How many women in this congregation are wearing makeup? How many of you actually feel rather undressed if you go out without your lipstick? My mother, who turned 104 in September, used to be so dependent on makeup she even wore lipstick and eye liner on hiking trips. I don’t often wear makeup myself, but I do on Sundays, to preach, because it’s part of dressing up.
Did you know that at one time a woman who wore cosmetics at all would have been called a “Jezebel”? Or, more likely, a “painted Jezebel”? It was a pretty major insult, too. If you wore paint on your face, you were a wicked, scheming hussy - trying to tempt men away from the stern road of duty. But it’s funny that Jezebel should be remembered for painting her face, because that may have been her finest hour. She was an old woman by then, her husband had been dead for fifteen years, and the general who had just killed her son was coming to kill her and take over the kingdom. But she didn’t run. Jezebel dressed up and faced him bravely. And I admire courage, don’t you? Even in a villain.
Let me explain.
You see, Jezebel was a Phoenician princess, and when she married King Ahab of Israel, she was bound and determined to rule as a Phoenician, not as an Israelite. And during her twenty-year tenure as Queen of Israel she did just that. Ahab was a good military leader, no question about it, Israel was the strongest power in the area back then, but when it came to domestic affairs he didn’t have a whole lot of say. So when Jezebel embarked on her persecution of the prophets of YHWH, Ahab pretty much stayed out of her way and let her do it. Of course, he probably didn’t care much, either, because the northern kingdom never was particularly interested in maintaining right worship. They built their own unauthorized temple after they split off from the southern kingdom of Judah after Solomon’s death about 100 years before. I suppose you could say they practiced religious freedom - you could worship whatever god you wanted - fertility gods, thunder gods, moon goddesses, whoever you thought might give you what you wanted. But Jezebel wasn’t satisfied when Ahab built her an altar to Ba'al, and set up poles for worshiping Asherah, the goddess of fertility. Nope. She wanted more. I don’t know what her motivations were - whether it was religious fervor, political ambition, or just sheer bloody-mindedness - but I imagine something like this. Listen to Jezebel tell it.
It was really a dreadful comedown when my father Eshbaal gave me to Ahab of Israel, but I understood, because although we Sidonians were very rich we were too small to have any military strength, and it was either knuckle under to Israel or buy into a share of their clout. But it was the most provincial little backwater imaginable! So I decided that, if I was going to live there, I’d just have to make it my duty to enlighten those backward, ignorant hill people and bring them the benefits of the very finest modern Phoenician art and culture. You see, we Phoenicians were the merchants and explorers of the world. Our ships and sailors brought back goods and ideas from all parts of the world, and we always heard everything new, and had everything new, before anyone else did. I was simply determined that during Ahab’s and my reign Israel would become even more splendid and up-to-date than Sidon. Ahab’s capital Samaria had a lot of potential. It was brand new, though; Ahab’s father Omri had built it only a generation before, and it was still pretty raw and unfinished. It was just made for a woman of my talents to transform, and I was absolutely determined that I, Queen Jezebel, would turn it into a showpiece that would be talked about from Memphis to Babylon.
The very first thing we had to do, of course, was get the gods on our side. Would you believe it, there wasn’t a single temple to Ba’al in the entire city? And there wasn’t even one sacred grove on the slopes of Mt. Ebal. What the goddess Asherah thought I have no idea, but I myself was simply shocked. I just couldn’t believe it. Apparently a lot of those country bumpkins still worshiped some sour-faced old-fashioned god named YHWH (I ask you - what kind of a name is that?) or as some people called him “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Anyway, he disapproved of everything I wanted to do, and his priests did nothing but make trouble. There was a wild-eyed scruffy disreputable sort of fellow running around who actually thought he could give orders to King Ahab and me! His name was Elijah. He didn’t come into town very often, though, so mostly we just ignored him. After all, what did ignorant back-country peasant superstitions have to do with us?
At least that’s what I thought. And, of course, in any really civilized country I would have been right. But then we had this drought. Now, droughts happen all the time, right? And what you do is, you buy grain from Egypt, and dole out enough to keep the people from either starving or rebelling, and put on a lot of big showy supplication services at the temple, with plenty of wine and dancing to keep morale up. And pretty soon it rains again and everything goes back to normal.
But no. This kook Elijah decides to take advantage of the situation and goes up and down the country announcing that this - this - this YHWH of his was punishing the country for paying a little decent respect to Ba’al, and that it wouldn’t rain again until he, Elijah, said it would. Well, I ask you. Who would believe a thing like that? But then the local contingent of YHWH-ist fanatics started stirring up the crowds against Ahab and me, right there in Samaria. What a nerve! So I had my personal bodyguard round them up and bring them in and had them all beheaded for treason, and that was the end of THAT little disturbance. Ahab got a little bent out of shape, though. I think he’s scared of Elijah himself, though he’d never admit it.
But in the meantime, Elijah was still stirring up trouble out in the hinterlands. And the next thing you know, he staged this demonstration up on Mt. Carmel that was supposed to be some kind of contest between Ba’al and YHWH. I don’t know how it could have happened, but apparently Ba’al’s priests lost, and Elijah incited the crowd to kill all four hundred fifty of them.
That was just too much, you know. I’d kept my hands off of Elijah so far, after all he did have a following, but I simply couldn’t let him get away with this. When a nut like that gets the bit in his teeth and starts thinking he can push the government around, who knows where it will all end? You just can’t have religious fanatics going around breaking the law and claiming that God told them to do it. So I sent a messenger to Elijah telling him his days were numbered. And sure enough - he collapsed like a burst balloon and ran for his life.
It did start to rain again, but I’m sure that was just a coincidence.
