The Spiritual World of Jezebel and Elijah: Biblical Background to the Novel Jezebel: Harlot Queen of Israel

By Brian Godawa

The Spiritual World of Jezebel and Elijah: Biblical Background to the Novel Jezebel: Harlot Queen of Israel
1st Edition

Copyright © 2019, 2021 Brian Godawa

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.

Warrior Poet Publishing
www.warriorpoetpublishing.com

ISBN: 978-1-942858-46-1 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-942858-47-8 (ebook)

Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001.

Table of Contents

Get the Novel Jezebel iii

Table of Contents iv

Chapter 1: The Characters 1

Jezebel 1

Installation of the High Priestess 9

Elijah 10

Jehu 14

Athaliah 18

The Rechabites 20

Chapter 2: The Spiritual World of Israel 25

Monotheist or Polytheist? 25

The Watchers 33

1 Kings 22 39

Leviathan 41

Chapter 3: The Gods of Canaan 46

Baal 46

The Image of Baal 50

The Temple of Baal 51

Yahweh Versus Baal 53

Asherah 55

Astarte 60

Anat 62

Mot 65

Molech 70

The Archangels 73

Chapter 4: Cosmic Geography 77

Underworld Valleys 77

Sheol 82

Cosmic Mountains 87

Chapter 5: Cultic Practice 95

High Places 95

Standing Stones 97

Masks 99

Qedeshim 101

Sacred Marriage 103

Family Shrines 106

Cult of the Dead 108

Marzeah Feast 112

Rephaim 116

Child Sacrifice 124

Great Offers By Brian Godawa 139

About the Author 140

I receive commissions on all links to Amazon books in this book.

Chapter 1:
The Characters

The Story First

Many of my readers like to learn about the biblical and historical research behind my novels after they’ve read them. The fact behind the fiction. It helps bring context and explains some of the “stranger things” of the novels to those who are intellectually and spiritually curious. This book is a presentation of the research behind my novel Jezebel: Harlot Queen of Israel. The truth is that the material in this book is so fascinating it can be read on its own by those who hunger as I do to uncover the ancient Near Eastern background of the biblical text. 

The novel retells the biblical story centered around Queen Jezebel of Israel that can be found in 1 Kings 16 through 2 Kings 11. Jezebel, a daughter of the king of Tyre, marries King Ahab of Israel in the ninth century B.C. The marriage is a political one for the purposes of uniting in defense against the hostile Aramean kingdom in the north. Despite the pragmatism, king and queen find themselves falling in love.

Tyre, a Phoenician coastal city, is cosmopolitan and Canaanite. So Jezebel brings wealth, sophistication, and culture to a less advanced agrarian Israel. Unfortunately, she also brings the worship of Baal, the storm god of Canaan, and even builds a temple to him in Samaria, the heart of Israel. 

Since Israel is supposed to be monotheist in its worship of Yahweh alone, the prophet Elijah the Tishbite and his students at the School of Prophets rise up to condemn Jezebel and call Ahab and Israel back to Yahweh from their spiritual adultery with Baal. This leads to a series of confrontations between the two worldviews that play out in the narrative, the most famous of which is the Mount Carmel episode of calling fire down from heaven. 

But Jezebel doesn’t give up. She fights back to gain more power and even trains Ahab’s sister Athaliah to emulate her ways as future queen down in Judah. Jezebel’s ruthless ambition forces a climactic battle that jeopardizes an entire family dynasty of kings.

The story of the novel is told through the eyes of Jehu son of Nimshi, who is the commander of the army of Israel. Jehu is a man who struggles with dual loyalty to both God and King. His dilemma becomes more pressing as the king whom Yahweh anointed strays from his God. As Jezebel’s power grows, Jehu must rise up to do what is right, facing the loss of everything he holds dear, or suffer the damning consequences of doing nothing.

