By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources
August 12, 1998
One of the White House spin-doctors must have watched a video or read Moby Dick recently. All the sudden we are hearing Clinton defenders on the talk shows claim that Kenneth Starr is the modern representation of Captain Ahab, the dark figure who pursued the great White Whale with unrelenting hatred.
Those who haven't read or seen Herman Melville's Moby Dick recently may wonder what the intended metaphor actually is in comparing Kenneth Starr with the wicked Captain Ahab. The plot of the book can be read as a general metaphor for the cosmic battle between the perverted powers of the Devil versus the divine powers of God and Jesus, both of whom try to enlist the souls of mankind in order to aid in each other's destruction. Within this metaphor, the Devil is manifest in the person of Captain Ahab, God becomes nature, Jesus is seen within the White Whale, and the crew in general represents mankind. The voyage of the Pequod, therefore, is representative of the passage of mankind on earth up until the death of Jesus, throughout which the influences of these three supernatural forces are interlaced. Thus, on the basis of this interpretation, within the plot of Melville's book there are also glimpses of the "plot" of the Bible itself.
The Moby Dickplot is based on sort of a reversal of Jonah and the Whale, in which Jonah, fleeing from the order of the Lord to go preach repentance to the wicked people of Ninevah (modern day Iraq) boards a ship headed the opposite way. En route, fierce winds and an angry sea threaten the ship and the seamen, who worshipped many different gods "were afraid and cried every man unto his god." (Jonah 1:5)
Meanwhile, Jonah the unwilling prophet of God was asleep below deck, where the Captain found him, woke him up and ordered him to pray to HIS God so they would not be destroyed. Then the men drew lots to find out whom, among all the various criminals aboard, was the cause of the weather that was about to destroy them, and the lot fell on Jonah. They threw him overboard, the sea calmed and a great fish came along and swallowed him. After much prayer in the dark confines of the belly of the fish, it coughed him up on land.
By then Jonah thought it a good idea to go do as the Lord had commanded him.
I guess what the Clinton apologists are telling us by labeling Kenneth Starr as Captain Ahab is that he is the evil one, pursuing the pure and righteous and majestic great White Whale, Bill Clinton.
However, when I heard the comparison I thought of a different Ahab, King Ahab, son of Omri and the most wicked and most powerful of the kings of northern Israel in 1 Kings in the Old Testament. He was married to the incredibly powerful and evil Jezebel, who led both her husband and the people of Israel to worship Baal and Ashtaroth, the false gods.
The ancient Jewish Talmud relates a story about Ahab meeting the prophet Elijah. In the conversation, Ahab ridicules a prophecy made by Moses in Deuteronomy 28:23-24, that if Israel should ever turn to the worship of other gods, the Lord would withhold rain in its season. Ahab pointed out that even though almost everyone in Israel worshiped other gods, the nation was prosperous and Moses' curse had not been fulfilled.
At Jezebel's insistence, the faithful prophets were killed one by one, until only Elijah remained alive. Elijah tells the wicked king, "As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." (1 King 17:1) It stopped raining. Famine stalked the land. The ravens fed Elijah who was in hiding to keep from being killed. Eventually, he came out of hiding, and ran into a widow with a young son who was preparing the last morsel of food she had. However, because she had enough faith to feed the prophet Elijah, throughout the drought the barrel of meal never became empty and the cruse of oil never failed.
Finally, in the third year of total drought, when no rain fell, and it was too hot for the crops to grow (Al Gore, please note) and the people were near death, Ahab meets Elijah in the wilderness and sarcastically asks if he is the one who is causing Israel all its problems. Elijah replies, "I have not troubled Israel; but thou , and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou has followed Baal." (1 Kings 18:18)
Human nature hasn't changed much in the last 4000 years. We again have a leader who is accusing someone else, in this case it's Kenneth Starr, not a prophet, of causing the trouble in the land, when it is his own immoral behavior that is the problem.
To convince Ahab, Elijah challenges him to a unique type of duel. He urges all the priests of Baal, and there were hundreds of them, to prepare a great altar to sacrifice a bullock to their god Baal. He would prepare an altar to sacrifice a bullock to the God of Israel. But, neither side could light the fire. The fire would have to be lit by the God each side worshipped.
And so the priests of Baal did their thing. They prayed, cutting themselves to show their loyalty, making a great deal of noise until finally the somewhat sarcastic Elijah taunts the priests, to "Cry aloud: for he IS a god; either he is talking or has gone away or perhaps he's sleeping." (1 Kings 18:27) Still, their fire didn't start.
Then Elijah took his turn, but first ordered that twelve barrels of water be poured over the dry wood and the sacrificial bullock. And then Elijah prayed. As a result of that prayer "the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench." When the people saw that they believed the "The Lord, he is the God," and they killed all of Baal's priests. (1 Kings18: 39)
At that point it started raining.
Did all that convert Ahab and Jezebel? Well, actually, no. It didn't. In fact, Jezebel got so mad that she immediately ordered Elijah killed, and he went into hiding.
Meanwhile, back at the palace, Ahab and Jezebel decide they want the vineyard of Naboth, which was next door. But, Naboth doesn't want to give it up. Jezebel reminds Ahab he is the king and she comes up with a scheme that was remarkably similar to Travelgate. She wrote letters in Ahab's name, sealed them with his seal and sent them to the elders and the nobles in the city. In the letters she urged that they proclaim a fast, and then set Naboth up by having two Baal worshippers bear false witness against him.
All that was done. Naboth was taken out and stoned to death, and they took over Naboth's vineyard. Sounds a lot like what happened to Billy Dale - except they didn't quite succeed in getting him stoned to death.
Ahab was happily surveying his new vineyard when who do you think showed up? That pest Elijah. The Lord had told Elijah to go find Ahab in Naboth's vineyard and to tell him, "Thus saith the Lord. In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood." This scared Ahab and he got really depressed about the whole thing.
But he got over it and pretty much went back to his old ways of doing things. Soon he was mortally wounded in battle and his blood covered the chariot. Elijah's prophecy was literally fulfilled when a servant washed the blood from the chariot back at Naboth's vineyard and the dogs licked up his blood.
In retrospect, King Ahab probably would have appreciated a nice clean impeachment.
The moral to this story is simply this: In the end leaders need to be a lot more worried about what God will do about their behavior than what the people they lead are willing to do. In fact, considering the warnings of droughts, earthquakes, tempests, fires and the like that, according to Scripture, are visited on those who defy God, Al Gore might want to factor in the people's wickedness rate in his dire global warming predictions.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com