Well, the next thing that happened was that the king of Aram (what you call Syria), whose name was Ben Hadad, decided to make war on Israel. Aram is just to the northeast of Israel and we’ve been fighting one another off and on for generations. It’s sort of like your World Series only the stakes are higher. The border moves back and forth between Aram and Israel every few years like a yo-yo. But this year I just knew we’d win. Weren’t we more powerful than ever? Wasn’t Ahab the best war commander in Canaan? And hadn’t Ahab and I just showed that Elijah that we couldn’t be pushed around? You just have to have conviction and show a little leadership, said I to myself. That’s the secret of a successful monarchy. And that’s what happened. At first it looked as if things were going bad for our side, but then there was a big battle in the Valley of Aphek and the Israelite army just rolled right over the Aramaeans. Ben Hadad, their king, was taken prisoner and brought into Samaria.
Ahab cut a deal with him and let him go in return for ceding all the land ¬from Galilee to Damascus to Israel. I thought it was a pretty good bargain, myself. It increased our territory about fifty percent, and gave us the Golan Heights and control over the Mt. Hermon water rights. But then another one of those so-called prophets told Ahab that YHWH had wanted Ben-Hadad killed, and that because Ahab let him go he would have to die himself.
So Ahab got very depressed. He and lost his appetite and wouldn’t even get out of bed, so I just had to do something. And I remembered this vineyard down in Jezreel that Ahab had really wanted to buy. It belonged to one of the old-timers, a real fossil named Naboth, who had the nerve to refuse to sell, even though Ahab was far more generous than he had any right to expect. He offered to trade it for a property of equal value, he offered to pay twice what it was worth, and still Naboth wouldn’t give in. He said YHWH gave the land to his ancestors and that it would be sacrilegious to sell it.
Well, when I heard that I knew I’d have to take matters into my own hands. Naboth should have been honored to serve the king! I thought we were done with all that superstitious balderdash. And then watching Ahab knuckle under was just the last straw. Was he the king of Israel or wasn’t he?
So I wrote to the elders and nobles of Jezreel and we cooked up a nice little trial, all legal and above-board, with two very convincing and well-paid witnesses to accuse Naboth of blasphemy and slander against the king. He was taken out and stoned to death, and that was the end of that. I had learned to do it all according to their law, so that nobody could point fingers and accuse me of taking shortcuts. And SNAP! The vineyard was his.
But then when Ahab went down to inspect it, who should turn up again but Elijah! And when he threatened Ahab again, Ahab just rolled completely over. He never went back to the vineyard. And things were never really the same after that, Ahab didn’t exactly start worshiping YHWH or anything that extreme, but he kept looking over his shoulder, so to speak. He died at the battle of Ramoth-Gilead a couple of years later.
Jezebel has quite a story, doesn’t she. Most of it is in 1 Kings, although her death is recorded in 2 Kings. And if you look at it piece by piece, you can actually make excuses for her.
As far as her persecution of the prophets goes, maybe she really was a fervent believer in the gods of her own country. She may have been misguided, but if she was sincere, isn’t that what counts? That’s what our culture tells us today, anyway.
Or maybe she really felt that letting prophets get away with denouncing the authorities was dangerous, and that she had a moral obligation to silence them in order to maintain stability. They were fanatics, after all, extremists, and they were upsetting things, and making people feel bad, and encouraging people to be disrespectful of their government. And after all, free speech wasn’t something that anybody back then had ever heard of.
And oddly enough, the great confrontation between Elijah and the prophets of Ba’al isn’t part of the lectionary series. Instead, we’re pointed toward this relatively insignificant act - not that fraud and judicial murder are insignificant, but it just doesn’t carry the dramatic impact of Elijah’s great victory. Why do you suppose the compilers of the lectionary picked this passage for us to focus on?
I think it’s because it shows us, in vivid, living color, that Jezebel was not just someone with a different religion, not just someone with a different political philosophy, not someone whose world-view and actions can be minimized or explained away. Jezebel’s hostility to YHWH - to the moral commandments of a holy God - went all the way down to the bone.
How many commandments do you think were broken in these 10 short verses?
Five. That’s right, five.
Ahab began by coveting his neighbor’s land.
He compounded the error by trying to encourage Naboth to dishonor his parents by selling the ancestral property. Woe be to those, Jesus said, who encourage others to sin!
Jezebel took the next step, bearing false witness. That’s perjury, and subornation of perjury.
She capped it with murder. It was done under the guise of law, and others carried out the sentence, but it was murder nonetheless. And she knew it.
And the vineyard came to Ahab through theft.
So what’s our lesson?
The Bible teaches us over and over again that indifference to God leads to hostility to God which leads to crime, injustice, violence. The great Russian writer Dostoevsky said that if there is no God, all things are permitted. And he was right.
The fear of the Lord that leads to wisdom, which as we talked about last week, is the foundation of all other good things as well. Not only wisdom comes from God but also peace, justice, abundance, all those things which are necessary to a good life. You cannot have a good and just society if the people do not recognize their accountability to God, if people make up their own morality out of what seems right to them. When we seek our own good at the expense of others, when we take shortcuts across God’s boundary lines, it may seem right to us at the time, we may be able to justify it to ourselves the way I imagined Jezebel justifying her actions to herself.
Jezebel didn’t believe the prophets, who foretold Ahab’s death, and her son’s, and her own. It was too far away, too far out in the future. She was hungry for power, for wealth, possibly for fame. And she got them all. And the fame she won has lasted nearly 3,000 years. But I don’t think it was what she wanted. Not a great and powerful queen, but a wicked, scheming woman - who wore too much makeup.
