Charles Ellicott Commentary


Charles Ellicott Commentary
"for all the sins of Baasha, and the sins of Elah his son, which they sinned, and wherewith they made Israel to sin, to provoke Jehovah, the God of Israel, to anger with their vanities." — 1 Kings 16:13 (ASV)
Vanities —that is, idols (1 Samuel 12:21; Psalms 31:6; Isaiah 41:29; Jeremiah 8:19; etc.): not only the idols of Dan and Bethel, but the worse abominations which grew up under cover of these. In the Old Testament generally, the contempt for idolatry and false worship as a gross folly, wasting faith on unrealities, is at least as strong as the condemnation of them, as outraging God’s law, and connected with sensual or bloody rites. (See, for example, the utter scorn of Isaiah 44:9-20; Psalms 115:4–8.)