Another unique aspect of the novel is the depiction of the spiritual world. As I will explain in Chapter 2, the novel pulls back the curtain of the unseen realm. It depicts the “spiritual principalities and powers” that reign behind pagan Gentile nations and how they have influence on the course of history. Baal, Asherah, Molech, and others are not mere myths without bite. They are actual names of demonic powers that are real and have their own agenda. 

Though this is obviously speculative, the principle is biblical. This is not simplistic “spiritual warfare” of demons of lust and gossip clinging to us like bacterial ghosts of influence. This is the bigger picture of higher entities of power ruling over Gentile nations as depicted in Deuteronomy 32:8-10 and Psalm 82. Nevertheless, the storyline of these spiritual powers is intended to reflect the mythology of pagans and how it reflects spiritual reality within a biblical worldview. 

Thus, as Jezebel seeks to implant Baal worship in Israel, we see the spiritual entity named Baal and his allies, Astarte, Asherah, Anat, and others maneuver for power in the spiritual territories of Israel and Judah, much like human mobsters might maneuver for power over their regions in a city under their control.

But Yahweh and his archangels have other plans to protect the seed of David from the Seed of the Serpent. That is the basic storyline of the novel Jezebel: Harlot Queen of Israel. Now enjoy learning about the historical and biblical research behind it all.

Jezebel

The story of Jezebel and Elijah is one of the most exciting and iconic narratives in all the Bible. One of the most well-known biblical miracles was Elijah’s showdown with Jezebel’s prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Considered the most wicked queen in Israel’s history, Jezebel has become a symbol for some in the modern church of women who embrace feminism. Feminists have sought to rehabilitate her image by revising it into one of a strong female misunderstood and oppressed by the “patriarchy.” Some prophecy pundits even believe we are currently reliving her storyline as end times prophecy.

Regardless of what you think of these various reactions, Queen Jezebel and the prophet Elijah remain as relevant to us today as they were 2,900 years ago.

In the novel, I have sought to depict Jezebel fairly and faithfully within her original ancient Near Eastern context. That context included both the volatile world of the divided kingdoms of ninth-century Israel and Judah—the prophet Elijah’s people as well as the culturally influential cosmopolitan spirit of Phoenicia—Jezebel’s homeland. My research involved fascinating Bible scholarship, archaeology, and Canaanite mythology that I just had to share with my readers. 

Let’s start with the queen bee, herself.

One of the first things the reader will notice is that the name of Jezebel in the story is actually Izabel, an anglicized version of her real Sidonian name, Ai-zebul. The Hebrew name change from Izabel to Jezebel is not merely a matter of dialect difference but a form of ancient prophetic insult. Ai-zebul (Izabel) translated most likely meant “Where is the Prince?” This was the phrase Baal worshippers would utter every harvest as they waited for their crops to arrive. It was symbolized in their myth of Baal, the god of storm and vegetation, being rescued from death in the underworld, who would then bring life back to their fields. Hillel Millgram explains,

This myth, the centerpiece of Canaanite religion, found expression in Canaanite liturgy. During summer, the time of Baal’s long absence, the worshipers of Baal would go out in procession “seeking Baal,” chanting: “Where is Baal the Conqueror? Where is the Prince, the Lord of the Earth?” With the coming of the rains in the autumn, the cry would go up: “Baal the Conqueror lives! The Prince of the Earth has revived!” By their very names, Ethbaal and his daughter Jezebel proclaim the central beliefs of their religion. Ethbaal (its Phoenician form is Ittobaal) means “Baal Exists!” It is a proclamation of faith.

Though Ethbaal and his daughter were priests of Astarte, their names carried the name of their most high god, Baal, a common naming technique of the ancient Near East, including Israel. In that world, names were also believed to assign destinies and even became expressions of authority by the namer over the named. Thus Abram’s name, which meant “exalted father,” was changed by God to Abraham, which meant “father of many nations” (Genesis 17:5) because that is what God would make him in his future.

