Jezebel

The Death of Jezebel by Gustave Doré.

Jezebel (Hebrew: אִיזֶבֶל / אִיזָבֶל, Standard Izével / Izável Tiberian ʾÎzéḇel / ʾÎzāḇel ; "not exalted") was the wife of King Ahab of Israel. A Phoenician princess, her marriage to Ahab portended peace and prosperity for Israel, but alienated the partisans of the Hebrew God Yahweh, who strongly denounced Jezebel for supporting Baal worship. Jezebel responded by persecuting the prophets of Yahweh, and an increasingly violent and bitter struggle for supremacy ensued.

After Ahab's death, Jezebel continued to hold influence through her sons Ahaziah and Joram, who succeeded her husband on the throne. Her daughter, Athaliah, reigned for several years as queen of Judah, the only woman to rule eithe Judah or Israel as queen. Jezebel's lineage thus merged with the Davidic kings. Thought seldomly acknowledged as such, she is also one of the ancestors of Jesus Christ according to the genelogy implied in the Gospel of Matthew.

Because of her strong denunciation by the bibical authors, the name Jezebel has become virtually synonymous with ruthless wickedness in females.

In the Hebrew Bible

Jezebel lived at a time when the nothern kingdom of Israel had established itself on a firm foundation of independence and even superiority in relation to the southern kingdom of Judah. She was a Phoenician princess, the daughter of King Ithobaal I of Tyre.

Marriage to Ahab

Her marriage to Ahab, who had recently moved his capital from Tirzah to the more centrally located Samaria, solidified a properous alliance between Israel and Trye, a wealthy trade center between the northern Mediterranean and the Levant. Biblical scholars suggest that Psalm 45 may have been composed in honor of her arrival in Ahab's capital:

File:Jezebel-ahab.jpg

Jezebel and Ahab as lovers.

Listen, O daughter, consider and give ear:

Forget your people and your father's house.

The king is enthralled by your beauty;

honor him, for he is your lord.

The Daughter of Tyre will come with a gift,

men of wealth will seek your favor.

All glorious is the princess within her chamber ;

her gown is interwoven with gold.

In embroidered garments she is led to the king;

her virgin companions follow her

and are brought to you.

They are led in with joy and gladness;

they enter the palace of the king.

Your sons will take the place of your fathers;

you will make them princes throughout the land.

Devotion to Baal Melqart

Whether or not this song actually pertains to Jezebel, it captures the hopes that the court of Israel must have held upon her arrival. Jezebel, however, did not "for her people and her father's house." Indeed, she seems to have brought with her a large number of attendants, including priests of the Phoneician God Baal Melqart, to whom she was strongly devoted.

The bible, our only near-contemporaneous source for Jezebel, says little about the years immediately after the marriage of Ahab and Jezebel. However, it is clear that dought plagues the country. Since Baal was worshiped as the god of rain storms who brings life and fertility to the land, it is reasonable to presume that the situation was ripe for the resurgence of Baal worship among the populace. This situation would make the introduction of an official temple of Baal in the new capital a tempting attraction. Thus, Ahab "set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal that he built in Samaria." (1 Kings 16:32)

It is also probable that the "sons of the prophets," bands of ecstaic Yahwist devotees who attended the "high places" of Israel, took strong and outspoke offense to any sings of official support of Baal, whom they considered Yahweh's enemy.

Jezebel vs. Elijah

In 1 Kings 17:1, the prophet Elijah appears at court at declares: "As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word." A serious drought follows. Jezebel herself is introduced into the narrative of Kings 19 by way of background. Several years of droubt have passed, and the drought has resulted in a severe famine. Jezebel has begun killing off hundreds prophets of Yahweh, whom she and Ahab apparently hold responsible along with Elijah for the lack of rain.

Elijah receives a new command from God to confront King Ahab, and the king agrees not only to meet Elijah but to arrange a contest between him and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, which is significantly located commanding the spiritual and physical high ground between the two capitals: Samaria and Trye. Elijah not only facilitates the spiritual defeat of Baal, but presides over the massacre of 450 of the the prophets of Baal. Rain clouds soon appear in response to Elijah's prayers.

Hearing Ahab's report of the slaughter of Baal's prophets, Jezebel threatens to take Eljiah's life in retaliation. The prophet then flees to Beersheba in the south of Judah. With Elijah out of the picture, other prophets of Yahweh emerge, at least one of which seems to be a "true" prophet declares that God will give victory to Ahab in an upcoming battle against a powerful coalition headed by the Syrian king Ben Hadad. The Israelite army gains the upper hand as predicted, and Yahweh's prophet counsels Ahab to prepare for another battle the following spring. This battle, at Aphek, too, is successful; but a second unnamed prophet soon condemns Ahab for allowing Ben-Hadad to live.

File:Elijah-ahab-jezebel.jpg

Elijah condemns Ahab and Jezebel.

Although not specifically mentioned in the text, about this time, Jezebel and Ahab's daughter Athaliah seems to have been married to Jehoram of Judah, the son of Judah's King Jehoshaphat. However, the ruthless Jezebel spoils whatever merit Ahab has won in the eyes of Yahweh by counseling her husband to murder the innocent Naboth, whose vineyard Ahab wishes to own. At this, Elijah himself suddenly returns from exile to deliver a ghoulish prophecy:

Dogs will devour Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel. Dogs will eat those belonging to Ahab who die in the city, and the birds of the air will feed on those who die in the country.

