Everyone has known someone who always seemed to win, who bent the rules in their favor and never paid the price, until the day the bill came due. Jezebel’s life is the Bible’s most complete story of that kind of power, used without limits, collected without mercy.
She was the daughter of Ethbaal, king of Sidon, in Phoenicia, a region that today corresponds to Lebanon. When she married Ahab, king of Israel, she brought with her own gods, Baal and Asherah, and the ambition to impose them on the LORD’s people (1 Kings 16:31).
As queen, she was not content to worship in private. She kept hundreds of prophets of Baal and Asherah at the palace table, and persecuted the prophets of the LORD with such violence that the survivors had to hide in caves (1 Kings 18:4, 13, 19).
When Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, Jezebel did not repent. She threatened. She swore to kill the prophet within twenty four hours, and drove him to flee into the desert, exhausted and alone (1 Kings 19:1-2).
Her darkest moment came over a vineyard. When Naboth refused to sell it to Ahab, she arranged a false trial, and the man was stoned for a crime he did not commit (1 Kings 21:1-16). It was there that Elijah announced the end, dogs would eat her body by the wall of Jezreel.
Years later, when Jehu marched on Jezreel to seize the throne, Jezebel painted her eyes, arranged her hair, and looked out the window, trying to command respect until the very last moment. She was thrown down from there, and exactly what Elijah had said came to pass (2 Kings 9:30-37).
Jezebel’s story unsettles because it exposes something we would rather not see, how much power and talent can be used for evil when there is no fear of God to restrain one’s own will. She did not fall by chance, she was judged by the One who saw every scheme behind the palace curtains.
God is not in a hurry, but neither does he forget. That is the warning, and at the same time the comfort, that Jezebel’s life leaves for those who read her story today.