In Jezebel’s case, the text of 1 and 2 Kings renames Ai-zebul to Ee-zebel (Jezebel in English), which linguistically in Hebrew turns her name into a profanity of excrement. Millgram again explains,

First Ai (where) was changed to Ee, a negative (none); thus Ai-Zebul (Where is the Prince? Where is the Exalted One?) becomes Ee-Zebul, “There is no Prince,” or “Unexalted.” Then Zebul (Prince, Exalted One) was altered to Zebel (feces, excrement).

This named future of Jezebel is expressed in 2 Kings 9:37, which reduces the powerful queen to pathos with a double entendre of her future demise: “And the corpse of Jezebel shall be as dung on the face of the field in the territory of Jezreel, so that no one can say, ‘This is Jezebel.’” The question her name was based upon, “Where is the prince (Baal)?” is related to his return from death to bring the rains and harvest. Just like no one can say, “Here is Baal,” because he is not the true storm god, so no one will be able to say “here is Jezebel.” Like her humbled god, she will be permanently shamefully reduced to dung on the field that awaits the rains from the true storm god, Yahweh.

This same technique of renaming is used elsewhere in the Bible. Another example I used in the novel was that of Ashtoreth, a goddess who shows up often in the Old Testament. The name refers to the infamous Astarte (Phoenician: Ashtart) of Canaan and was in fact the goddess whom Jezebel’s father served as high priest.

It is said that ignoring someone is the most vicious way to hurt them. False gods were bad enough to the ancient Hebrew, but female goddesses were so offensive that the Bible writers didn’t use a word for goddess. They simply used their names (Asherah, Ashtoreth, Lilith). But it has long been noted that the name Ashtoreth was a deliberate diabolical distortion of Astarte by using the vowels of the Hebrew word for “shame” (bosheth) between the consonants of Astarte. The goddess was too shameful or profane for Hebrews to use her real name.

Names and language are powerful tools for altering our interpretation of reality. I’ve explained more extensively how God and the writers of the Bible altered, subverted, reimagined, and deconstructed pagan imagination and concepts in my book God Against the gods: Storytelling, Imagination, and Apologetics in the Bible. (Affiliate link)

But this doesn’t exhaust the biblical usage of Jezebel’s name for theological purposes. In the New Testament book of Revelation, Jezebel shows up as a metaphor for spiritual apostasy among God’s people. In Christ’s message to the seven churches of Asia Minor, he warns the church at Thyatira of a “Jezebel.”

Revelation 2:18–23:

But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, and I will strike her children dead.

This condemnation has led to the common image of Jezebel as a harlot or sexually immoral woman. Some modern Christians call women who are sexually active outside of marriage “Jezebels.” But a closer look at the context reveals that this is not really the apostolic intent of the imagery.

While it is possible the false teaching in Thyatira may have included sexual rituals, since pagan religions often did, it isn’t likely this is the import of the text here. Christ was drawing from the books of 1 and 2 Kings as an analogy for what was going on in the Church. Jezebel wasn’t criticized in the Old Testament for engaging in sexual immorality. She was damned for bringing Baal worship to Israel. 

When Jezebel is first introduced in 1 Kings 16:31-33, she is described as the wife of Ahab who influenced him to build a temple of Baal and worship the Canaanite god, along with Asherah. And in Ahab’s obituary in 1 Kings 21:25-26, it was said of him that “there was none who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the LORD like Ahab, whom Jezebel his wife incited” to go after abominable idols. But there is no mention of any sexual sin against her husband.

Jezebel could very likely have been a faithful, loving wife to Ahab. That is why she is portrayed as such in the novel. At least, she starts out that way. Her evil was not sexual immorality. Rather, sexual immorality was a metaphor for her spiritual evil of making Baal worship more popular in Israel. 

Israel was called Yahweh’s bride throughout the Old Testament. His relationship with his people was so sacred and intimate that it was covenanted like a marriage. So when Israel worshipped other gods like Baal, Asherah, Molech, and others, the prophets all likened that apostasy to marital unfaithfulness to her husband Yahweh. The most recurring image used of Israel in prophetic denunciations by God was that of an unfaithful wife, described as a harlot, adulteress, or prostitute. 

