Ahab
Son of Omri and king of Israel at Samaria for twenty-two years. Kings condemns him for the worship of Baal and the murder of Naboth. An Assyrian stela names him among the kings who fought Shalmaneser III at Qarqar in 853 BC.
Ahab succeeded his father Omri and reigned twenty-two years in Samaria. He married Jezebel of Sidon and built a temple of Baal in his capital, for which Kings judges him worse than all the kings before him (1 Kings 16:29–33). The prophet Elijah opposed him through a long drought (1 Kings 17:1; 18:17–18); see Elijah on Mount Carmel. When Jezebel had Naboth killed so that Ahab could take his vineyard, Elijah announced the end of his house; Ahab humbled himself and the sentence was put off to his son’s time (1 Kings 21).
Kings also shows him as a soldier. He twice defeated Ben-hadad of Aram and then made a treaty with him (1 Kings 20:1–34), and he died of an arrow wound fighting Aram at Ramoth-gilead (1 Kings 22:29–37). The stela of Shalmaneser III from Kurkh lists “Ahab the Israelite” with 2,000 chariots and 10,000 soldiers among the allies who met the Assyrians at Qarqar in 853 BC (Kurkh Monolith ii 91–92), a battle Kings does not mention; see Ahab at the Battle of Qarqar. That inscription fixes the one firm date in his reign. The year of his death is reckoned from it and from the reigns of his two sons (1 Kings 22:51; 2 Kings 3:1).
In the timeline
- about 860 BC, traditional dateElijah on Mount Carmel
During a long drought the prophet Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal, whom King Ahab and Queen Jezebel support, to a contest on Mount Carmel. Kings tells of fire from heaven, the people’s return to the Lord, and Elijah’s flight to Horeb.
- 853 BC, firm dateAhab at the Battle of Qarqar
Shalmaneser III of Assyria meets a coalition of Syrian and Palestinian kings at Qarqar on the Orontes. His stela lists Ahab the Israelite among them. The Bible does not mention the battle, which gives the first fixed date in the history of Israel’s kings.