20 Ahab said to Elijah, "Have you found me, my enemy?" He answered, "I have found you, because you have sold yourself to do that which is evil in the sight of Yahweh.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
The words "O mine enemy," may refer partly to the old antagonism (marginal reference; 1-Kings 17:1; 1-Kings 19:2-3); but the feeling which it expresses is rather that of present oppositions - the opposition between good and evil, light and darkness John 3:20.
Thou hast sold thyself to work evil - Compare the marginal references. The metaphor is taken from the practice of men's selling themselves into slavery, and so giving themselves wholly up to work the will of their master. This was a widespread custom in the ancient world.
Thou hast sold thyself to work evil - See a similar form of speech, Romans 7:14 (note). Thou hast totally abandoned thyself to the service of sin. Satan is become thy absolute master, and thou his undivided slave.
And Ahab said to Elijah, hast thou found me, O mine enemy?.... So he reckoned him, because he dealt faithfully with him, and reproved him for his sins, and denounced the judgments of God upon him for them:
and he answered, I have found thee; as a thief, a robber and plunderer, in another's vineyard; he had found out his sin in murdering Naboth, and unjustly possessing his vineyard, which was revealed to him by the Lord; and now was come as his enemy, as he called him, as being against him, his adversary, not that he hated his person, but his ways and works:
because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord; had given up himself wholly to his lusts, was abandoned to them, and as much under the power of them as a man is that has sold himself to another to be his slave; and which he served openly, publicly in the sight of the omniscient God, and in defiance of him. Abarbinel gives another sense of the word we render "sold thyself", that he "made himself strange", as if he was ignorant, and did not know what Jezebel had done; whereas he knew fully the whole truth of the matter, and that Naboth was killed through her contrivance, and by her management purposely; and so he did evil in the sight of that God that knows all things, pretending he was ignorant when he was not, and this Elijah found out by divine revelation; so the word is used in Genesis 42:6, but the former sense is best, as appears from 1-Kings 21:25.
thou hast sold thyself to work evil--that is, allowed sin to acquire the unchecked and habitual mastery over thee (2-Kings 17:17; Romans 7:11).
Ahab answered, "Hast thou found me (met with me), O mine enemy?" (not, hast thou ever found me thine enemy? - Vulg., Luth.) i.e., dost thou come to meet me again, mine enemy? He calls Elijah his enemy, to take the sting from the prophet's threat as an utterance caused by personal enmity. But Elijah fearlessly replied, "I have found (thee), because thou sellest thyself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord." He then announced to him, in 1-Kings 21:21, 1-Kings 21:22, the extermination of his house, and to Jezebel, as the principal sinner, the most ignominious end (1-Kings 21:23). הרע לעשׂות חתמכּר to sell one's self to do evil, i.e., to give one's self to evil so as to have no will of one's own, to make one's self the slave of evil (cf. 1-Kings 21:25, 2-Kings 17:17). The consequence of this is πεπρᾶσθαι ὑπὸ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν (Romans 7:14), sin exercising unlimited power over the man who gives himself up to it as a slave. For 1-Kings 21:21, 1-Kings 21:22, see 1-Kings 14:10-11; 1-Kings 15:29-30; 1-Kings 16:3, 1-Kings 16:12-13. The threat concerning Jezebel (1-Kings 21:23) was literally fulfilled, according to 2-Kings 9:30. חל, written defectively for חיל, as in 2-Samuel 20:15, is properly the open space by the town-wall, pomoerium. Instead of בּחל we have בּחלק in the repetition of this threat in 2-Kings 9:10, 2-Kings 9:36-37, and consequently Thenius and others propose to alter the חל here. But there is no necessity for this, as בּחלק, on the portion, i.e., the town-land, of Jezreel (not, in the field at Jezreel), is only a more general epithet denoting the locality, and חל is proved to be the original word by the lxx.
Hast thou found - Dost thou pursue me from place to place? Wilt thou never let me rest? Art thou come after me hither with thy unwelcome messages? Thou art always disturbing, threatening, and opposing me. I have - The hand of God hath found and overtaken thee. Sold thyself - Thou hast wholly resigned up thyself to be the bondslave of the devil, as a man that sells himself to another is totally in his master's power. To work evil, &c. - Impudently and contemptuously. Those who give themselves up to sin will certainly be found out, sooner or later, to their unspeakable amazement.
*More commentary available at chapter level.