In 1 Samuel 21, we see the story of a queen. Jezebel was her name, and she was married to one of the evilest men who ever became King. Marriage is an adventure and most of the time we hope and trust God that our dreams and expectations will be met. However, marriage doesn’t come with a template, so we get into it and build whatever we have the resources to build.
In building our marriage, some of us rely on ourselves and the smarter ones amongst us run to God so as to build according to godly pattern in the hope that we will get the outcome we desire. However, this is assuming we have the privilege of knowing the ways of God or at least have heard them in the past.
For Jezebel, it was not as clear cut as this. Yes, she was the Queen, and royalty is vested with some level of power and she should enjoy perks that ordinary people don’t. This is how we meet Jezebel in 1 Kings 21, at the climax of her reign as King Ahab’s wife, as well as the end of her husband’s evil reign on the throne of Israel.
However, Jezebel’s story began five chapters before we ever heard of Naboth or his famous vineyard. The first time we heard of Jezebel, her husband, Ahab had just ascended the throne in Chapter 16. As if Ahab’s evil wasn’t enough, he also married Jezebel, the daughter of the Sidonian King, Ethbaaland, as a result; Ahab bowed to Baal worship.
The Bible in Proverbs 18:22 says, ‘whoso finds a wife, finds a good thing and obtains favour from the Lord’. So, if a man who finds a wife finds a good thing and receives favour from God, something must have definitely gone wrong when Ahab married Jezebel, because rather than obtain favour, the Bible records that Ahab’s evil was enhanced because of his relationship with Jezebel.
Let’s pause for a moment and think about what this means? If the Bible lamented Ahab’s marriage to Jezebel, it must be that she comes from a background of pagan worship… yet, if I remember, Moses also married Zipporah, a woman who wasn’t Israelite and the Bible didn’t lament his choice. Ruth was gentile, yet she got written into the genealogy of Jesus Christ and Rehab, even though, an ex-prostitute was also written in.
My take, therefore, is how come just marrying Jezebel cemented Ahab’s fate as a bad King beyond redemption?
It is my understanding that it was not because she was the daughter King Ethbaal of Sidonia, but because she was a proactive pagan worshipper, and her influence on Ahab had the capacity to make an already bad case worse.
So stop for a moment with me, what is said of me when it is discovered that people are in a relationship with me; marital or otherwise? What is the reputation that precedes me? It is my thinking that while Jezebel couldn’t control what others said about her, she could have conducted herself differently in her marriage to Ahab and that could have changed the course of history for them.
However, Jezebel lived every step of the way according to her reputation. She was ‘badder’ than the Bible even reckoned? In chapter 18 of 1 Kings, Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to a contest on Mount Carmel and in the process fire fell from heaven and consumed his offering to God. At the end of that contest, Elijah had the people seize the prophets of Baal and had them slaughtered. In 1 Kings 19, Ahab went home and ‘told Jezebel everything Elijah had done, including the way he had killed all the prophets of Baal.
Hold on! Why does a King go home to ‘recant’ to his wife everything that happened in a gathering of men especially in a patriarchal society? This was no ordinary ‘how was your day?’ conversation; it seems to me that Ahab knew Jezebel was bad like that and so when the work was too dirty he passed it on to her without even making it obvious! Anyway, Ahab told Jezebel all that had happened and Jezebel sent a message to Elijah,and it was a simple and straight forward message:
‘May the gods strike me and even kill me if by this time tomorrow I have not killed you just as you killed them’. What was Elijah’s response? He was afraid and fled for his life.
Question: what makes a man of God who just called down fire from heaven and had 450 prophets of Baal killed afraid? Elijah was afraid because somehow he knew that this was no empty threat Jezebel had issued!
Elijah ran and hid himself. No wonder Ahab, always reported to Jezebel every time he got home, it seems to me that Jezebel was Ahab’s mercenary, she was bad enough not to care what others said and she was stupid enough to think that she would always get the outcomes she desired without any repercussion. However, by the time we get to 1 Kings 21, she realised too late that there is always a day for the wicked or manipulative!
