “possession” without familial, historical, or sentimental linkage. From his stance, Naboth has no option but to refuse the offer of the king. He does not hesitate or blink in his refusal to the king. For him the matter is unambiguous, even if the king cannot fathom such refusal. As the story goes, Ahab is powerless before this peasant refusal and can only fall into depression.
But then Jezebel, his queen, enters the narrative. We know that Jezebel, a foreign wife (on which see I Kings 11:2), has no commitment to Yahwism and no understanding of covenantal understandings of familial property. We know, moreover, that Jezebel was host to a number of prophets committed to religious traditions other than Yahwism (see 18:19). In our narrative, Jezebel takes the initiative on behalf of her depressed husband-king, Ahab. The king understands himself to be foiled by Naboth and so is helpless; the queen, however, recognizes no legitimacy in Naboth’s claim and has no such compunction. She promptly organizes a conspiracy to frame Naboth on false charges and so to have him stoned as one who “cursed God and the king” (v. 13). When Naboth is murdered by a mob incited by the queen, his property falls to the crown. With the report of Naboth’s death, Jezebel tersely dispatches Ahab to seize the property as his own:
Go, take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused to give you for money; for Naboth is not alive, but dead. (v. 15)
Ahab took “possession” of the vineyard. He “possessed” an “inheritance.” So now the king’s confiscation, made possible by his ruthless queen, gives him the land of ancient tribal inheritance that he has taken in ignoble ways.
It is clear that the narrative offers us two notions of property, two systems of economics, one that has covenantal rootage that depends upon fidelity, and the other that is purely commercial without any linkage to the fabric of society.
It is clear here, as everywhere, that the covenantal practice of property is extremely vulnerable to the force of commercial interest and has few ways to effectively resist it. This clash between systems is crucial to the perspective of biblical faith. This pervasive clash between systems serves to make the Bible immediately and relentlessly contemporary, for this clash of covenantal and commercial is everywhere evident among us. Indeed, one can see that much of Israel’s Torah is designed for resistance to the commoditization of the land. This is unmistakable not least in the tenth commandment of Sinai:
Neither shall you covet your neighbor’s wife. Neither shall you covet your neighbor’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. (Deuteronomy 5:21)
The coveting of a neighbor’s field is everywhere at work in ancient and contemporary society and constitutes a key accent of prophetic critique:
Alas for those who devise wickedness
and evil deeds on their beds!
When the morning dawns, they perform it,
because it is in their power.
They covet fields and seize them;
houses, and take them away;
they oppress householder and house,
people and their inheritance. (Micah 2:1-2)
Ah, you who join house to house,
who add field to field,
until there is room for none but you,
and you are left to live alone
in the midst of the land. (Isaiah 5:8)
The plot of our story is simple. It is, however, made more thick and complex in verse 17 with the arrival of Elijah in the story. Ahab addresses Elijah as “my enemy” (v. 20). In response, Elijah declares a severe condemnation of Ahab and Jezebel for their seizure of Naboth’s life and inheritance:
“I will bring disaster on you; I will consume you, and cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel; and I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam son of Nebat and like the house of Baasha son of Ahijah, because you have provoked me to anger and have caused Israel to sin. Also concerning Jezebel, the Lord said, “The dogs shall eat Jezebel within the bounds of Jezreel.” Anyone belonging to Ahab who dies in the city the dogs shall eat; and anyone of his who dies in the country the birds of the air shall eat.” (I Kings 21:21-24)
The fact that Elijah mitigates the harsh judgment against Ahab in verse 29 does not detract from the reality of the divine sanction.
Elijah’s dramatic appearance in the story serves to show that the issue between Naboth and Ahab is not mere economics. It is also a theological dispute, as such economic issues always are. Thus, we do well to see the connection between this narrative and the dramatic contest of the gods in chapter 18 where Elijah, on behalf of YHWH, triumphs over Baal and the prophets of Baal. When the land narrative of chapter 21 and god narrative of chapter 18 are brought together, we can see a god-land linkage that makes the matter so urgent. Thus, YHWH is shown to be the sponsor and advocate of land as inheritance, and Baal is seen to be the sponsor and advocate for land as possession:
And “Baal” is lord” in the sense of owner—the owner of the light and power of nature in and under and over the earth, and especially of the light and power or the nature of man himself…Man outside the covenant and Word of God is necessarily man fallen and pledged and committed to some such Baal (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV 1, 455).
It is inescapable in the horizon of this narrative that land rights and land responsibilities are deeply linked to a God-relatedness. Thus, the “contest at Carmel” between the gods is reiterated in our narrative as the contest between peasant and king, between inheritance and possession. It is no wonder that Elijah is seen to be “my enemy,” of the king (21:20) and elsewhere “troubler of Israel” (18:17), because Elijah represents covenantal interests rooted in YHWH that refuse the commoditization of life and property that are rooted in Baalism and practiced by the royal house. Baal is the god of commoditization in which everyone and everything can be bought and sold, used, traded and disposed of, without worth or value beyond its usefulness. While Ahab is given something of a reprieve in 21:29, the harsh judgment against the instigating queen, Jezebel (21:23-24), is not modified and is brought to fruition in due course:
But when they went to bury her, they found no more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands. When they came back and told him, he said, “This is the word of the Lord, which he spoke by his servant Elijah the Tishbite, ‘In the territory of Jezreel the dogs shall eat the flesh of Jezebel; the corpse of Jezebel shall be like dung on the field in the territory of Jezreel, so that no can say, This is Jezebel.’” (II Kings 9:35-37)
The narrative would have us recognize that in the long run the land the enterprise of commoditization sponsored by Baal and implemented by Ahab and Jezebel cannot prevail. In the end, it is asserted that the covenantal reality willed by YHWH, enacted by Naboth, and voiced by Elijah will prevail because it is the will of the Lord of the covenant.
The narrative is uncompromising in its conviction, even if our lived experience makes it often less clear and convincing than that. That conviction shows up with clarity in the most elemental contest of the gospel:
There is a remarkable affinity between Baal, the lord and owner, the god all natural theology who helped Ahab, as it were, in his sleep—but responsibly as an unjust judge and murderer and a thief—to possess the vineyard of Naboth, and what the New Testament calls “mammon, the “Mammon of unrighteousness ...” “No man can serve two masters ... You cannot serve God and mammon ...” Ahab tried to do this, and his act of aggression against Naboth was the proof that he could not do so. Neither can any of us. (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV 1, 458)
The either /or of Baal or YHWH (I Kings 18:21) shows up on the lips of Jesus:
No one can serve two masters...You cannot serve God and wealth. (Matthew 6:24; see Luke 16:13)
Much as we might wish otherwise, on this elemental question it cannot be both/and; it is relentlessly either/or.
Walter Brueggemann
Walter Brueggemann
Walter Brueggemann is surely one of the most influential Bible interpreters of our time. He is the author of over one hundred books and numerous scholarly articles. He continues to be a highly sought-after speaker.
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