CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
1 Kings 16:15. Did Zimri reign seven days—A brief possession of a throne won by such criminal deeds! The Israelites repudiated the villainous usurper.
1 Kings 16:18. Into the palace of the king’s house—אֲרְמוֹן means the highest place in the king’s house; “the fortress of the palace, the securest and inmost place; for the royal palace contained a great number of buildings” (Gesenius). Burnt the king’s house over him—The Syriac says, the besiegers fired the royal house over his head.
1 Kings 16:19. For his sins … and in walking in the way of Jeroboam—As he only reigned “seven days,” this must refer to his previous career, although “the sins which he sinned” well describe his sanguinary deeds in seizing the throne.
1 Kings 16:22. So Tibni died, and Omri reigned—According to Josephus (Antiq. viii. 12, 5), Tibni was slain; which seems the necessary termination of the struggle. The phrase, “So he died,” does not allow of the thought of a natural death, whereby Tibni conveniently left the position unchallenged to Omri; but a forced conclusion of the rivalry by the death of Tibni. However, וַיָּמָת does not definitely indicate a violent death.
1 Kings 16:24. Bought the hill Samaria of Shemer—The “two talents of silver” purchase price equal less than £700. Thus this hill became the site of the royal residences of the kings of Israel, and Samaria the capital of the kingdom of Israel, until Israel was dispersed and the kingdom ceased. Stanley says of this site: In the centre of a wide amphitheatre of mountains, about six miles from Shechem, rises an oblong hill, with steep yet accessible sides, and a long flat top extending east and west, and rising 500 or 600 feet above the valley. Knobel says: It was a beautiful round mountain, covered with splendid trees, commanding a lorious prospect of the fruitful valley and the heights and villages surrounding it. Layard tells us a tablet was dug from the ruins of Nineveh relating to Samaria, thereon called Beth-Khumri, the house of Omri.
HOMILETICS OF 1 Kings 16:15-28
SIN THE PROLIFIC SOURCE OF NATIONAL CALAMITIES
I. It degrades the throne and vitiates its authority (1 Kings 16:15-20). It places the crown at the disposal of ambitious adventurers. At this period in the history of Israel there is a remarkable resemblance to the events which led to the accession of the Flavian dynasty at Rome; and the character and career of the Roman Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian bear a curious similarity to the Israelitish Elah, Zimri, Tibni, and Omri. Whoever could best succeed in bribing the army was sure to gain the crown; and the monarch for the time being used his exalted position and power for purposes of personal indulgence and debauchery. “It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness; for the throne is established by righteousness” (Proverbs 16:12).
He’s a king,
A true, right king, that dare do aught save wrong;
Fears nothing mortal but to be unjust:
Who is not blown up with flattering puffs
Of spongy sycophants; who stands unmoved
Despite the jostling of opinion.
But where sin is triumphant, and justice and righteousness are disregarded, no throne can be stable. The very army which has elevated the monarch may be the instrument of his fall and ruin. Sin tarnishes the crown, breaks the sceptre of authority, and weakens the whole nation. The usurper is often the dupe of his own wickedness. You smile when you see a child trying to grasp its own shadow; but how many have been grasping shadows all their lives, and will continue to reach out and grasp as long as breath and eyesight last!
II. It divides the people, and introduces all the horrors of civil war (1 Kings 16:21-22). For four years the rival claimants of the crown carried on the fratricidal contest, and in all probability Tibni suffered a violent death. As soon as Zimri—Sardanapalus-like—came to such a suicidal end, it would appear that the authorities at Tirzah, disliking a military despotism, elected Tibni as king, and as the army had already elected Omri, the nation was plunged into all the miseries of civil war, which was terminated by Omri gaining the supremacy. Bitterly do the seceding tribes reap the fruits of evil sowing; for not only are they given up to idolatry, but are half swallowed up in anarchy. Both Tibni and Omri would have done well to refuse these proffered honours, considering what had befallen the kings that had gone before them. Macro, captain of the guard, and Laco, knight of the watch, Romans who had been active in ruining Sejanus, had great honours bestowed upon them by the Senate. But they refused them; and Dion attributed the reason of their refusal to the terrors of an example so fresh in their memories. “The nation from whose heart rectitude is gone, in whose soul vice runs riot, has its throne built on moral gunpowder.”
