Jezebel: The Untold Story of the Bible's Harlot Queen
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“Had the biblical authors and editors”: Finkelstein and Silberman, The Bible Unearthed.
Monolith Inscription: Text in Miller and Hayes, History of Ancient Israel and Judah.
the Moabite Stone: Ibid.
Israel as bit-Humri: e.g., on the Black Obelisk of Shalmanezer III, ibid.
Like Rabin: Yitzhak Rabin, chief of staff during Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, later became prime minister and the architect of a tentative agreement with the Palestinians. For this he was accused of treason by extreme right-wing Israelis and, in 1995, was assassinated by a fundamentalist fanatic.
Ahab and Jezebel’s palace: See Reissner, Fisher, and Lyon, Harvard Excavations.
“the house of ivory”: 1 Kings 22:39.
four hundred priestesses: 1 Kings 18:19.
“Yahweh and his Asherah”: See Becking et al., Only One God? Both Astarte and Asherah are regional variations on the Mesopotamian Ishtar, also known as Ishara, for whom the wedding bed was laid in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
“the queen of heaven”: Jeremiah 7:18.
fertility cakes: Ibid. The triangular poppy-seed-filled haman taschen— “Haman’s ears”—baked for the Jewish festival of Purim in celebration of Esther’s defeat of the evil Haman are clear descendants of these fertility cakes. 43–44 “polytheistic Yahwism”: Smith, Early History of God.
the Baal Cycle: See Smith, Ugaritic Baal Cycle.
a stand-alone chapter: 1 Kings 20.
“So may the gods do to me”: 1 Kings 20:10.
“It is not the man who puts on armor”: 1 Kings 20:11.
“like two herds of goats”: 1 Kings 20:27.
“If we dress in sackcloth”: 1 Kings 20:31.
“Your servant Ben-Hadad begs you”: 1 Kings 20:32.
“He is my brother”: 1 Kings 20:32.
“When Yahweh your god gives”: Deuteronomy 7:2.
“smite Amalek”: 1 Samuel 15:3.
“Because you have rejected”: 1 Samuel 15:23.
“a man of blood”: 1 Chronicles 28:3.
“I seized and killed”: Text of the Moabite Stone, a.k.a. the Mesha Inscription, in Miller and Hayes, History of Ancient Israel and Judah.
herem: For an in-depth discussion of this concept, see Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible. Note that the concept was later softened in rabbinical Judaism to become excommunication, or a ban.
“sold himself into evil”: 1 Kings 21:25.
“incited by Jezebel his wife”: Ibid.
“Because you have let go the man”: 1 Kings 20:42.
3. Gilead
“Go up unto Gilead, and take balm”: Jeremiah 46:11.
“Is there no balm in Gilead?”: Jeremiah 8:22.
the tel of Master Elijah: A tel is a low hill or mound created when a new city is repeatedly built on top of the ruins of a previous one, then is eventually abandoned so that it is covered over with dust and silt.
“Elijah of Tishbi”: 1 Kings 17:1.
an eternal lesson in atonement: See Helner, “Zealous Spirit.”
“militant” or “opposition” prophecy: See Uffenheimer, Early Prophecy in Israel.
“the zealot may be outwardly motivated”: Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven.
“he exhibits an intense, prurient disgust”: Raban, My Holy War.
“The Believer from his height”: Qutb, Milestones.
Think of argument as war: Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant.
“You have polluted the country”: Jeremiah 3:2.
66–67 “playing the harlot”: The verb zana, meaning “to prostitute oneself” or “to play the harlot,” is used to speak of apostasy in, among others, Exodus 34:15–16; Deuteronomy 31:16; throughout Leviticus; Numbers 15:39 and 25:1; Judges 2:17 and 8:27; 1 Chronicles 5:25; fifteen times in Ezekiel; throughout Jeremiah 2 and 3; Psalm 106:39; and Hosea 1:2, 4:5, 4:12, and 9:3.
“sons of a sorceress”: Isaiah 57:3.
“You have offered your services”: Ezekiel 16:28–29.
“a lustful she-camel”: Jeremiah 2:23–24. The meaning is evaded in the King James translation; the Jerusalem Bible renders the passage this way: “A frantic she-camel running in all directions…snuffing the breeze in desire; who can control her when she is in heat?”
