Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Kings 16:30

And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD above all that [were] before him.

See 1Ki 16:33. The great sin of Ahab – that by which he differed from all his predecessors, and exceeded them in wickedness – was his introduction of the worship of Baal, consequent upon his marriage with Jezebel, and his formal establishment of this gross and palpable idolatry as the religion of the state.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, above all that were before him. Adding other idols to the calves, and those more abominable than they; since the other kings pretended to worship God in them, but he worshipped other gods besides him, as the following verses show.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Whereas the former kings of Israel had only perpetuated the sin of Jeroboam, i.e., the calf-worship. or worship of Jehovah under the image of an ox, which he had introduced, Ahab was not satisfied with this. , “it came to pass, was it too little?” i.e., because it was too little (cf. Ewald, 362, a.) to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, that he took as his wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal the king of the Sidonians, and served Baal, and worshipped him. before , “he went and served,” is a pictorial description of what took place, to give greater prominence to the new turn of affairs. .sri (i.e., with Baal) is the ( or : Jos. Ant. viii. 13, 1) mentioned by Menander in Josephus, c. Ap. i. 18, who was king of Tyre and Sidon, and priest of Astarte, and who usurped the throne after the murder of his brother, king Pheles, and reigned thirty-two years. Jezebel ( , i.e., probably without cohabitation, cf. Gen 30:20, = untouched, chaste; not a contraction of , as Ewald, 273, b., supposes) was therefore, as tyrant and murderess of the prophets, a worthy daughter of her father, the idolatrous priest and regicide. Baal (always with the article, the Baal, i.e., Lord ) was the principal male deity of the Phoenicians and Canaanites, and generally of the western Asiatics, called by the Babylonians = (Isa 46:1), , and as the sun-god was worshipped as the supporter and first principle of psychical life and of the generative and reproductive power of nature (see at Jdg 2:13). Ahab erected an altar to this deity , in the house (temple) of Baal, which he had built at Samaria. The worship of Baal had its principal seat in Tyre, where Hiram, the contemporary of David and Solomon, had built for it a splendid temple and placed a golden pillar ( ) therein, according to Dius and Menander, in Joseph. Ant. viii. 5, 3, and c. Ap. i. 18. Ahab also erected a similar pillar ( ) to Baal in his temple at Samaria (vid., 2Ki 3:2; 2Ki 10:27). For statues of images of Baal are not met with in the earlier times; and the are not statues of Baal, but different modifications of that deity. It was only in the later temple of Baal or Hercules at Tyre that there was, as Cicero observes ( Verr. iv. 43), ex aere simulacrum ipsius Herculis, quo non facile quidquam dixerim me vidisse pulcrius.

Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

30. Above all that were before him He even went beyond the hitherto unparalleled wickedness of Omri, his father.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

1Ki 16:30 And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD above all that [were] before him.

Ver. 30. Above all that were. ] He proved an arrant non-such. a

a Bipedum nequissimus.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)