tion of hypocrisy,
covetousness, fraud, usurpation, cruelty, robbery, and murder, that he
once more heard the Divine voice which summoned him from his retirement
and sent him to the court with an awful message. Suddenly, unannounced
and unexpected, the man of God appeared before the king in his newly
acquired possession, surrounded by his gardeners and artificers, and
accompanied by two of his officers,--Bidkar, and Jehu the son of
Nimshi,--destined to be both instrument and witness of the retribution.
With unwonted austerity, without preface or waste of words, Elijah broke
forth: "Thus saith Jehovah!"--how the monarch must have quaked at this
awful name: "In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall
dogs also lick thine, even thine." The conscience-stricken, affrighted
monarch could only say, "Hast thou found me, oh mine enemy!" And
terrible was the response: "Yes, I have found thee! and because thou
hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord, behold, I will
take away thy posterity, and will make thy house like the house of
Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin. And as to thy wife also, saith
Jehovah, the dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel. Him that
dieth of Ahab in the city shall the dogs eat, and him that dieth in the
field shall the fowls of the air eat."

When and where, in the annals of the great, has such a dreadful
imprecation been uttered? It was more awful than the doom pronounced on
Belshazzar. The blood of Ahab and his wife was to be licked up by dogs,
their dynasty to be overthrown, and their whole house destroyed. This
dire punishment was inflicted probably not only on account of the crime
pertaining to Naboth, but for a whole life devoted to idolatry. The
sentence was not to be executed immediately,--possibly a time was given
for repentance; but it would surely be inflicted at last. This Ahab knew
better than any man in his kingdom. He was thrown into the depths of the
most abject despair. He rent his clothes; he put ashes on his head and
sackcloth on his flesh, and refused to eat or drink. He repented after
the fashion of criminals, and humbled himself, as Nebuchadnezzar did,
before the Most High God. God in mercy delayed, but did not annul, the
punishment Ahab lived long enough to fight the king of Syria
successfully, so that for three years there was peace in Israel. But
Ramoth in Gilead, belonging to the northern kingdom, remained in the
hands of the Syrians.

In the