III. It encourages the ruling power to perpetrate acts of unexampled wickedness (1 Kings 16:25-26). Omri “did worse than all that were before him.” Worse than Jeroboam, Nadab, Baasha, and Elah. He was an idolater in principle and in practice. He led the people to idolatry by precept and example; and he went beyond all his predecessors in legalising and enforcing idolatry upon his subjects by statutes, for we read in Micah 6:16, of “the statutes of Omri, the keeping of which made Israel a desolation.” Taking this in connection with the character which the historian ascribes to him, we cannot doubt, remarks Kitto, that these “statutes of Omri,” which were but too well maintained by his successors and observed by the subjects of his kingdom, were measures adopted for more completely isolating the people of Israel from the services of the House of the Lord at Jerusalem, and for perpetuating, perhaps increasing, their idolatrous practices. Jeroboam made Israel to sin by temptation, example, and allurement; but Omri did it by compulsion. Thus when a people forsake God, they go from worse to worse, till destruction comes upon them to the uttermost.
LESSONS:—
1. The frequent end of ambitious projectors is to perish in the flames they have themselves kindled.
2. Envy and revenge, even in death, forsake not the wicked.
3. Of all inflictions on a nation, none are more terrible than civil wars.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
1 Kings 16:15-20. The vanity of an ill-gotten success. I. An ill-gotten success is evanescent in its character (1 Kings 16:15). II. Creates numerous enemies (1 Kings 16:16). III. Has to contend with violent opposition (1 Kings 16:17). IV. Drives to acts of desperation (1 Kings 16:18). V. Brings its own inevitable punishment (1 Kings 16:19). VI. Acquires an unenviable notoriety (1 Kings 16:20).
1 Kings 16:18. Despair. I. Often the result of baffled ambition. II. Is one of the sharpest stings of a guilty conscience. III. Is associated with the bitterest feelings of hatred and revenge. IV. Frequently ends in suicide.
—The doom of despair is the end of a life given over to sin, which has lost sight of the living God, and can never again find Him. Frequently what the world regards as heroism and contempt of death is simply cowardice and crime in the sight of God. The Lord has no pleasure, &c. (Ezekiel 18:23). It requires more courage and bravery to bear the merited punishment of one’s sins than to escape from it by suicide.
—Zimri’s desperate act has been repeated more than once in the world’s history. That the last king of Assyria, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks, thus destroyed himself, is almost the only fact which we know concerning him. Herodotus gives a similar account of a contemporary of his, a certain Boges, a Persian general left by Xerxes to defend Eïon when he retired from Europe after Salamis. He also relates that the Xanthians, when pressed by Harpagus, burnt their wives, their children, and their slaves in the Acropolis, and then threw themselves on the Persian swords.
1 Kings 16:21-22. Anarchy. I. The inevitable consequence of national irreligion. II. Is fomented and sustained by incompetent and unscrupulous rulers. III. Is not suppressed without much cruelty and suffering.
1 Kings 16:23-28. The power of a wicked life. I. Is the more dangerous when associated with material prosperity (1 Kings 16:24). II. Transforms a king into a tyrant (1 Kings 16:25-26). III. Is the less excusable in a man of valour and capacity (1 Kings 16:27). IV. Is transmitted to succeeding generations (1 Kings 16:28).
1 Kings 16:24-26. Omri built Samaria, making it the strong centre of the kingdom; but he walked in all the sins of Jeroboam, and did worse than all who went before him. It is not said in what respect he was worse, but it certainly implies that he maintained the anti-theocratic institutions of Jeroboam with great zeal and decision. It appears that he stood well as captain of the army, for it was in the camp that he was elected to the throne. Yet, however valiant he may have been as a warrior, in the chief thing—namely, in his relation to Jehovah and the theocratic fundamental law—he stood worse than any of his predecessors, and was furthest from being what was especially required of a theocratic king, that is, a servant of Jehovah. A man may be skilful and useful to himself and others in all material and worldly things, whilst in spiritual and divine things he works only mischief and destruction. What, without religion, is so-called civilization?—Lange.