Naboth had this vineyard that had been in his family for years. It is said that this vineyard was part of the land that Caleb his ancestor had to fight for the age of80, and it had been in Naboth’s family for about 600 years. This was the vineyard that Ahab suddenly took an interest in and wanted Naboth to sell to him so he could make a vegetable garden out of it. Who takes a vineyard and makes a vegetable garden out of it? Well, Ahab was the King and in his mind if the King wanted it, then the King should get it!
However, Naboth didn’t think so, so he told Ahab; ‘God forbid that I should give you the inheritance that was passed down by my ancestors.’ Naboth knows the implication of losing or selling an inheritance so he was bold enough to say No to Ahab. True to type, Ahab got upset but everything was fine until Ahab got home and told Jezebel… He was sad he didn’t get his latest item of interest, but he didn’t plan on taking Naboth’s life so he could get his hands on the vineyard; at least that was what it looked like on the surface.
By the time Jezebel found out why the King was sad, she made plans and had Naboth killed and came back to tell the King that the vineyard was now his to acquire because Naboth was dead. Wait; did Ahab ask her how she Naboth died? No, he simply went down and claimed the vineyard. Ahab always knew that Jezebel would fight his battles for him and Ahab was comfortable that way because it meant he didn’t have to do his dirty work by himself!
How did this all end? The hammer fell; God showed up through his prophet the same Elijah and this time he came with notification of destruction. However, Ahab despite his brashness and evil heart always knew something about repentance and by the time the reaper’s axe began to swing he repented so hard that God decided not to bring about the destruction in his life time. God spared him the pain of witnessing his entire lineage perish, however, upon his death in 1 Kings 22, God released the curse of death upon his household and by 2 Kings 9, Jezebel met her waterloo just as the Prophet of the Lord had prophesied.
What can we learn from Jezebel? How can we transact our lives differently from her?
Recently, the Lord started to speak to me about the order in the home. He reminded me how the man is the authority/head of his home and how the woman should give him the room to exercise this authority.
I remember that I thought about the relationships where the man ‘had no clue’ and didn’t even try to, so the woman had to make all the decisions on the direction her household will go. I thought about situations where the man was full of bad decisions, and the woman had to step in so she can make the right ones. Then I thought about where the man had abdicated his responsibility to the extent that it doesn’t even make sense to expect him to step up and make any sensible decisions.
But then the Lord reminded me of those situations where the man didn’t fall in any of the categories above yet, his wife had simply usurped authority and makes all the decisions. Or those cases where in the integrity of our hearts as women and helpers, we have to step in every time because we have seen and witnessed some bad decisions in the past.
In that space I realised that maybe, just maybe Jezebel didn’t start out threatening to kill or kill people, maybe she always knew Ahab was weak, and she didn’t want the people to see how spineless he was as a King so she stepped in every time a tough decision needed to be made. Or maybe it was even the way their relationship had been designed; one where because Ahab needed to be perceived as one thing, he allowed his wife do the dirty work; considering that she is not bound by the laws of the God of Israel. Maybe just maybe…
Regardless of what the details and peculiarities are, one thing is clear looking at Jezebel, and it is the fact that because
where I am coming from doesn’t have to define me, even though I was not always a Christian, common sense tells me that when I find a better way, I should take it. So even though Jezebel wasn’t Jewish maybe she should have considered the ways of their God and bought into something better than what she knew in her father’s palace; after all, Ruth did.
Another thing that stood out for me is that life is an adventure and no matter how hard we try we may never get the specific outcomes we wanted… so rather than continue to live a life of constantly contending with what is, maybe sometimes the true adventure is to be able to go with the flow, trusting that what we will find will better enhance and position us.
Finally, I realised like Jezebel did even though at the end of her life, that structure was laid down for a reason, and it is not my responsibility to determine how everything ends. It is my take that adventure sometimes means we have to make room for others so Jezebel should have made room for the God of Israel and his people even though she came from a different stock. It is also my opinion that even when we love our spouses or the people around us, it is not our place to play God.
Jezebel played god and she not only lost her life, she lost practically everything else her and her family ever hold.
In the words of Paul, sometimes we just ‘can’t fight against the thorns…’because the outcomes are decided by God and God alone.
Tell me; can you relate with Jezebel sometimes? I know I can…