There are several reasons to not name your child Jezebel. Here are a few:
It's awkward to say
Why is there a J and Z in one name? I mean, unless you’re a New York hip hop artist, those letters surely should be nowhere near each other
The name literally means “where is my prince?”, which is a back handed slap in the face of feminism and everything we’ve come to expect from modern society
As compelling as all these reasons are, the one that tops all of them is the fact that this was also the name of the murderous Israelite queen whose reign of terror was...biblical, in its brutality and pettiness.
Many wouldn’t consider her a dictator per se, but doggone it, if imposing your religion on a whole country and using a searing hot fire poker to gouge out the eyes of anyone who dared to oppose you doesn’t count as dictating, then I don’t want to write these emails anymore.
But instead of just focusing on the vixen that she was, think of her like Kim to the Kardashians, Tamar to the Braxtons or Ozzy to the Osbournes; a fascinating character, for sure, but part of a larger messier family.
And so this piece centers around an ancient family whose overzealous ambitions got in the way of them establishing a long-lasting royal lineage. The world is probably a better place for it, to be honest.
Jezebel was so privileged from the moment of her birth that she might as well have had a personal legion of handmaids to escort her through the birth canal. Her dad was one Ithobaal, king of Tyre (located in modern-day Lebanon). Back then though, Tyre was its own separate nation.
A nation which Ithobaal had done a pretty sterling job of ruling, mind you. During his reign, Tyre expanded, making most of the neighbouring region part of its own territory by devastating the armies of the surrounding nations and tribes, through a combination of brute strength and testosterone-infused imperial fortitude. Kicking butt and taking names, basically.
In between decimating his enemies, Ithobaal served as the high priest of the bevy of Phoenician gods, including the fertility deities Asterte and Baal. This dude was essentially the Pope and the King. The Pong, if you will.
Not too far from Tyre’s shores was the nation of Israel. And if you thought Country X was bad, well Israel was a nation in complete disarray. After King Solomon died and left his dunderhead of a son in charge, the Israelites split into two kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south.
The first king of the north was a dude named Omri. He established the capital in a place called Samaria in an attempt to bring some kind of national pride to the new state. This didn’t work all that well because internal tribal differences still racked the rickety nation.
After Omri died, his son Ahab inherited the throne. In probably a wise move on his part, Ahab reached out to Ithobaal of Tyre to establish some kind of military alliance. Probably tired from all the fighting and seeing that there was very little to gain from laying siege to the backwater kingdom that Israel was, Ithobaal agreed.
To seal the deal, King Ahab would marry princess Jezebel. And just a note, if marrying someone is a term of a contract, you may need to reconsider what you’re getting yourself into. But then again, this was standard practice in ancient times so no harm no foul.
And so, Jezebel was all set to make the traumatic transition from a life of absolute luxury in Tyre to a life of relative luxury in Israel.
However, the main problem that, for some reason, everyone seemed to overlook - aside from the fact that all of this was decided by a plenary of dudes and nobody had even bothered to consider what the young Princess Jezebel wanted for her life - was that Israel, unlike its Phoenician neighbours, had only one God: Yahweh. And according to the law of Yahweh, the Israelites were not to intermarry with their foreign neighbours, for reasons that will become clear later.
Sure, nobody really cared about the law of Yahweh anymore. Least of all the new king, Ahab. But still, Israel was fundamentally a monotheistic nation and while having a foreign cutie as a Queen was fine, there was some resistance to all that it involved.
For one thing, having had a Pong for a father, Jez was pretty committed to her religion and wasn’t quite ready to give up her coterie of deities to serve only one. Jezebel didn’t even try to fit in with her new subjects and imposed her religion on the hapless Israelites.
Now forcing your beliefs on people is one thing but having the local Jewish priests and prophets executed is quite another. After ridding the land - or so she thought - of Yahweh’s messengers, Jezebel brought in 850 of her own sorcerers and priests. She also established the worship of her gods, Asterte and Baal, as the official state religion; outlawing the very mention of Yahweh.
According to rumours, her brand of worship involved, among other things, barbequing babies as sacrifice to her gods. King Ahab couldn’t have cared less. After all, most of the children who were executed probably belonged to peasant families. They’d have probably died from like polio, measles, diarrhea, or something anyway.
Anyhoo, Ahab and Jez were to become the kind of power couple of folklore. Well, more Jezebel. Ahab was a spoiled brat who because he’d had everything handed to him on a silver platter was an irritable and pouty man-boy with the emotional maturity of Alvin the Chipmunk.
