Jezebel is a name you know. Maybe you have heard it and maybe you have used it. Maybe you have been called it. And maybe just maybe you have noticed there are not too many Jezebel’s in the maternity ward. 

Her name echoes through history and I have heard it recently.  Raygun (the delightfully snarky and thoroughly midwestern t-shirt prophets) had a shirt, “The Spirit of Jezebel.” The newsletter had an image of well… surprise…a white, baby-boomer male pastor talking about Kamala Harris and calling her Jezebel or at the least the Spirit of Jezebel and referencing the end time when the daughters of Jezebel lead us all the wrong direction.  

I personally had not spent enough time in ‘culty christianity’ to know this theme but a quick google search will provide you with endless exploration on the Jezebel spirit and some hilarious guides complete with stock photos of young men whom are obviously confused or constipated or perhaps both by the Jezebel they have encountered. There seems to be three primary attributes of a Jezebel spirit; she is smart, attractive and capable. 

Wow! What a problem. She is clearly the worst.

While some humor can be found, what is not funny is any time a woman is capable, smart and attractive she can be dismissed as a Jezebel. ANYTIME! Even if she is in a national election; even if smart and capable and attractive might be what we are looking for and frankly might have been found in male candidates like JFK and Obama, too. 

It’s quite a tool in the religious right’s holster; so easy to deploy and sounds so righteous. 

Jezebel the Phoenician

So let’s actually meet her, or as much of her as we can. She is a Phoenician Princess and she comes to the northern Jewish Kingdom, Israel, after her father-in-law Omri has a pretty successful run at leading the country and arranges for his son Ahab to marry this brilliant beauty and make the country more secure. Omri’s success is noted by folks in the region, it is carved into an Assyrian Obelisk but not by the religious leaders who wrote the bible, which gives you a hint at the long competing agendas between the religious leaders and the royal leaders (Music in the Old Bones: Jezebel through the Ages by Janet Howe Gaines, P10). This is the stage for Jezebel’s move to Israel. There is no way of knowing if she wanted to marry Ahab and move from her lush fertile homeland and its flowers, fruit trees and cedars but she is smart enough to know it’s her job.

The Phoenicians know how to sail and fish, they are skilled and industrious, famous for producing beautiful textiles and metal work (Gaines, p7). They trade across the mediterranean and their impact, I imagine outsizes their country. Because just like Israel and Judah, they are still vulnerable to the larger Assyrians to the north and the powerful Egyptians to the south. An alliance is smart for everyone. 

Plus these folks are all part of the semitic tribes, that is to say they are cousins even if distant. The Semitic tribes, with their herds and their masculine warrior gods sweep into the agricultural lands from the deserts in the neolithic period (Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine by Joseph Campbell, p xxiii). Sometimes their lightning warriors marry the feminine earth goddess of the peoples they colonize. It happens with the Indo-European tribes from the north as well, which is why Zeus has so many wives and baby mamas and girlfriends and divine assault victims (to be honest). 

The Phonecians celebrate Gods by the name of Baal and the goddess by the name of Asherah. And they are known for their deep commitment to their faith, even their coins had the god Baal’s image. Jezebel’s Dad, Ethbaal of Tyre, has Baal in his name and her name does too or did and it means “Where is the Prince?” A rough name for any royal daughter (Gains, p 6). 

The Phoenicians are not the only semitic folks that use the word Baal because it means Lord. Hebrew folks like Saul name a kid Ishbaal and Jonathan names his son Meribaal because they are important people and have important kids that should have LORD in in their name (Gains, p 7). Which is really a reminder that this word is more shared than not between Jezebel’s people and Elijah’s people but that’s not how the story is going to be told. The priestly folks who write the history, hate her so much generations later will manipulate the spelling of her name to mean “Where is the excrement?” (Gains, p 6) (which is even worse than, “Where is the prince?”)

She is a faithful and able queen, in fact if you are looking for a biblical model of marriage where the couple supports each other this might be it (unless you want to look to Ruth and Naomi or Jonathan and David). Scholar Lynn Japlina points out there is no reason to call her a “whore;” she is not unfaithful to her husband (Preaching the Women of the Old Testament: Who They Were and Why They Matter by Lynn Japinga, p. 145). There are no ‘sexual sins’ just the classic patriarchy; keeping a woman in her place by using sexual slurs. By the end of her story they will accuse her sorcery and her son of supporting it. 

