Jezebel

Jezebel, Queen of Israel
Jezebel and Ahab meeting Elijah, print

by Sir Francis Dicksee (1853-1928)
Spouse(s) King Ahab
Children Ahaziah, Joram, and
Athaliah
Parents Ithobaal I
Jezebel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Jezabel" redirects here. For the band, see The Jezabels. For the website, see
Jezebel (website).
For other uses, see Jezebel (disambiguation).
Jezebel (/dzbl/,
[1]
Hebrew: /
, Modern Izvel / Izvel Tiberian zel /
zel) (. 9th century BC) was a
princess, identied in the Hebrew Book of
Kings as the daughter of Ethbaal, King of
Tyre (Phoenicia) and the wife of Ahab,
king of north Israel.
[2]
According to the biblical accounts, Jezebel
incited her husband King Ahab to abandon
the worship of Yahweh and encourage
worship of the deities Baal and Asherah
instead. Jezebel is said to have persecuted
the prophets of Yahweh, and to have
fabricated false evidence of blasphemy
against an innocent landowner who
refused to sell his property to King Ahab,
causing the landowner to be put to death.
For these transgressions against the God
and people of Israel, the Bible relates, Jezebel met a gruesome death - thrown out
of a window by members of her own court retinue, and the esh of her corpse
eaten by stray dogs.
Jezebel became associated with false prophets. In some interpretations, her
dressing in nery and putting on makeup before her death
[3]
led to the
association of use of cosmetics with "painted women" or prostitutes. According to
Israel Finkelstein, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, apart from the
names of rulers and some of the buildings and battles mentioned, the Biblical
stories of Jezebel and her family contain "very little veriable historical
material".
[4]
Contents
1 Meaning of name
Jezebel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jezebe...
1 of 9 2014-05-09 20:59
Jezebel from "Promptuarii
Iconum Insigniorum "
2 Scriptural account
3 Historicity
4 Cultural symbol
5 In popular culture
6 References
Meaning of name
Jezebel is the Anglicized transliteration of the Hebrew ('Izevel/'Izavel). The
Oxford Guide to People & Places of the Bible states that the name is "best
understood as meaning 'Where is the Prince?'",
[5]
a ritual cry from worship
ceremonies in honor of Baal during periods of the year when the god was
considered to be in the underworld.
Scriptural account
Jezebel's story is told in 1st and 2nd Kings. She
was a Phoenician princess, the daughter of
Ethbaal, king of Tyre (1 Kings 16:31 says she was
Sidonian, which is a biblical term for Phoenicians
in general).
[5]
According to genealogies given in
Josephus and other classical sources, she was the
great-aunt of Dido, Queen of Carthage.
[5]
Jezebel
married King Ahab of the Northern Kingdom (i.e.
Israel during the time when ancient Israel was
divided into Israel in the north and Judah in the
south). Ahab was the son of King Omri, who had
brought the northern Kingdom of Israel to great
power, established Samaria as his capital, and
whose historical existence is conrmed by ancient
inscriptions on the Mesha Stele and the Black
Obelisk of Shalmaneser III.
[4]
According to the account in the Hebrew Bible, Ahab
and Jezebel supported the worship of the deities Baal and Asherah, erecting
shrines to them in Samaria, which was "evil in the sight of the Lord".
[6]
The Bible
states that there was never anyone like Ahab, who sold himself to evil, incited by
his wife.
[7]
1 Kings 18 states that Jezebel had commanded that all the prophets of Yahweh in
the kingdom of Israel be killed,
[8]
while entertaining "four hundred and fty
2 of 9 2014-05-09 20:59
The death of Jezebel, by
Gustave Dor
Andrea Celesti - Queen
Jezebel Being Punished by
Jehu
prophets of Baal and four hundred prophets of
Asherah"
[9]
at her royal table. Elijah, prophet of
Yahweh, had escaped Jezebel's persecution,
however, and confronted King Ahab, demanding
that all the prophets of Baal and Asherah meet him
at Mount Carmel for a competition.