“infatuated by profligates”: Ezekiel 23:20.
“Let her rid her face of her whoring”: Hosea 2:2–3, 2:13, 2:16–17. The last four lines here involve a triple entendre on the word “Baal.” The name used as “lord” for any foreign god also means both “owner” and “husband” and is still used in both these senses in modern Hebrew.
68–69 “They will level your mound”: Ezekiel 16:39.
“pagan queen”: In, for instance, Gloria Howe Bremkamp’s novel Merai: The Woman Who Challenged Queen Jezebel and the Pagan Gods (Harper, 1986).
the myth of orgy: The phrase was coined by Frymer-Kensky in In the Wake of the Goddesses.
“sacred prostitute”: See in particular Bird, Missing Persons: Oden, Bible Without Theology; Hooks, Sacred Prostitution.
“The temples of the Semitic deities”: Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites.
“voluptuous and dissolute”: Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile.
“Immorality was nowhere so flagrant”: Cumont, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism.
“all girls were obliged”: Fraser, Golden Bough, vol. 1, pt. 4.
“Sacred prostitution was apparently”: Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel.
“There is, to be sure, a mounting hesitancy”: Oden, Bible Without Theology.
“The foulest Babylonian custom”: Herodotus, History, vol. 1.
women began to rise in the ranks: See, most notably, Ackerman, Under Every Green Tree; Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses; Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities; Yee, Poor Banished Children of Eve.
Western image of the Middle East: See Said, Orientalism.
“As Yahweh the god of Israel lives”: 1 Kings 17:1.
4. Carmel
“You shall be cursed in the city”: Deuteronomy 28:16.
the advent of iron tools: See Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology.
“Take heed that your heart be not deceived”: Deuteronomy 11:16.
“I will make a wilderness of her”: Hosea 2:3.
“internal jihad”: In Stern, Terror in the Name of God.
“because the true faith is in jeopardy”: Ibid.
“a cleansing force”: Fanon, Wretched of the Earth.
“Now I know that you are a man of god”: 1 Kings 17:24.
“Go show yourself to Ahab”: 1 Kings 18:1.
“Is it you, you troubler of Israel”: 1 Kings 18:7.
“It is not I who have afflicted Israel”: 1 Kings 18:18.
“Go gather all of Israel”: 1 Kings 18:19.
the highest point of Mount Carmel: Geologists have in fact established that another part of the Upper Carmel, closer to Haifa, is a few feet higher than the Muhraka, but the Muhraka is nonetheless still known as the highest point, partly because of tradition and partly because it looks higher to the naked eye.
“Then the prophet Elijah arose”: Ben-Sirah/Ecclesiasticus, 48:1.
“the site of Armageddon”: The only reference in the Bible to Armageddon is in Revelation 16:16 (“And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon”). The assumption is that this is a Greek corruption of the Hebrew Har Megiddo, meaning Mount Megiddo, though in fact there is no Mount Megiddo and never was. Megiddo was a city at the southwestern edge of the long, wide Valley of Jezreel. It was a ceremonial center in prebiblical times, an administrative center in Omride times, subsequently a fortified city, and currently an archaeological park. Today it is referred to as Tel Megiddo.
thirty-four major battles: See Cline, Battles of Armageddon.
“Choose!” he yelled: 1 Kings 18:21.
“whichever god answers”: 1 Kings 18:24.
“there was no voice, and none who answ
ered”: 1 Kings 18:26.
“They leaped around the altar”: Ibid.
“They began to howl:” Quoted in de Vaux, Bible and the Ancient Near East.
Enheduanna: Quoted in Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses.
“She cut her skin with a stone”: Translated by Ackerman in Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen.
“answering a call of nature”: 1 Kings 18:27. The King James translation evasively renders this as “gone aside.”
“Yahweh, the god of Abraham”: 1 Kings 18:36.
“And then Yahweh’s fire fell”: 1 Kings 18:38.
“Take hold of the priests of Baal”: 1 Kings 18:40.
95–96 a cloud “as small as a man’s hand”: 1 Kings 18:44.