Ahab wins God's reprieve when he repents for killing Naboth, but is killed when he accepts the advice 100 prophets of Yahweh urge him to join with Jehoshaphat of Judah in a battle against Ben-Hadad at Ramoth-Gilead. One additional Yahwist prophet, Micaiah son of Imlah, alone had warned of disaster.

Jezebel as queen mother

Jezebel not only survives the death of her husband but also outlasts her nemesis Elijah to and see two of her own sons, Ahaziah and Joram, ascend to the throne of Israel. Years pass and the prophets of Yahweh again emerge as a powerful political force. Elijah's successor Elisha even gives grudging support to Jezebel's son Joram, mainly because of his continued alliance with Jehosophat of Judah, whom Elisha respects.

However, Elisha in dure course moves to fulfill Elijah's prophecy against Jezebel. He conspires with Ben Hadad's lietenant Hazael to murder the Syrian king and simultaneously anoints the Israelite commander Jehu to overthrow Joram. Through a prophetic messenger, Elisha commands:

I will avenge the blood of my servants the prophets and the blood of all the Lord's servants shed by Jezebel. The whole house of Ahab will perish. (2 Kings 9:1-10).

File:Jezebel-death.jpg

The gruesome death of Queen Jezebel.

Jehu promptly rides to Jezreel, where King Joram was recovering wounds he has suffered in battle. "Do you come in peace, Jehu?" the king asks. Jehu replies: "How can there be peace, as long as all the idolatry and witchcraft of your mother Jezebel abound?" Jehu not only proceeds to assissant Joram, but also sees to it that his ally, King Ahaziah of Judah, is also slain.

Jezebel herself is Jehu's next victim. She dies at his command after being thrown down from a high window by her own eunuchs. Although Jehu attempts to have her buried with honor, Elijah's prophecy is fulfilled as, "when they went out to bury her, they found nothing except her skull, her feet and her hands." (2 Kings 9: 35) Following this, Jehu "killed all who were left there of Ahab's family." (2 Kings 10:17)

Jehu next turns to Jezebel's spiritual legacy. He summons the priests of Baal to a solemn assembly in the capital, saying, "Ahab served Baal a little; Jehu will serve him much." Once they assemble in Baal's temple, Jehu proceeds to have them all slaughtered, demolishing the temple and turning it into a public latrine.

Jezebel's lineage

While Jezebel's male descendants were eliminated by Jehu's purge, he inadvertently paved the way of her daughter Athaliah to ascend to the throne by also killing Ahaziah of Judah. Athaliah was Ahaziah's mother, probably naming him after her own brother, Jezebel's son Ahazaiah of Israel. (It is interesting to note that both Ahaziah and Athaliah contain "yah" endings, signifying the honoring of Yahweh in the last sylable. Jezebel's acceptance of such names for her children may indicate a less adamant opposition to Yahwism on her part than imagined by the biblical writers.)

Hearing of Ahaziah's death, Athaliah began a purge of her own against her husband's other descendants by other wives. She reigned as queen in her own right in Jerusalem for seven years, both tolerating and encouraging Baal worship in the holy city. One of Ahaziah's sons, however, remained alive. The boy Joash was placed on the throne by the priests of the Yahwist Temple of Jerusalem after they succeeded in a plot to murder Athaliah in the seventh year of her reign.

Ironically, because Ahaziah was Jezebel's grandson, this move placed Jezebel herself in the position of the foremother of the remaining David kings, from whom the Messiah himself was prophecied to come. In Christian tradition, Jesus was descended from this David lineage. He is in that sense not only the "son of David," but also the "son of Jezebel."

Crticial View

Bible critics have recognized for more than a century that the account of Jezebel and Ahab is strongly colored by the religious prejudice of its authors, who cast Jezebel as a villain who tempted Ahab into Baal worship, brought God's wrath against Israel, and even spread her wicked ways to Judah through her evil daughter Ataliah. In more recent years, through the advent of feminist theology, attempts have even been made to cast Jezebel as a heroine who supported religious pluralism and promoted the recognition of femininity in the godhead.

The latter view is hard to reconcile with the purported facts of the case, such as Jezebel program of persecution against the prophets of Yahweh and her role in Ahab's murder of the innocent --------. However, even the biblical writers never actually show us Jezebel conducting a slaughter of the prophets of Yahweh, as they show us Elijah conducting the massacre of 450 prophets of Baal. Nor does Jezebel wicknedness, by modern moral standards, approach anything near the extremes of Jehu—the anoinited agent of Elisha—in his slaughter of the extended family of Ahab and his murder of the priests of Baal under the pretense of joining them for worship.

Jezebel in modern culture

The name Jezebel has come down through the centuries to be used as a general name for all wicked women. Jezebel is portrayed in modern usage as a controlling whore in such phrases as "painted Jezebel." (The "painted" part refers to a line in 2 Kings, just before she is murdered, where she puts on her makeup). From a generalized Christian point of view, the story and concept of Jezebel has been used to refer to those who refute perceived evidence and belief in God. Being compared to Jezebel would suggest that the person would be a pagan, apostate, ruthless, or domineering woman. While it is usually strongly negative in connotation, some embrace Jezebel's glamourous image, as evidenced by various lingerie designs named after her.

External links

Jezebel revisited

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Jezebel  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Jezebel"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.