Jezebel the Worst

She is unfaithful to Israel's God, Yahweh, mostly because she is not Jewish. She moved to Israel and she brought her faith with her. She celebrated Baal and Asherah, some of her priests and religious leaders came with her. And she gets into it with the religious leaders, like the very famous Elijah. The two exchange words and actions, like violent actions that harm folks (priestly religious folks). 

Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, ‘So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.’ Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life.            1 Kings 19: 1-4           

1 Kings details the two exchanging words and violence. Elijah organizes a “prophet off” and kills 400+ people that work in Baal’s temple system. That’s when Jezebel promises revenge. We don’t have many times when she actually speaks but here she promises and names her rage. Elijah the saintly prophet runs away and rally's folks against the royal household and during his life does things both helpful and hurtful. Elijah trains Elisha to follow in his footsteps; he will anoint the usurping king, heal some folks and famously call down ‘she bears’ to kill some tweens who mock his receding hairline. They all use violence, they all create harm and yet Elijah is the one folks will leave a seat for at the table and Jezabel is the worst. 

Jezebel is no angel either, when Ahab wanted Naboth's land to plant a garden but he says no, Ahab stops eating and mopes around the palace. She probably finds it outrageous. Perhaps because she married such a baby but also that a man would tell a king no. She is likely not aware of the ways Jewish tribes organize their property and royal leadership in those days, and uses lots of violence. So she has this man killed, through manipulation. It is terrible. Just like when David had Bathsheba's husband killed by sending him to the front lines of a war. But somehow David is the GOAT and Jezabel is the worst. 

The Feminine Mistake 

See, the real problem isn’t that she is a wicked, unkind partner to the King, it’s that the royal household is in conflict with the religious leaders of the day. There are competing agendas on what will make Israel great again. And Jezabel becomes the perfect scapegoat. 

The truth is this wasn’t the first time a foreign wife kept practicing her faith in the land of Israel and the real truth is she wasn’t the only one living in Israel worshiping other divinities. There were sacred groves, trees, altars and poles celebrating the feminine divine often under the many regional names like Queen of Heaven, Asherah, Astarte, Anat, Qudshu. Some scholars even speculate Yahweh to have her as a partner, just as much as Baal did, at least in the very early days before the stories of monotheism are written down and she becomes one of the many faces of the singular divine. Later kings who are labeled righteous destroy. 

“King Josiah, that righteous man, didn’t just cut down the poles, he burned them. He didn’t just destroy the altars, he crusted them into dust. And he dug up the graves of the people there on the high places and set their bones on the dust of her (ashara’s) altar and burned them too. Strong actions against someone who didn’t exist” (Fierce: Women of the Bible and their Stories of Violence, Mercy, Bravery, Wisdom, Sex and Salvation by Alice Connor pg, 56).  

When semitic peoples enter the agricultural communities, by force, the pre-patriarchal goddesses never leave but they do get demoted, usually to wives and occasionally they get destroyed (like Marduk of Babylon) or silenced entirely (Campbell, p xxiii). Baal marries Ashara; the busty, lion hearted, fertility goddess of abundance and growth. And while the folks who celebrate Yahweh in Judaism are leaning into monotheism, it's probably not so black and white there either. 

We find the feminine face of God whispering through the scriptures. Thomas Jay Oord speaks of translations, el shaddai notes how it is typically used when God is promising abundance in the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Our Bibles translate it as God Almighty but it really links to “God of breasts” or “I am the breasted God” (The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence by Thomas Jay Oord, p 12). The phrases like a land flowing with milk and honey are also reminders of the pre-patriarchal spirit that explored God in a more feminine form. Tiny household totems or gods, often called Venus statues in modern museums have been found all over the ancient world; bare breasted and empowered to nourish and nurture life. 

Rachel and The Household Gods

One of my favorite stories is when Jacob is leaving his father-in-law Laban’s household with a good portion of what might be considered Laban’s flocks plus his daughters, Rachel takes her fathers household gods. The two men have been ruthless, tricksters to each other certainly and like every other interesting character in the Bible are wildly imperfect. And doing this will outrage Laban but she does it anyway. She must love the household God’s she grew up with, the little symbols of the divine that gave her courage and so she packs them up. 

“Now Laban had gone to shear his sheep, and Rachel stole her father’s household Gods.” -Gen 31: 19

Laban hunts his son-in-law and daughters down to find these little statues; tearing through the tents. Jacob doesn't know what the hell is happening and promises death to whoever committed this crime.

