1 Kings — Chapter 21

Naboth's vineyard: Lapide quotes S. Ambrose's treatise De Nabuthe at length: \"O rich man, you do not know how poor you are, how indigent you appear to yourself, who call yourself rich! The more you have, the more you need: and however much you acquire, you still lack. Avarice is inflamed by gain, not extinguished.\"

Naboth: \"The Lord be merciful to me and not give thee the inheritance of my fathers\": Lapide: S. Ambrose: \"The inheritance given to me by my parents is to be preserved, not as mine alone, but as theirs — for a son owes this reverence to his parents: to guard their goods and transmit them to posterity.\" Tropologically: \"The vineyard is the soul, which is our entire inheritance; beware lest you sell it cheaply for pleasure or honour to the devil.\"

Jezebel to Ahab: \"Arise and be of good cheer, I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jezrahelite\": Lapide: \"Jezebel was more impious than her impious husband, more avaricious than the avaricious, more cruel than the cruel, more rapacious than the rapacious. She was the torch and incendiary of idolatry and all evils in Israel, like a fury of hell, as appears from verse 25.\"

Naboth stoned on false accusation: Lapide draws the parallel between Naboth and S. John Chrysostom: \"In a similar manner Eudoxia, wife of the Emperor Arcadius, coveting the vineyard of the widow Callitropé, drove S. Chrysostom (who argued the widow's cause) into exile, and through a thousand trials — hunger, thirst, soldiers tormenting him — brought him to death. So that S. Chrysostom is not merely Confessor but Martyr.\"

Elijah to Ahab: \"Thou hast sold thyself to do evil in the sight of the Lord\": Lapide: \"Thou, O Ahab, art truly not a king nor an Israelite (i.e. a free man of noble condition), but a slave of Baal and Jezebel; for you have totally given yourself and enslaved yourself to them, to obey them in everything.\" Note the boldness of Elijah: he says to the king's face that he is the slave of sin.

Ahab rent his garments and did penance in sackcloth: Lapide discusses whether this was true contrition or servile attrition. He concludes with the most probable view: it was true attrition (sorrow from fear of punishment), but did not rise to contrition formed by charity (sorrow from love of God). Hence God remitted the temporal punishment but deferred it to Ahab's son, without justifying Ahab himself.