Omri did not secure the throne of Israel without a long struggle. Comparison of verses 15 and 23 of 1 Kings 16 suggests that the civil war raged four years. Seeing that half the nation preferred Tibni to Omri this is not surprising; but the condition of the country while these unprincipled men were contending must have been pitiful. Only a few years before, probably within the memory of living persons, the twelve tribes of Israel were a united people. They stood high amongst the nations by the goodness of God and their sovereign was receiving the homage of all the kings round about. The country was wealthy and peaceful. Gold was so plentiful that silver was thought nothing of in the days of Solomon (2 Chron. 9:20). Now—they were divided into two mutually antagonistic nations, and two ruthless military leaders were contending for the mastery in the Northern State. Also vast amounts of Solomon’s accumulated treasure had been seized and carried away from Jerusalem into Egypt. “How are the mighty fallen!” (2 Sam. 1:27). Truly the consequences of turning away from God and His Word are disastrous! Let us take heed!
Omri was apparently an able man as the world speaks, for he brought order out of chaos, and after twelve years rein he left the throne of the ten tribes unchallenged to his son. He seems to have overhauled the laws of the nation. In Micah 6:16, long after Omri’s death, Jehovah complained that “the statutes of Omri” were preferred to His holy ordinances. “The statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab, and ye walk in their counsels; that I should make thee a desolation, and the inhabitants thereof a hissing: therefore ye shall bear the reproach of My people.” It is no uncommon thing for the professing people of God to prefer human rules and regulations to the plain teaching of his blessed Word. The Lord Jesus told the religious leaders of His own time: “Full well ye reject the commandment of God that ye may keep your own tradition... making the word of God of none effect through your tradition which ye have delivered” (Mark 7:9-13). Since the Lord spake thus, the Scriptures have been completed; the whole revelation of God is in our hands; yet the great majority of souls in Christendom are far more subject to ecclesiastical regulations and human dictation than to the wholesome Word of God!
In the middle of his reign Omri decided to transfer his capital from Tirzah to a preferable site which had attracted his attention. Being a man of military genius, he desired for his seat of government a place of greater strategic value than Tirzah had proved to be when Zimri endeavored to hold it. It could not sustain even a week’s siege! (1 Kings 16:18). So “he bought the hill Samaria of Shemer for two talents of silver, and built on the hill, and called the name of the city which he built, after the name of Shemer, owner of the hill, Samaria” (1 Kings 16:24). Such a memorial of his reign would suit the vanity of Omri, besides making for greater security in time of war. Although firm rule, and a new up-to-date Metropolis may be considered desirable things in men’s eyes, it is the moral and spiritual condition that counts with God; and Ormi became a more wicked ruler than even his bad predecessors. “Omri wrought evil in the eyes of Jehovah, and did worse than all that were before him.” He continued the worship of Jeroboam’s golden calves and added fresh devilries of his own devising. When he died he was buried in the new city which he had created on the hill of Shemer. But “there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust” (Acts 24:15).
“Ahab his son reigned in his stead—Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty and two years.” The new king exceeded his father and all others in transgression against Jehovah. “Ahab did more to provoke Jehovah the God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him” (1 Kings 16:28-33). Things were thus ripening fast for the heavy stroke which fell upon the nation with such devastating effects by the instrumentality of Elijah.
One of the daring evils of Ahab’s reign was the rebuilding of Jericho by Hiel the Bethelite. Indeed, anything was possible in those dark days. Flesh had utterly broken loose, and all divine restraint was cast aside. “In his days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in Segub his youngest son, according to the word of Jehovah which He spake by Joshua the son of Nun” (1 Kings 16:34.) At the time of the conquest of Canaan by the people of Israel, Jericho was the first city to oppose their progress. It typifies the world as that which would hinder the Christian enjoying his present heavenly portion in Christ Jesus. Jericho’s walls fell flat by direct divine action, and the wicked city was given to the flames. Joshua pronounced the curse of God upon anyone who should venture to rebuild it, and Joshua charged them with an oath at that time (R.V.) saying “Cursed be the man before Jehovah, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son he shall set up the gates of it” (Josh. 6:26). Five hundred years elapsed between Joshua and Ahab; but, during all that time, when the people of Israel frequently turned aside into paths of disobedience, no one was bold enough to brave the divine imprecation. Its terms were serious; the daring builder, whoever he might be, would pay the penalty of his impiety in the death of his firstborn son at the beginning of his undertaking, and in the death of his youngest at its completion. In Ahab’s day Hiel the Bethelite was sufficiently infidel to dare the Almighty in this matter; but it happened to him “according to the word of Jehovah which He spake by Joshua the son of Nun.” Abiram his firstborn died when he laid the foundation, and Segub his youngest died when he set up Jericho’s gates. Truly, “God is not mocked!” (Gal. 6:7).