Rachel (and this is my favorite part) sits on the statues and when her dad is coming though her tent, she's like "Dad, I’m on my period.” She won’t get up. And he won’t dare touch her. Laban and Jacob settle their differences after this moment, and Rachel keeps what matters to her, the household gods. In a world where she has so few choices to make for herself, she keeps her faith. 

All of this is to say that the faith practiced in Israel is not so monolithic. Even Jacob who becomes Israel after wrestling with God has a wife with household gods that may or may not be so popular with the Religious leaders that will later write about Jezebel.

Make Israel Great Again: The Post-Game Report

Jezebel and Elijah’s conflict may be an exciting drama between two worthy opponents to tell over the campfire but it is really the story of competing agendas on what it means to be community and how to make Israel safe and prosperous. 

Once David is gone, no king can hold the country together in quite the same way, and to be honest the geo-political realities are different now. The large countries that were on the decline when David reigned have rebounded. I’m not sure any leader of a smaller community had much of a chance in a world so prone to harm and violence and so desperate for peace and justice. The royal leaders lean towards political and economic alliances and the religious leaders lean towards a more rigorous practice of faith. And probably none of them are as just, compassionate and equitable as we would dream them to be. 

Furthermore this whole story is more of a post-game report written generations later by the religious leaning leaders. 

“It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that this text reflects directly the concerns of the ninth century, in which Jezebel actually lived. The account in its present form is no earlier than the late seventh century, and the Naboth story may be even later” (Women’s Bible Commentary  “1 and 2 Kings” by Claudia V. Camp, p110).

They have a bias and it’s impossible to know if either of these strategies would have kept them safe from captivity, exile and destruction. But worse of all, because they choose to see this as a religious failure, the trauma they endure becomes the punishment for their sins, not the actions of unjust, oppressors. They sinned and they got punished by God. So they blame some folks, like Jezebel and Eve for leading them astray. 

Both generations of religious leaders, in the days of Ahab and Jezebel as well as the ones telling the story later fail, in my opinion, to take responsibility for how their faith matters in the lives of people. Rather than going deep into the many faces of God’s love and the power of God's justice, they get mad at other faiths. They are on a quest to make Israel great again but they refuse to do the work that is hard and they choose the work that is easy, fear mongering and scapegoating. They place blame on foreign wives and foreign peoples (even if most of them were already there) and they smash and slash religious freedoms, burn sacred groves and trees and sites to the ground. It becomes particularly gruesome when leaders like Ezra and Nehemiah demand all men separate from their foreign wives and children. 

Jezebel was in conflict with the ancient religious conservatives and she, it turns out, was right to be worried about their political agenda. In the end they lead a coup and kill her son. He sounds so unsuspecting, sending out messages to his army, “Is all well, Jehu?” Jehu kills him, just as a companion begins to warn of treason and leaves his body in the land his father took from Naboth. 

Then Jehu comes for her, the dowager queen puts on her royal regalia and her eyeliner to greet the trader. Commentators see this and say, what a slut or whore. But I think lots of folks see this and say, I think she wanted to feel her most empowered self. Putting on her makeup and her uniform to face the worst threat to her life and family. They kill her. And they track down the 70 sons of Ahab (P.S. Jezebel did not have 70 baby boys, so can it really be just about her.)

So What? Why does it matter now?

It’s violent and ugly. I wish it wasn’t. I wish Jezebel or probably as it should have been, Jeze-beel didn’t kill anybody. I wish that for David and Jehu and Elisha and Elijah too. I wish folks were more open to women leaders and the feminine divine. I wish the religious folks had done their work rather than blame, limit, harm and hate. I wish folks hadn’t turned Jezebel’s name into shorthand to silence any smart, capable and attractive woman. I wish at the very least we could stop doing that now.  

Mostly, I pray we learn something so we can do better. That’s the spirit we need to heal the hurt of the past and live a just future. If folks have called you a Jezebel. If it has the tones of sexism or racism or both, I’m sorry. If folks have tried to silence you for being smart, capabel and attractive. I’m sorry. If someone has called you a witch or bitch or anything else to cut you down and keep you quiet, I’m sorry. I share in this pain and as a pastor, if it has been a church leader or member I tell you now that sucks and that is not our faith. 

We have a faith of hope and healing, or radical equality and sweeping justice. That’s the faith that invites everyone to the table where we can do some hard work. And that’s the work we are called to do and make vividly present day by day. May we have the courage. 

May it be so, Amen.