[9]
The
prophets of the pagan gods and Elijah met before
"all the people",
[10]
and Elijah had two altars set
up, one dedicated to Baal, one to Yahweh, and a
bull sacriced upon each altar. The supporters of
Baal called upon their god to send re to consume
the sacrice, but nothing happened. When Elijah
called on Yahweh, re came down from heaven
immediately and consumed the oering,
whereupon the crowd fell to the ground, crying
"The Lord, he is the God." Elijah ordered the
people to seize the prophets of Baal, and they were
all slaughtered on his orders.
[11]
Jezebel swore to
kill Elijah in revenge.
[12]
1 Kings 21 contains the story of Naboth, who
owned a vineyard near the royal palace of Ahab in
the city of Jezreel. Wishing to acquire Naboth's
vineyard so that he could expand his own gardens,
Ahab oered to purchase Naboth's vineyard or to
give him a better one in exchange, but Naboth
refused to let Ahab have his family inheritance
under any circumstances.
[13]
When Jezebel saw
that her husband was upset and depressed by this
obstacle to his plans, she concocted false evidence
against Naboth and had the authorities in his town accuse him of blasphemy and
stone him to death.
[14]
Ahab took possession of Naboth's vineyard,but he was
confronted by Elijah, who prophesied to him that, owing to the way Ahab and
Jezebel had plotted to have Naboth killed, Ahab would himself be killed, his royal
line obliterated, and Jezebel would be eaten by dogs.
[15]
Three years later, Ahab died in battle.
[16]
His son Ahaziah inherited the throne,
but died as the result of an accident
[17]
and was succeeded by his brother,
Joram.
[18]
2 Kings 9 states that the prophet Elisha, Elijah's successor, anointed Jehu,
commander of Joram's army, as king, in order that he might destroy Ahab's
descendants as a punishment for the way Jezebel had treated God's prophets and
3 of 9 2014-05-09 20:59
his people.
[5][19]
According to the biblical text, when Jehu confronted Joram in
order to kill him, Jehu told him there could be no peace in Israel while his mother
Jezebel's "whoredoms" (idolatry) and "witchcraft" continued.
[20]
Thereupon he
shot Joram with an arrow, and ordered his body to be dumped on the plot of land
that had belonged to Naboth which Ahab and Jezebel had stolen.
[21]
Jehu then headed for the royal palace at Jezreel. Knowing that he was coming,
Jezebel "painted her face and tired her head" (put on make-up and a wig or
adornments in her hair) and looked out a window.
[3]
Jehu ordered her own
servants to throw her from the window to her death, sprinkled her blood on the
walls and on his horses, and trampled upon her corpse.
[22]
He then entered the
palace where, after he ate and drank, he ordered Jezebel's body to be taken for
burial, but his servants discovered only her skull, her feet and the palms of her
hands - her esh had been eaten by stray dogs, just as the prophet Elijah had
prophesied.
[23]
Historicity
The marriage of King Ahab to the daughter of the ruler of the Phoenician empire,
disapproved of by the biblical writers, was actually a sign of the northern
Kingdom of Israel's power and prestige and a "brilliant stroke of international
diplomacy", according to Israel Finkelstein,
[4]
who also writes that the
inconsistencies and anachronisms in the biblical stories of Jezebel and Ahab mean
that they must be considered "more of a historical novel than an accurate
historical chronicle."
[4]
Among these inconsistencies, 1 Kings 20 states that
"Ben-Hadad king of Aram" invaded Samaria during Ahab's reign, but this event
did not happen until later in the history of Israel,
[4]
and 2 Kings 3:9 refers to a
king of Edom at the time of Jehoram's reign, but there is no evidence of monarchy
in Edom until a century after that.
[4]
The two books of Kings are part of the
Deuteronomistic history, compiled more than two hundred years after the death of
Jezebel, and are "obviously inuenced by the theology of the seventh century BCE
writers".