“Whoever is on the side of Yahweh, to me”: Exodus 32:26.
“So may the gods do to me”: 1 Kings 19:2.
“If you are Elijah”: In Basileion C, Kings III 19:2 (1 Kings 19:2) of Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, tr. Brenton.
“Her liver swelled with laughter”: Translated by Ackerman in Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen.
“He ran for his life”: 1 Kings 19:3.
5. The Vineyard
A series of excavations: See Ussishkin and Woodhead, “Excavations at Tel Jezreel.”
“Once there was a vineyard”: 1 Kings 21:1.
“Give me your vineyard”: 1 Kings 21:2.
Moses’ spies from the land of Canaan: Numbers 13:23.
“Yahweh forbids me”: 1 Kings 21:3.
“Land is a central…theme”: Brueggemann, Land.
charter of the ruling Hamas party: The English translation of the 1988 text is online at www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html.
two mule-loads of Israelite soil: 2 Kings 5:17.
“sullen and displeased”: 1 Kings 21:4.
“Why are you so displeased”: 1 Kings 21:5.
Talmudist Adin Steinsaltz: Personal communication to the author.
“Ahab was so addicted to her”: Wiesel, Five Biblical Portraits.
“a coward in thine own esteem”: Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I, scene VII.
“Come you spirits, unsex me here”: Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I, scene V.
“She wrote letters in Ahab’s name”: 1 Kings 21:8.
“a kind of lynch law of ancient times”: Rofé, “Vineyard of Naboth.”
the Whitewater affair: It is disconcerting to realize that nearly three thousand years after the episode of Naboth’s vineyard, the Whitewater real estate scandal of the 1990s was manufactured by political opponents of the Clinton administration to discredit a sitting president and his outspoken wife, even down to malicious rumors that an aide who committed suicide had actually been murdered to ensure his silence. Those who drummed up the scandal may well have taken their cue from Kings, seeing Hillary Clinton as a modern Jezebel whose political outlook threatened the conservative agenda of orthodox Republicans.
“Jezebel reveals the whole plot”: Rofé, “Vineyard of Naboth.”
“cut off” the priests of Yahweh: 1 Kings 18:4.
two halves of a slaughtered animal: Jeremiah 34:18, which reads “I will make the men who transgressed my covenant…like the calf which they cut in two and passed between its parts.” For more, see Hillers, Covenant.
“killed the priests of Yahweh”: 1 Kings 18:13.
“Get up and take possession”: 1 Kings 21:15.
“Have you found me, my enemy?” 1 Kings 21:20.
“Have you murdered”: 1 Kings 21:19.
“I want to ask you”: Quoted in Ari Shavit, “The General: An Israeli Journalist’s Six Years of Conversation with Ariel Sharon,” The New Yorker, January 23 and 30, 2006.
“Woe to those who are at ease”: Amos 6:1.
“Kings is the history of landed Israel”: Brueggemann, Land.
“I will bring evil upon you”: 1 Kings 21:21.
“And I will cut off from Ahab every one”: Ibid.
“Ahab’s people who die in the city”: 1 Kings 21:24.
King Jeroboam and King Baasha: 1 Kings 15:11 and 1 Kings 16:4.
“And the dogs shall eat Jezebel”: 1 Kings 21:23.
6. Sinai
“the God-trodden mountain”: Kazantzakis, Journeying.
“And behold the Lord passed by”: 1 Kings 19:11.
“What are you doing here, Elijah?”: 1 Kings 19:13.
“I have been very zealous”: 1 Kings 19:14.
“Go back by way of Damascus”: 1 Kings 19:15.
creation of Adam and Eve: “Male and female created he them” in Genesis 1:27, and “from the rib, he made a woman” in Genesis 2:22.
he’s plowing the fields of Abel Mehola: 1 Kings 19:19.
“As Yahweh lives”: 2 Kings 2:2.
“May your spirit be doubled in me”: 2 Kings 2:9.
a chariot of fire appears: 2 Kings 2:12.
“The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha”: 2 Kings 2:15.
merkaba (chariot) mysticism: For an introduction to the subject, see Silberman, Heavenly Powers.
eternal hero: Campbell, Hero With a Thousand Faces.
