1 Kings 18:4, 19
The table and the cave
She cuts off the prophets of the LORD, and Obadiah hides a hundred of them in two caves and feeds them. Her own eight hundred and fifty eat at her table.
People of the Bible
Jezebel
A Sidonian princess who ran a state religion, wrote letters in her husband’s name, and met the end she did with her eyes painted.
Jezebel is the daughter of the king of the Sidonians, married to Ahab as an alliance, and she does not convert. She brings four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and four hundred of Asherah to eat at her table, and she cuts off the prophets of the LORD. After Carmel she sends Elijah a message promising to do to him by this time tomorrow what he did to them, and the man who had just faced down a nation runs for his life. When her husband cannot buy a vineyard, she writes letters in his name, seals them with his seal, and arranges a fast, two false witnesses and a stoning.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Jezebel
- 01
- 02
1 Kings 19:1-4
So let the gods do to me
Ahab tells her everything, including the killing at the brook. She sends a messenger with an oath and a deadline, and Elijah goes a day’s journey into the wilderness and asks to die.
- 03
1 Kings 21:5-16
Do you now govern Israel
She finds her husband refusing food over a vineyard. She writes to the elders and nobles of Naboth’s own city, and they do exactly as the letters say.
- 04
2 Kings 9:30-37
The window at Jezreel
She hears he is coming and prepares deliberately. Had Zimri peace, who slew his master. Two or three eunuchs throw her down at his word, and he goes in to eat.
Why it matters
Jezebel is the only figure in Kings who is a genuine religious programme rather than a lapse. The northern kings mostly drift; she imports, funds and enforces. Her name becomes shorthand for exactly that, and Revelation uses it for a teaching in a church rather than for a queen. The account gives her a last scene that refuses to flinch: she hears Jehu is coming, paints her eyes, does her hair, and meets him at a window with a line about a king who murdered his master.
13 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