[4]
The compilers of the biblical accounts of Jezebel and her family were
writing in the southern kingdom of Judah centuries after the events from a
perspective of strict monotheism. The polytheism of the members of the Omride
dynasty was sinful in the eyes of the biblical writers, and they were hostile to the
northern kingdom and its history, with its rival center to Jerusalem, represented
by Samaria.
[4]
An ancient seal, discovered in 1964, may be inscribed with Jezebel's name.
[24]
[25][26]
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Bette Davis as Julie in the
lm Jezebel
Cultural symbol
The name Jezebel came to be associated with false prophets, and further
associated by the early 20th century with fallen or abandoned women.
[27]
In
Christian lore, a comparison to Jezebel suggested that a person was a pagan or an
apostate masquerading as a servant of God. By manipulation and/or seduction,
she misled the saints of God into sins of idolatry and sexual immorality.
[28]
In
particular, Jezebel has come to be associated with promiscuity. In modern usage,
the name of Jezebel is sometimes used as a synonym for sexually promiscuous
and/or controlling women.
[29][30]
In his two-volume Guide to the Bible (1967 and
1969), Isaac Asimov describes Jezebel's last act: dressing in all her nery,
make-up and jewelry, as deliberately symbolic, indicating her dignity, royal status
and determination to go out of this life as a queen.
[31]
In popular culture
Bette Davis starred as an antebellum Southern
Belle named Julie in New Orleans, Louisiana, in
the lm Jezebel (1938). Julie is told by her aunt
that she makes her aunt think of "Jezebel, a
woman who did evil in the sight of the Lord".
[32]
Frankie Laine recorded "Jezebel" (1951), written
by Wayne Shanklin, which became a hit song.
[33]
The song begins:
If ever the Devil was born without a pair of
horns
It was you, Jezebel, it was you
If ever an angel fell
Jezebel, it was you, Jezebel, it was you!
[34]
Iron & Wine included a song named Jezebel on their 2005 EP Woman King. It
contains many references to the biblical Jezebel.
[35]
In his novel The Caves of Steel (1953, 1954), Isaac Asimov portrayed Jezebel
as an ideal wife and woman who, in full compliance with the mores of the
time, conscientiously promoted her own religion.
[36]
Paulette Goddard starred as the Biblical Queen Jezebel in the lm Sins of
5 of 9 2014-05-09 20:59
Jezebel (1953).
[37]
The Gawker oshoot blog Jezebel (launched 2007) concerns mostly feminist
issues and women's interests.
[38]
In the novel The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, the brothel is called
"Jezebel's" and prostitutes are Jezebels.
[39]
The popular historian Lesley Hazleton wrote a revisionist account, Jezebel,
The Untold Story of the Bible's Harlot Queen (2004), that presents Jezebel as
a sophisticated queen engaged in mortal combat with the fundamentalist
prophet Elijah. Hazleton is also the author of several other non-ction books
about the Middle East.
[40]
References
^ Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition. 1.
^ Elizabeth Knowles, "Jezebel" (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O214-
Jezebel.html), The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, OUP 2006
2.
^
a b
2Kings 9:30 (http://tools.wmabs.org/bibleversender/?book=2Kings&
verse=9:30&src=kjv)
3.
^
a b c d e f g h
Finkelstein, Israel; Silberman, Neil Asher (2001). The Bible
Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred
Texts. Simon and Schuster. pp. 169195. ISBN 978-0-684-86912-4.
4.
^
a b c d
Hackett, Jo Ann (2004). Metzger, Bruce M; Coogan, Michael D, eds. The
Oxford Guide to People & Places of the Bible. Oxford University Press. pp. 150151.
ISBN 978-0195176100.
5.
^ 1Kings 16:30-31 (http://tools.wmabs.org/bibleversender/?book=1Kings&
verse=16:30-31&src=kjv)
6.
7.
^ 1Kings 18:4 (http://tools.wmabs.org/bibleversender/?book=1Kings&
verse=18:4&src=kjv)
8.