In one incident, Ahab wanted to enlarge his lands by buying up the property of his neighbor, Naboth. Naboth refused. Because he had the right to and also because it was Jewish custom to keep land within the family.
Having heard the word “no” for the first time in his life, King Ahab went home shocked and confused. He was so upset that he refused to talk or eat and spent his days in bed, writhing and groaning so much you’d be forgiven for thinking he’d contracted a highly contagious respiratory illness that originated in a populous Asian country.
When Jezebel found the sulking king, she quickly reminded him that he had unfettered power to do whatever sordid thing his mind thought up and nobody could tell him otherwise. Unless of course they wanted to end up face-down in the Jordan River with a dozen arrows sticking out of their necks.
After that motivational pep talk, Jezebel ordered that Naboth be stoned to death for treason. This wasn’t actually a capital offence in Israel at the time but Jezebel didn’t give a rat’s backside. And the people of Israel went with it because hey, better Naboth than them right?
With Naboth out of the way, the Queen turned her attention to another problem: the pesky prophet named Elijah.
Elijah was like Bear Gryllz before Bear Gryllz. I mean this dude was hardcore; he ate honey flavoured wild locusts as his staple diet for goodness’ sake. But that aside, Elijah was also a rugged prophet with a message that spoke Yahweh’s truth to the privileged and powerful.
Like mosquitoes that seem to use the smoke from the fumes of mosquito coils as shisha, Elijah had somehow survived the earlier extermination of the Lord’s prophets. Now, he would occasionally pop up, saying mean and hurtful things about the royals like insinuating that their time in power was coming to an end and that they were going to be judged by Yahweh.
Elijah also went so far as to claim that the drought that the country was enduring was punishment from Yahweh
And as fun as this prolonged game of whack-a-mole had been, Jezebel was about ready to silence the rabble rousing prophet once and for all. After a lengthy but epic war of words between the two, Elijah had finally challenged Jez and her priests to a showdown.
Mount Carmel, just outside Samaria was to be ground zero for an event more highly anticipated than Wrestlemania 37 or the return of live professional sports. The rules were simple. Each side would place their sacrifice of choice on an altar; cows were the preferred option because well...beef. The deity who responded by engulfing the offering in flames would be proven to be the real and true God. The steaks could not have been higher.
It was a rout.
After hours of trying to cajole Baal and Asterte to say something...anything...Jezebel’s priests hit a dead end and gave up. Minutes after Elijah had set it up, fire from the sky engulfed his sacrifice. Yahweh had won the day.
The part they probably didn’t tell you in Sunday school is that a buoyant Elijah somehow managed to fashion a weapon and proceeded to hack, impale and dismember each of the several hundred priests that were there to death. Presumably, the priests, being priests, didn’t fight back.
When Jezebel heard of the events at Carmel, she threw her toys out of the pram and placed a bounty on Elijah’s head. A more than generous reward was offered to anyone who could stick a blunt sieve through Elijah’s spleen and bring back his head on a swivel like a toffee apple at an amusement park.
Now, Elijah was brave but he was no Walker Texas Ranger or anything. Hearing of the danger, he had fled into the wilderness where he spent his days napping and having snacks delivered to him by ravens.
And now, Elijah would pop up now and again with choice words for Jezebel, including that rabid dogs would devour her flesh for all her misdemeanours.
Harsh but prophetic words.
Meanwhile, at the palace, things started to unravel. Soon after Elijah’s prophecy, Ahab made the stupid decision to go to war against the Assyrians. Even though he was advised that this was a hair-brained move that was likely to get him and thousands of others killed, Ahab was like “YOLO” and did it anyway.
Well sort of. Since a local seer had informed him that if he went to war, he’d be coming back in a body bag, Ahab thought that a way to circumvent this morbid prophecy was to basically put on a Halloween costume and disguise himself on the battlefield.
That worked as well as you’d expect a plan like that to. King Ahab tragically met his end from a stray arrow that some lackadaisical Assyrian soldier had lazily fired into the haze of the battleground.
The loss of a king was gain to a nearby herd of pigs which feasted on the blood and entrails of the dying royal - a detail that's only relevant because it’s revolting and because coming into contact with swine made even the body of Ahab ritually unclean according to the law of Israel.
Ah well, he died as he lived, I guess.