Moses died on Mount Nebo: Deuteronomy 34:1.
“heal the water”: 2 Kings 2:21.
“Rise up thou bald one”: 2 Kings 2:23.
calls into being two bears: 2 Kings 2:24.
7. Damascus
“he rent his clothes”: 1 Kings 21:27.
“Go up to Ramot Gilead and prosper”: 1 Kings 22:15.
“How many times do I have to make you swear”: 1 Kings 22:16.
“Yahweh has put a lying spirit”: 1 Kings 22:22.
“If you return at all in peace”: 1 Kings 22:28.
“between the lower armor and the breastplate”: 1 Kings 22:34.
“in innocence”: Ibid.
“And the blood ran out of the wound”: 1 Kings 22:35.
“washed by the pool, and the dogs”: 1 Kings 22:38.
a deliberate contraction: Gray, I and II Kings.
“A land that devours its inhabitants”: Numbers 13:32.
a full week of public mourning: For details of mourning rituals, see Olyan, Biblical Mourning.
“You have been called, O Ahab”: Adapted by me from a Phoenician funerary incantation in Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit.
“drank tears like wine”: Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen.
“Well-being for Ahab”: Adapted by me from a Phoenician funerary incantation in Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit.
the title of Great Lady or gevira: For more on the role of the queen mother, see Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen.
visiting her husband and bowing down: 1 Kings 1:16.
her son, King Solomon, bows down to her: 1 Kings 2:19.
her younger son Joram: Those referring back to Kings will find considerable confusion as to nomenclature. Joram and Jehoram are used interchangeably both for Jezebel’s younger son and for her son-in-law (the son of the Judean king Jehoshaphat), while Ahaziah is the name both of Jezebel’s elder son (the one who died after falling from a balcony) and of her grandson Ahaziah of Judea.
“I am Mesha, son of Chemosh-Yat”: Text of the Mesha Inscription, a.k.a. the Moabite Stone, in Miller and Hayes, History of Ancient Israel and Judah.
“What have I to do with you?”: 2 Kings 3:13.
“Yahweh will deliver the Moabites”: 2 Kings 3:18.
“took his eldest son, the heir”: 2 Kings 3:27.
high infant mortality rate: See Jackson, Doctors and Diseases in the Roman Empire.
a senior Damascus general: The story of Naaman and Elisha takes up most of 2 Kings 5.
“every good thing of Damascus”: 2 Kings 8:9.
“Your son Ben-Hadad, king of Damascus”: 2 Kings 8:8.
“Go tell the king that he will certainly recover”: 2 Kings 8:10.
“Why do you weep, my lord?”: 2 Kings 8:12.
“Because I know the evil”: Ibid.
“But who am I, your servant”: 2 Kings 8:13.
“Yahweh has shown me”: Ibid.
“Then the next day, he took a cloth”: 2 Kings 8:15.
“Gird up your loins”: 2 Kings 9:1.
“Thus says Yahweh the god”: 2 Kings 9:6.
“they blew the horn”: 2 Kings 9:13.
8. Jezreel
“The wild dogs of Najaf”: Berenson, “After the Siege, a City of Ruins, Its Dead Rotting.”
“That you roar at the land”: In Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses.
“When someone’s javelin or sword”: Homer, Iliad.
yet modern chemical analysis: Rozell, “Dog Saliva: The Next Wonder Drug?”
dogs as effective as high-tech medical testing: McNeil, “Dogs Excel on Smell Test to Find Cancer.”
hair of a dog placed on the forehead: In Pardee, Ritual and Cult in Ugarit.
“May the valley be filled with their bodies”: In Miller and Hayes, History of Ancient Israel and Judah.
“Their corpses will be eaten by dogs”: In Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts.
two Israelite kings: Jeroboam and Baasha.
“in madness”: 2 Kings 9:20.
“Is it peace, Jehu?”: 2 Kings 9:22.
“What peace, when your mother Jezebel’s harlotries”: 2 Kings 9:22.
“Treachery, Ahaziah!”: 2 Kings 9:23.
“He drew his bow with his full strength”: 2 Kings 9:24.
“Cut him down too”: 2 Kings 9:27.
“She painted her eyes”: 2 Kings 9:30.