The answer is in the Book of Numbers, thirty-sixth chapter and seventh verse:
“So shall not the inheritance of the children of Israel remove from tribe to tribe; for every one of the children of Israel shall keep himself to the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers.”
So Naboth stood upon the law.
In Ezekiel we read:
“Moreover, the prince shall not take of the people’s inheritance by oppression, to thrust them out of their possession; but he shall give his sons inheritance out of his own possession, that My people be not scattered every man from his possession.”
So Naboth was not answering haughtily or resentfully. He was answering both solemnly and religiously. When money was offered for his fathers’ inheritance, he spurned the offer. There are some things, blessed be God, we can not pay for.
When Ahab said “I will give thee for it a better vineyard than it” he knew not of what he was speaking. There can be no better vineyard than the vineyard of the fathers; there can be no vineyard equal to the vineyard that is sown with history, planted with associations, solemnized and endeared by a thousand precious memories. There ought to be some things which we can not barter. Surely there ought to be some things which we should never try to sell.
Verily, when we hear propositions made to us that money shall be given in exchange for certain things, our whole soul should rise in horror and indignation, and repel the approach of a barter which itself expresses an infinite, because a most spiritual, injustice. So Naboth’s position was strong, and he had the courage to answer the king in these terms.
Kings must submit to law. Kings ought to be the subjects of their own people. Ahab was taught that there was a man in Samaria who valued the inheritance which had been handed down to him. Have we no inheritance handed down to us—no book of revelation, no day of rest, no flag of liberty, no password of common trust? Do we inherit nothing? Did we make the age as it is, and is civilization a creature of our own fashioning? And are we not bound to hand on to others what was handed to us intact and unpolluted?