Ahab

{{other}}
'''Ahab''' (or '''Ach'av''' or {{Hebrew Name|אַחְאָב|Aḥʼav|ʼAḥăʼāḇ, ʼAḫʼāḇ|"Brother of the father"}}) was [[Kingdom of Israel|king of Israel]] and the son and successor of [[Omri]] (''[[Books of Kings|1 Kings]]'' 16:29-34). [[William F. Albright]] dated his reign to [[869 BC]]-[[850 BC]], while [[E. R. Thiele]] offered the dates [[874 BC]]-[[853 BC]].

==Biography==
He married [[Jezebel (biblical)|Jezebel]], the daughter of King [[Ithobaal I]] of [[Tyre (Lebanon)|Tyre]], and the alliance was doubtless the means of procuring him great riches, which brought pomp and luxury in their train. We read of his building an [[ivory]] palace (''1 Kings'' 22:39; ''[[Book of Amos|Amos]]'' 3:15), and founding new cities, the effect perhaps of a share in the flourishing commerce of [[Phoenicia]], which supplied the ivory for his palace.

The material prosperity of his reign, which is comparable with that of [[Solomon]] a century before, was overshadowed by the religious changes which his [[interreligious marriage]] introduced. Although he worshiped [[Tetragrammaton|YHWH]], as the names of his children prove (''1 Kings'' 22:5ff), his wife was firmly attached to the worship of the [[Melkart]] (the Tyrian [[Ba'al]]), and led by her he gave a great impulse to this cult by building a temple in honour of Baal in [[Samaria]]. This roused the indignation of the Jewish prophets and Priests whose aim it was to purify the worship of [[God]]. (See [[Elijah (prophet)|Elijah]])

During Ahab's reign, [[Moab]], which had been conquered by his father, remained tributary; [[kingdom of Judah|Judah]], with whose king, [[Jehoshaphat]], he was allied by marriage, was probably his vassal; only with [[Aram Damascus]] is he said to have had strained relations.

The one event mentioned by external sources is the [[Battle of Qarqar]] (perhaps at [[Apamea (Syria)|Apamea]]), where [[Shalmaneser III]] of [[Assyria]] fought a great confederation of princes from [[Cilicia]], Northern [[Syria]], Israel, [[Ammon]] and the tribes of the Syrian desert ([[853 BC]]). Here Ahab (''A-ha-ab-bu matSir-'i-la-a-a'' or "Ahab the Israelite") joined [[Baasha ben Ruhubi|Baasha]], son of [[Ruhub]] (Rehob) of Ammon and nine others in alliance with [[Hadadezer]] (''Bir-'idri''), Ahab's contribution being reckoned at 45,000 [[chariot]]s and 10,000 men. The numbers are comparatively large and possibly include forces from [[Tyre (Lebanon)|Tyre]], Judah, [[Edom]] and [[Moab]]. The Assyrian king claimed a victory, but his immediate return and subsequent expeditions in [[849 BC]] and [[846 BC]] against a similar but unspecified coalition seem to show that he met with no lasting success. According to the [[Tanakh]], however, Ahab with 7,000 troops had previously overthrown [[Ben-hadad]] and his thirty-two kings, who had come to lay siege to Samaria, and in the following year obtained a decisive victory over him at [[Aphek (biblical)|Aphek]], probably in the [[plain of Sharon]] at [[Antipatris]] (''1 Kings'' 20). A treaty was made whereby Ben-hadad restored the cities which his father had taken from Ahab's father (that is, Omri, but see 15:20, ''[[Books of Kings|2 Kings]]'' 13:25), and trading facilities between Damascus and Samaria were granted.

A late popular story (20:35-42, akin in tone to 12:33-13:34) condemned Ahab for his leniency and foretold the destruction of the king and his land. Three years later, war broke out on the east of the [[Jordan River]], and Ahab with Jehoshaphat of Judah went to recover [[Battle of Ramoth-Gilead|Ramoth-Gilead]] and was mortally wounded (ch. 22). He was succeeded by his sons ([[Ahaziah]] and [[Jehoram of Israel|Jehoram]]).

