jezebel Summary and Overview

chaste, the daughter of Ethbaal, the king of the Zidonians, and the wife of Ahab, the king of Israel (1 Kings 16:31). This was the "first time that a king of Israel had allied himself by marriage with a heathen princess; and the alliance was in this case of a peculiarly disastrous kind. Jezebel has stamped her name on history as the representative of all that is designing, crafty, malicious, revengeful, and cruel. She is the first great instigator of persecution against the saints of God. Guided by no principle, restrained by no fear of either God or man, passionate in her attachment to her heathen worship, she spared no pains to maintain idolatry around her in all its splendour. Four hundred and fifty prophets ministered under her care to Baal, besides four hundred prophets of the groves [R.V., 'prophets of the Asherah'], which ate at her table (1 Kings 18:19). The idolatry, too, was of the most debased and sensual kind." Her conduct was in many respects very disastrous to the kingdom both of Israel and Judah (21:1-29). At length she came to an untimely end. As Jehu rode into the gates of Jezreel, she looked out at the window of the palace, and said, "Had Zimri peace, who slew his master?" He looked up and called to her chamberlains, who instantly threw her from the window, so that she was dashed in pieces on the street, and his horses trod her under their feet. She was immediately consumed by the dogs of the street (2 Kings 9:7-37), according to the word of Elijah the Tishbite (1 Kings 21:19). Her name afterwards came to be used as the synonym for a wicked woman (Rev. 2: 20). It may be noted that she is said to have been the grand-aunt of Dido, the founder of Carthage.

(chaste), wife of Ahab king of Israel. (B.C. 883.) She was a Phoenician princess, daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians. In her hands her husband became a mere puppet. #1Ki 21:25| The first effect of her influence was the immediate establishment of the Phoenician worship on a grand scale in the court of Ahab. At her table were supported no less than 450 prophets of Baal and 400 of Eastward. #1Ki 16:31,21; 18:19| The prophets of Jehovah were attacked by her orders and put to the sword. #1Ki 18:13; 2Ki 9:7| At last the people, at the instigation of Elijah, rose against her ministers and slaughtered them at the foot of Carmel. When she found her husband east down by his disappointment at being thwarted by Naboth, #1Ki 21:7| she wrote a warrant in Ahab's name, and sealed it with his seal. To her, and not to Ahab, was sent the announcement that the royal wishes were accomplished, #1Ki 21:14| and on her accordingly fell the prophet's curse, as well as on her husband, #1Ki 21:23| a curse fulfilled so literally by Jehu, whose chariot-horses trampled out her life. The body was left in that open space called in modern eastern language "the mounds," where offal is thrown from the city walls. #2Ki 9:30-37|

JEZ'EBEL (chaste), the wife of Ahab, king of Israel, was the daughter of a Zidonian king, 1 Kgs 16:31, and of course educated in the idolatrous practices of her native country. She was the virtual ruler of Israel. She introduced the worship of Baal and other idols, maintaining 400 priests of Astarte at her own expense, while Ahab maintained 450 priests of Baal. 1 Kgs 18:19. She resolved on the extermination of all the prophets of God. Obadiah, who was a pious man and principal officer of Ahab's household, rescued one hundred of them at one time from her grasp, and supplied them with bread and water while they were concealed in caves. 1 Kgs 18:3-4, 1 Kgs 18:13. Soon after this, Elijah caused the 450 priests of Baal supported by Ahab to be put to death. For this proceeding Jezebel threatened to take the life of Elijah, but her purpose was frustrated. Soon afterward she planned and perpetrated the murder of Naboth; and by using the king's name and authority with the leading men of Jezreel, she secured their co-operation in the flagrant crime. 1 Kgs 21:1-13. Her doom was predicted by Elijah, and was in due time visited upon her to the very letter. 2 Kgs 9:30-37. See Ahab, Elijah, Jehu. In Rev 2:20 the name Jezebel is used symbolically, and with us it is common as a name of infamy. Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth is often, though improperly, compared to Jezebel.

= chaste, free from carnal connection. One whose name belied her nature: licentious, fanatical, and stern. Daughter of Ethbaal, or Ithobal, king of Sidon and priest of Astarte, who had murdered Phelles his predecessor (Josephus contra Apion, 1:18) and restored order in Tyre after a period of anarchy. Wife of see AHAB who became a puppet in her hands for working all wickedness in the sight of Jehovah (1 Kings 21:25). She established the Phoenician idolatry on a grand scale at her husband's court, maintaining at her table 450 prophets of Baal and 400 of Astarte (so "the groves" ought to be translated): 1 Kings 16:31,32; 18:19,13. She even slew the prophets of Jehovah (2 Kings 9:7). When Elijah under God wrought the miracle at Carmel, and killed her favorite prophets, Jezebel still unsubdued swore by her gods to do to Elijah as he had done to them (1 Kings 19:1-3). Even he was constrained to flee for his life to Beersheba of Judah and the desert beyond. Like Clytemnestra or Lady Macbeth, she taunted Ahab with lack of kingly spirit in not taking what he wished, Naboth'svineyard (1 Kings 21:7,14,23): "dost thou govern Israel? I (the real monarch) will give thee the vineyard of Naboth." So she wrote in Ahab's name to the Jezreelite elders, and sealed the letters with his seal; and to her it was that they wrote the announcement that they had stoned Naboth for blasphemy. Upon her therefore fell a special share of the divinely-foretold doom. She survived Ahab 14 years, and still as queen mother exercised an evil influence in the courts of her sons Ahaziah and Joram of Israel, and in that of her daughter Athaliah's husband Jehoram (2 Chronicles 21:6; 22:2). But judgment was executed upon her by see JEHU for all her whoredoms and witchcrafts, which had become proverbial (2 Kings 9:22,30-37). In Revelation 2:20 Jezebel typically expresses some self-styled prophetess, or a set of false prophets (for the Hebrew feminine expresses collectively a multitude), as closely attached to the Thyatira church as a wife is to a husband, and as powerfully influencing that church for evil as Jezebel did her husband. The Sinaiticus manuscript and the Paris manuscript and Vulgate Latin read as the KJV; but the Alexandrinus and Vaticanus manuscripts "thy wife," i.e. the wife of the presiding bishop or "angel." Like her father, the ancient Jezebel had been swift to shed blood. A priestess and devotee of Baal and Astarte herself, she seduced Israel beyond the calf worship (the worship of the true God under the cherub ox form, a violation of the second commandment) to Baal worship, of which whoredoms and witchcrafts were a leading part (a violation of the first). The spiritual Jezebel of Thyatira similarly, by pretended inspiration, lured God's servants to libertinism, fornication and idol meats (Revelation 2:6,14,15), as though things done in the flesh were outside the man, and therefore indifferent. The deeper the church penetrated into paganism, the more pagan she became.