Descent Legends: Palestine
Loyal Daughter of Asherah
Background Info
The story of Jezebel is related in the Bible, though with definite negative bias. The Yawhist priests who composed those passages had little good to say about Jezebel. Feminist historians are now looking beyond the Biblical account and found further information from which they've concluded that Jezebel was no painted harlot, but a passionate evangelist of Asherah.
Jezebel means ‘Where is the prince?’- the ‘prince’ in this context is the god Baal. When Baal was in the Underworld or Land of the Dead, vegetation on the earth’s surface died (winter). Baal's followers chanted ‘Where is the prince?’ as a prayer to encourage the onset of spring and the return of vegetation.
Jezebel was unflinchingly loyal to Baal, and went to her death wearing the ritual make-up and headdress of a high priestess of Baal.
The story of Jezebel is a complicated one of religious conflicts between polytheists and monotheists, as well as political alliances and the nature of kings. Being a daughter of of the monarch of the Phoenician city of Sidon, she is raised to believe that a monarch's power is absolute. She is also a high priestess of Baal, (as were her parents) and is strong and resolute in her religion.
When she was married off to Ahab, ruler of the Northern kingdom of Israel in a political alliance, she was entering a region already rife with dynastic struggles for political power. And, while the worshippers of Yaweh made up the majority of the inhabitants, there was a large group of Baal and Asherah worshippers living there, as well. She became defender of the faith and leader of her religious followers (as well as the enemy to the Yahweh worshippers), while her husband tried to steer a middle course between the two religions.
A long, ugly drought, her husband often off fighting in wars (clothed most often as a common soldier), and with a totally different view of ruling his people than what Jezebel felt was correct, set up a intolerable situation which could only lead to the death of Jezebel.
Throughout the centuries, Jezebel has been attacked as a whore, and her name has been used to describe a woman of promiscuous behavior. But there is nothing written about Jezebel to suggest she was ever unfaithful to Ahab.
She was, however, powerful, a woman and a foreigner. I was tese qualities which made her a target for the prophets of Yahweh. She ruled with arbitrary power (as her father did in Sidon), which went against the Israelite ideal of kingship. But she was a woman of tremendous ability and intelligence, strong-willed, courageous and loyal. In the end, she died as a queen should die: magnificent and defiant, hurling insults at her murderers to the very last moment of her life.