It is very difficult to obtain any clear idea of the order of these events (the [[Septuagint]] places ''1 Kings'' 21 immediately after 19). How the hostile kings of Israel and Syria came to fight a common enemy, and how to correlate the Assyrian and Biblical records, are questions which have perplexed all recent writers. The reality of the difficulties will be apparent from the fact that it has been suggested that the Assyrian scribe wrote "Ahab" for his son "Jehoram", and that the very identification of the name with Ahab of Israel has been questioned.

==Legacy==
Whilst the above passages from ''1 Kings'' view Ahab not unfavourably, there are others which are less friendly. The murder of [[Naboth]] (see [[Jezebel (biblical)|Jezebel]]), an act of royal encroachment, stirred up popular resentment just as the new cult aroused the opposition of certain of the prophets. Indeed, he is referred to, for this and other things as being "more evil than all the kings before him".The latter found their champion in Elijah, whose history reflects the prophetic teaching of more than one age. His denunciation of the royal dynasty, and his emphatic insistence on the worship of Yahweh and Him alone, form the keynote to a period which culminated in the accession of [[Jehu]], an event in which Elijah's chosen disciple [[Elisha]] was the leading figure.

The allusions to the statutes and works of Omri and Ahab in ''[[Book of Micah|Micah]]'' 6:16 may point to legislative measures of these kings, and the reference to the incidents at the building of [[Jericho]] (''1 Kings'' 16:34) may be taken to show that foundation sacrifices, familiar in nearly all parts of the world, were not unknown in Israel at this period, which have in fact been confirmed by excavation in [[Palestine]].

One controversial theory, put forward first in 1952 by [[Immanuel Velikovsky]] (''Ages in Chaos''), was that Ahab was a contemporary of [[Akhenaten]], and appears in the famous [[Amarna Letters]] as Rib Addi, the king of Gubla. This identification has now generally been rejected, though a similar theory, proposed recently by Emmet Sweeney, is that Ahab was a contemporary of Akhenaten's successor [[Tutankhamun]]. Sweeney sees [[Baasha (Bible)|Baasha]], the predecessor of Ahab, as the Israelite contemporary of Akhenaten. According to Sweeney, Baasha appears in the Amarna Letters under the name of [[Labayu]]. (See Sweeney, ''Empire of Thebes'', New York, 2006)

{{start}}
{{s-hou|[[Omri|House of Omri]]|||name=Ahab of Israel}}
{{s-bef|before=[[Omri]]}}
{{s-ttl|title=[[Kingdom of Israel|King of Israel]]|years=[[William F. Albright|Albright]]: 869 BC – 850 BC [[Edwin R. Thiele|Thiele]]: 874 BC – 853 BC [[Gershon Galil|Galil]]: 873 BC – 852 BC}}
{{s-aft|after=[[Ahaziah of Israel|Ahaziah]]}}
{{end}}

==External links==
*[http://www.tanakhpersonalities.org/showentries.php?code=01080102 Achav in the Biblical Encyclopedia Tanakh Profiles] {{languageicon|Hebrew/English}} See also [http://www.tanakhpersonalities.org/showappendix.php?num=8 translations of names.]

[[Category:Kings of ancient Israel]]
[[Category:853 BC deaths]]
[[Category:850 BC deaths]]

[[ar:أحاب]]
[[ca:Acab]]
[[cs:Achab]]
[[de:Ahab (König)]]
[[el:Αχαάβ]]
[[es:Ajab]]
[[eo:Ahabo]]
[[fr:Achab (roi)]]
[[it:Acab]]
[[he:אחאב]]
[[nl:Achab]]
[[ja:アハブ]]
[[no:Akab]]
[[pl:Achab (król Izraela)]]
[[pt:Acab]]
[[ru:Ахав]]
[[sv:Ahab (kung)]]
[[tr:Ahab]]
[[yi:אחאב]]
[[zh:亞哈]]