"You must therefore be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect". (Matt:5:48).

With this counsel, Jesus explains how the Law of Moses was to be applied. Love of neighbour was always advocated in the Torah, but not hatred of enemies. Many chose to conclude that it was permissible to hate one's enemies, but Jesus makes it clear that there was to be no limitation on love, i.e. even enemies had to be loved because that was the Father's way. God was not without morality; rather He loved without limit and if Jesus' followers were to be considered true children of God, then they had to love as the Father did. The perfection mentioned here came from being singularly devoted to God, to be pure in heart like the Father.

In Elijah, this devotion to perfection meant being a champion of the poor and an opponent of corrupt religious and civil authority. Jezebel and Ahab's sin was the murder of Naboth and the usurping of his land, but their greater sin was Jezebel's belief in false, foreign gods and her leading Ahab away from his proper devotion to the Lord God and on to double-dealing and murder. She actively persecuted the followers of the Lord, but God's love for the poor and the victimised meant justice had to be meted out in the punishment of Ahab who failed as king to "love" his subjects. As she and Ahab killed off Naboth and his sons, so too would they and their heirs be punished.