FREE BIBLE STUDY ON ELIJAH INSTALL

Her coronation as queen upset the balance of power between Yahwism and Baalism. Įlijah Jezebel and Ahab meeting Elijah, print by Sir Francis Dicksee (1853–1928)

FREE BIBLE STUDY ON ELIJAH INSTALL

Geoffrey Bromiley points out that it was Phoenician practice to install a royal woman as a priestess of Astarte, thus she would have a more active role in temple and palace relations than was customary in the Hebrew monarchy. Jezebel, like the foreign wives of Solomon, required facilities for carrying on her form of worship, so Ahab made a Baalist altar in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. This marriage was the culmination of the friendly relations existing between Israel and Phoenicia during Omri's reign, and possibly cemented important political designs of Ahab. Krahmalkov proposed that Psalm 45 records the wedding ceremony of Ahab and Jezebel, but other scholars cast doubt on this association.

Jezebel eventually married King Ahab of Samaria, the northern kingdom of Israel. As the daughter of Ithobaal I, she was also the sister of Baal-Eser II. Īccording to genealogies given in Josephus and other classical sources, she was the great-aunt of Dido, Queen of Carthage. Jezebel is introduced into the biblical narrative as a Phoenician princess, the daughter of Ithobaal I, king of Tyre ( 1 Kings 16:31 says she was 'Sidonian', which is a biblical term for Phoenicians in general). instances for Baal, Mephibosheth and Ish-bosheth).īiblical account Jezabel and Ahab ( c. Alternatively, a feminine Punic name noted by the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, Phoenician: 𐤁𐤏𐤋𐤀𐤆𐤁𐤋, romanized: bʿlʾzbl, may have been a cognate to the original form of the name, as the Israelites were known to often alter personal names which invoked the names of foreign gods (cf. The Oxford Guide to People & Places of the Bible states that the name is 'best understood as meaning 'Where is the Lord?'' ( Hebrew: אֵיזֶה בַּעַל, romanized: ʾēze baʿal), 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. Jezebel is the Anglicized transliteration of the Hebrew אִיזֶבֶל‎ ʾIzeḇel. Later, in the Book of Revelation, Jezebel is symbolically associated with false prophets. Her corpse was trampled by Jehu's horse and then eaten by stray dogs, just as the prophet Elijah had prophesied ( 2 Kings 9:33–37). For these offences, Jezebel was thrown from a window to her death. This caused irreversible damage to the reputation of the Omride dynasty, who were already unpopular among the Yahwists.

Īccording to the biblical narrative, Jezebel and her husband purged the Yahwist cult so that Baal and Asherah worship could be institutionalized. Jezebel ( / ˈ dʒ ɛ z ə b əl, - b ɛ l/ Hebrew: אִיזֶבֶל, Modern: ʾĪzével, Tiberian: ʾĪzeḇel) was the daughter of Ithobaal I of Tyre and the wife of Ahab, King of Israel, according to the Book of Kings of the Hebrew Bible ( 1 Kings 16:31). 19th-century painting of Jezebel by John Liston Byam Shaw

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