A form of evil is suggested in Hiel’s open defiance of God which has become painfully common in our day. The judgments of God are openly challenged; from many modern pulpits eternal punishment is never mentioned; and multitudes say impudently that they do not believe in Hell. We cannot but recall Satan’s first move against our race. Adam and his wife were placed by the generous Creator in a garden of abundance and delight, with one single prohibition. There was a tree in the midst of the garden of which they must not eat, or the judgment of death would ensue (Gen. 2:17). The serpent approached Eve, as we all know, challenging God’s word as to this, saying definitely, “Ye shall not surely die” (Gen. 3:4); but the Word of God stood nevertheless, and so it must ever be. “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12).
Hiel the Bethelite, and his wife with him (if she were living), surely felt the bitterness of beholding both the eldest and youngest of their sons laid low in death. Why not abandon the mad enterprise when Abiram died? Alas, for the stubbornness of flesh! Satan was ready enough with some natural explanation of the young man’s death, and so the building operations continued to the predicted tragedy. Let all the cavilers in Christendom beware! Whatever Satan and his agents may say, there is a “Hell of fire that never shall be quenched, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9).
The Holy Spirit notes that Hiel was a Bethelite. His hometown had many sacred memories which should have influenced the man’s soul. Nearby, Abram pitched his tent and reared his altar when he first entered the land (Gen. 12:8). There he enjoyed manifestations of Jehovah, and listened to His gracious promises of blessings for days yet to come. It was at Bethel that God spoke to Jacob in a dream, and opened out to him the future in a very full way, assuring him of His continued interest in him, even though at that moment his ways were displeasing in His sight. Jacob felt that that spot was the very house of God, although no visible temple stood there. (Gen. 28:11-22). Some years later, when Jacob was suffering at the hands of Laban, he received this precious word in a dream, “I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar” (Gen. 31:13). This was a sweet reminder that amidst all his troubles and vicissitudes he had to do with a faithful God. Still later, after years of wandering, “God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother” (Gen. 35:1). This call exercised Jacob deeply. He became aware of many things in himself and family that did not suit the presence of a holy God. He charged his household to put away all the strange gods that were among them, and to purify themselves, and change their garments. To Jacob’s soul, now divinely stirred, it was impossible to take strange gods and other evil things to a spot that was to him the very house of God. The assembly is the house of God today; our exercises should be deep and thorough when we gather together to have to do with God.
When Jacob arrived in Bethel, “he built there an altar, and called the place El-Bethel: because there God appeared unto him when he fled from the face of his brother.” Note again how Jacob connected the presence of God with the place. In calling it “El-Bethel,” which means “the God of the house of God,” he took much higher ground than when he built an altar near Shechem, and called it “El-elohe-Israel,” i.e. “God the God of Israel” (Gen. 33:20). Self was the center of his thoughts when he said the latter, the expression of his trust that God would look after him; but at Bethel he rose to the thought of having to do with God in His own house, and thus everything connected with himself must be in suitability to the holy One who dwelt there.
Hiel might well have learned great lessons from these memories; but his mind was too utterly alienated from God to learn anything. Bethel in his time horrible to say was one of the chief seats of idolatry. There stood Jeroboam’s golden calf, glaring proof that the early sin of Exod. 32. had never been truly judged. Let us not miss the lesson of these Old Testament records. “They were written aforetime for our learning” (Rom. 15:4). From whence comes the repudiation of God’s judgments in our day? From those circles which claim to know God, and where the term “house of God” is freely used; in other words it is not so much the non-professing world which speak against the judgments of God, as the leaders and teachers of those “who profess and call themselves Christians.” The results of this widespread denial of the judgments of God are disastrous; morality everywhere declines, and deceived souls glide carelessly down to eternal ruin.