Ahab was succeeded by his son, Ahaziah. Oh yeah, Jez and Ahab had kids. Ahaziah turned out to be an even bigger dipstick than his dad, if that was at all possible. After trying but failing miserably to win the hearts and minds of his people, Ahaziah retreated to the palace where he found solace crying in the lap of his mum and at the bottom of booze-filled urns.
So bad was his drinking habit that on one occasion, while staggering back to his quarters after a midnight bender, he fell several storeys to the pavement through a latticed window.
Bedridden, incapacitated, and in agony from his injuries, Ahaziah sent for the prophets of Baal to come heal him. The messengers never made it to the temple. They were intercepted by that irritating Elijah, who for some reason, had developed enough of a backbone to show his face in public again.
Elijah told the messengers to go back and tell the King that, for his deeds and for seeking a god that was not the God of Israel, he would never rise from his bed.
And he never did.
Because Ahaziah had no children, the kingdom was handed over to his brother, Jehoram. At least in name. The Queen Mother, Jezebel, was still the one in charge for all intents and purposes. And what’s better than ruling one kingdom by proxy? Well, ruling two of them by proxy, of course.
The names get confusing at this point but hang in there.
In addition to their delinquent sons, Ahab and Jezebel also had a daughter named Athaliah.
Actually Ahab had a LOT more kids from his other wives and baby mamas. Ahab had so many sons, he should have been called...Ahab-raham. *Ba dum tss*
Anyhow, Athaliah, like moms, had been married off in a strategic alliance. She was handed over to King Joram of the southern kingdom of Judah. The two had a son soon after, who was named Ahaziah in a strange ode to her intemperate brother.
Sadly, King Joram died soon after the young lad’s 21st birthday. Apparently, grandma’s house was a good place to mourn, so some time after the death of his pops, Ahaziah, now the incumbent King of Judah made the trek up to Samaria.
Unbeknownst to anyone in the royal family, a revolution was brewing.
While the family reunion was going on, a military man named Jehu, in something reminiscent of Game of Thrones, decided that now was the right time to make a move for the throne(s) and once again unite the 2 kingdoms. This actually wasn’t a bad plan. In theory. In fact, Jehu had personally been appointed King of Israel in a shadow ceremony conducted by none other than that sneaky Elijah.
Well, with the connivance of some of Jezebel’s guards, a full-on palace coup was afoot.
It wasn’t very subtle, if truth be told. Jehu’s men rode into Samaria, administering fresh cans of whoop-ass on anyone who tried to stop them. Most of Israel’s army had defected anyway, so it's not like there was a whole lot of opposition.
Ahaziah and his Uncle Jehoram both went out to meet the rebellious entourage, with Jehoram learning too late of Jehu's murderous intentions. Ahaziah watched as his uncle was shot by Jehu, who was armed with a bow. Ahaziah fled for his life, but was mortally wounded by Jehu’s henchmen before dying in a lagoon of his own blood.
Jezebel, realising that her end was in sight, determined that she would at least go out in style. She decked herself out in her finest dress and performed an extravagant face beat that even Mihlali Ndamase would struggle to outdo. A face beat before a beat down.
Glancing out the palace window, Jezebel saw an army riding toward her yelling for here to be thrown down. To save themselves, the servants pushed the queen out of the window to the streets below where the army’s horses trampled her to death.
The soldiers sieged the palace and then went back to bury the deposed Jezebel—for though she was a wicked queen who they thoroughly hated, she was still a queen. And queens need royal funerals, ornamental tombs, decorated caskets and all that good stuff. But when the soldiers got to the place she had fallen, all they found were several splintered bones. Dogs had eaten the rest.
But that wasn’t the end of this brutal affair.
Jehu ordered hits on all of Ahab’s kids, presumably to destroy the bloodline forever. As evidence that the deed was done, the heads of the slain were severed, placed in baskets and hand-delivered to the coup-general faster than Amazon Prime. Jehu also lured Jezebel’s prophets, or those that remained, into a pagan temple where they were also executed en masse.
Daughter Athaliah was to meet a similar fate. After receiving this devastating news, she moved mad and tried to institute a massacre of the royal bloodline of Judah to consolidate power in her hands. This was brought to an end and so was her life. And behold, the Jezebels were no more. Pretty much.
The moral of the story is that all dynasties come to an end at some point. Oh, and you can’t choose your family but you sure can choose whether you’ll try to build a personal empire off imposing your beliefs on people who clearly don’t share them.
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