Israel’s spiritual infidelity was so prevalent that the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah described her as “playing the whore,” having sex with idols from the nations, “on every high hill and under every green tree” (Isaiah 57:5; Jeremiah 2:20; 3:6-9), which were the locations of the forbidden high places of idol worship. Ezekiel likened Judah’s polytheism to a spiritual prostitute “offering herself” sexually “to any passerby,” the gods of the Egyptians, Philistines, Assyrians, and Babylonians (Ezekiel 16:24-29, 35-36).

The Jezebel of Revelation was a religious and spiritual “whore” because of her apostate teachings as a so-called prophetess. Christians following those teachings were likened to “committing adultery with her.” There is even reason to believe that the Jezebel of Revelation 2 is poetically linked to the “Great Harlot” who rides the scarlet Beast of Revelation 17. 

The first step in understanding this connection is to realize that of the seven churches in Revelation 2-3, Thyatira is the fourth, which places it exactly in the middle of the seven. A well-known and oft-used literary device of many biblical writers is the poetic structure called “chiasm.” In short, chiasm is the structuring of a narrative where the first half of the story builds to a midpoint climax, which represents the most important thematic focus. Then the last half of the story mirrors the first half but in reverse, as if it is undoing the tension built up to the middle. 

If the seven churches sequence of Revelation is understood as a chiasm, then that spiritual prophetess and harlot Jezebel is the midpoint focal theme. And it is precisely that royal/priestly figure of the Great Harlot, Mystery Babylon, which is being judged in Revelation 17. In fact, the judgment of that spiritually important city seems to be a climactic center point for Revelation’s series of judgments (for a complete narrative story of who Mystery Babylon was, see my novel series Chronicles of the Apocalypse – paid link).

In conclusion, both Old and New Testaments explain Jezebel’s harlotry as a spiritual analogy of apostasy, not earthly sexual behavior.

Jezebel’s father was a priest of Baal, but he also became king of Tyre. So Jezebel was most likely a high priestess of Astarte since it was Phoenician custom to appoint the king’s daughter as the high priestess of the local gods. Astarte was considered Baal’s consort in the Phoenician pantheon of Tyre. The writer of 2 Kings makes a poetic connection of Jezebel with the shameful goddess Astarte. And he does so during the description of her death at the command of Jehu, thus linking her execution with the eradication of goddess worship.

After Jehu had killed the king of Israel, he entered Jezreel to eliminate all of Ahab’s family. His first order of business was to kill Jezebel. Jezebel heard that Jehu was coming, so she prepared for his arrival. The text says, “She painted her eyes and adorned her head and looked out of the window” (2 Kings 9:30). This is a peculiar thing to draw attention to in such a story. Knowing how much Jezebel and Jehu despised each other, it would be foolish of Jezebel to think she could seduce the zealous warrior king. But Jezebel was no fool. The writer is making a deliberate artistic reference to a very common motif of Astarte worship in Canaan: the “woman in the window.” 

Multiple ivory reliefs from the Iron Age have been found throughout Mesopotamia and the Levant that depict a woman peering out of a window. She is linked to the cult of Astarte as a fertility goddess. The writer of 2 Kings describes Jezebel as painting herself with make-up, a common motif of seduction (Jeremiah 4:30), in this case the spiritual seduction by false goddesses. Jezebel was about to be attacked and destroyed just as the goddess whom she had brought to Israel was about to be attacked.

As archaeologist Eleanor Ferris Beach puts it, “In Jezebel, the literary Jehu encounters the personified visual image from the marzeah couch [Woman at the Window], and he shatters her, quite physically, as the last obstacle to the throne. He thereby denies the necessary memorial rites to the murdered kings and queen mother and asserts his independent legitimacy.” 

