Ahab אחאב
king of Israel for twenty-two years; husband of Jezebel
Ahab son of Omri reigned twenty-two years and was the strongest king of the north: the annals of Shalmaneser III credit him with two thousand chariots at Qarqar — more than any ally. He built up Samaria and Jezreel, «the house of ivory».
Kings looks elsewhere. He married Jezebel, daughter of the king of Sidon, and set up an altar and a temple for Baal in Samaria; in his days the prophets of the Lord were hunted, and Obadiah hid a hundred of them in caves. Against this stood Elijah: three years without rain, and then the assembly on Mount Carmel where the people answered «the Lord, He is God» (1 Kings 18).
The second story is the vineyard of Naboth of Jezreel, which the king wanted and its owner would not give, being his fathers' inheritance. Jezebel suborned false witnesses, Naboth was stoned, and Ahab went down to take possession — and there Elijah met him with sentence. Ahab rent his clothes and fasted, and the sentence was deferred a generation. He died in battle for Ramoth-Gilead: an arrow shot at random struck the joint of his armour.
On the timeline
Sources
Tanakh
- Melachim I (1 Kings) 16:29–34 — the twenty-two years, the marriage to Jezebel, and the temple of Baal in Samaria
- Melachim I (1 Kings) 18 — the three years of drought and the assembly on Mount Carmel
- Melachim I (1 Kings) 21 — the vineyard of Naboth, the false witnesses, and Elijah's sentence
- Melachim I (1 Kings) 22:29–40 — his death at Ramoth-Gilead from an arrow shot at random
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.