^
a b
1Kings 18:19 (http://tools.wmabs.org/bibleversender/?book=1Kings&
verse=18:19&src=kjv)
9.
verse=18:21&src=kjv)
10.
6 of 9 2014-05-09 20:59
11.
verse=19:2&src=kjv)
12.
13.
14.
15.
^ 1Kings 22 (http://tools.wmabs.org/bibleversender/?book=1Kings&verse=22&
src=kjv)
16.
^ 2Kings 1 (http://tools.wmabs.org/bibleversender/?book=2Kings&verse=1&
src=kjv)
17.
verse=1:17&src=kjv)
18.
19.
verse=9:22&src=kjv)
20.
21.
verse=9:33&src=kjv)
22.
23.
^ "Ancient Seal Belonged To Queen Jezebel" (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases
/2007/10/071026210336.htm). Science Daily. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
24.
^ Liphshiz, Cnaan (11 October 2007). "The missing letter" (http://www.haaretz.com
/print-edition/news/the-missing-letter-1.230847). Haaretz. Retrieved 17 November
2013.
25.
^ Korpel, Marjo C.A. "Fit for a Queen: Jezebels Royal Seal"
(http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/uncategorized/t-for-a-queen-jezebels-royal-
seal/). Biblical Archaeology Society. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
26.
^ Cook, Stanley Arthur (1911). "Jezebel". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopdia
Britannica 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 411.
27.
^ The New Testament, Book of Revelation (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage
/?search=REV%202:20-23&version=ESV)., Ch. 2, vs. 20-23.
28.
7 of 9 2014-05-09 20:59
^ "Meaning #2: "an impudent, shameless, or morally unrestrained woman" "
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jezebel). Merriam-webster.com.
Retrieved 2012-05-24.
29.
^ Pilgrim, David. "Jezebel Stereotype" (http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/jezebel/). Jim
Crow Museum. Ferris State University. Retrieved 29 July 2011.
30.
^ Asimov, Isaac (1988). Asimov's Guide to the Bible: Two Volumes in One, the Old and
New Testaments (reprint ed.). Wings. ISBN 978-0517345825.
31.
^ "Jezebel" (http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/lm/e00114/jezebel_e00114.htm).
Cosmopolis. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
32.
^ Frankie Laines hits in the years 1947-1952 (http://www.meantime-jp.com
/EditorsPick/Yakame/Data/FrankieLaine.html).
33.
^ "Jezebel lyrics" (http://www.metrolyrics.com/jezebel-lyrics-frankie-laine.html).
Frankie Laine lyrics. Metro Lyrics. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
34.
^ Leahey, Andrew. "Iron & Wine, "Jezebel" " (http://www.americansongwriter.com
/2012/04/iron-wine-jezebel/). americansongwriter.com. Retrieved 8 April 2014.
35.
^ Asimov, Isaac, "The Caves of Steel", Panther Books Ltd, 1958, 7th reprint 1973, p.
40-41.
36.
^ "At The Imperial: "Jezebel" Color Spectacle Stars Paulette Goddard In Title Role"
(http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=2IQuAAAAIBAJ&sjid=sioDAAAAIBAJ&
pg=3263,4699346&dq=sins+of+jezebel&hl=en). The News and Eastern Townships
Advocate. January 14, 1954. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
37.
^ Stephanie D. Smith, Irin Carmon. "Memo Pad." Women's Wear Daily, 2007-05-21. 38.
^ http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/handmaid/summary.html 39.
^ "JEZEBEL The Untold Story of the Bibles Harlot Queen by Lesley Hazleton"
(https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/lesley-hazleton/jezebel/). Kirkus
reviews. Retrieved 8 April 2014.
40.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jezebel&
oldid=607220113"
Categories: Kings of ancient Israel Kings of ancient Judah 840s BC deaths
9th-century BC women Biblical murder victims Biblical murderers
Book of Revelation People executed by defenestration Female murderers
Monarchs of the Hebrew Bible Phoenician people 9th-century BC executions
Women in the Bible
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