The “marzeah” mentioned in the previous quotation was a ritual banquet feast that was part of a hero-cult of the dead. The marzeah memorialized the death of one king and his living replacement, who was approved by previous kings now in the underworld (more on marzeah and the cult of the dead later in this book).

Installation of the High Priestess

In the novel, Jezebel’s installation as high priestess to Baal in Tyre is depicted with liturgy and fanfare. This is based on an existing manuscript of rituals from ancient Emar called The Installation of the Storm God’s High Priestess. For the sake of story pacing, I’ve used creative license to draw elements from the text and telescope the ceremony from nine days into a mere one day. 

In the original text, day one involved anointing the priestess’s head with oil and sacrificing a sheep along with a jar of barley and jug of wine. Day two was the shaving of the priestess with another sacrifice of one ox and six sheep. Here we are told of the “divine weapon” as an axe that was used as a symbolic sacred implement. The priestess was shaved at the entrance to the temple.

Day three involved more sacrifices with singers in a procession, presentation of the sacred weapon, and the high priestess’s entrance into the temple. She is described as wearing gold earrings and the gold ring of Baal while her head is wrapped with a red headdress. She is carried on the shoulders of her brothers to the house of her father, where the elders then bow before her and offer gifts of silver.

The next six days are filled with daily sacrifices of sheep and offerings of loaves, cakes, and fruit, along with goblets of wine and barley beer presented to the storm god Baal.

On the final ninth day, the priestess leaves her father’s house with a veiled face like a bride and is taken to the temple of Baal, where more sacrifices are made and she offers her own sacrifice of lamb and loaves.

A large feast by the elders is followed by placing on her a fine robe. Then she is shown to her bedroom. Her feet are washed, and she lies down to sleep.

Elijah

Elijah the Tishbite is one of the most fascinating characters in the whole of Scripture. He is the first of the line of major prophets used to call Israel and Judah back to Yahweh, and he becomes so symbolically important that he was prophesied to return before Messiah would come to bring the Day of the Lord.

Malachi 4:5:

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.

Jesus explained that John the Baptist was the fulfillment of this prophecy as a spiritual symbol rather than a physical reincarnation (Matthew 11:12-14; Mark 9:11-13, Luke 1:17). John the Baptist came “in the spirit and power of Elijah” to be the messenger announcing Messiah as well as the destruction of the old covenant temple that Messiah replaced with his new covenant (Malachi 3:1-3).

Malachi 3:1–2:

Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?

At the Mount of Transfiguration, Elijah showed up with Moses to validate Jesus as Messiah (Matthew 17:1-17). The team of Moses and Elijah had become a symbolic expression of the “Law and the Prophets,” or the whole of the Scriptures. So their presence at the transfiguration was another way of God saying that all the Scriptures point to the supremacy of Jesus.

Elijah was only one of two men in Scripture who never died but were taken away to heaven. Enoch was the other. (2 Kings 2:11-12. Genesis 5:24). The story of Elijah’s fiery chariot ascension is told in the novel Jezebel: Harlot Queen of Israel. 

But perhaps one of the most endearing character traits of the prophet was his fear. I think this is why he is so relatable to most believers despite being given such a high calling and status in the family of God. 

Here you have a man who does one of the most gutsy things anyone can do, call a contest of gods in the real world (1 Kings 18:17-41). He tells Ahab to bring his prophets of Baal and Asherah to Mount Carmel and to set up an altar sacrifice. And Elijah would do the same. Then they were to each call upon their gods respectively and see which god would answer with fire from heaven. The scene is emblazoned in the minds of believers as one of the most glorious miracles outside of the Red Sea deliverance and the resurrection of Christ. 

So there is Elijah, having just won that contest and slaughtered four hundred prophets of Baal in a display of Yahweh’s power and might. Then he gets a letter—a mere letter—from Jezebel threatening his life in return (1 Kings 19:2), and he runs like a scaredy-cat into the desert for forty days and forty nights all the way to Mount Horeb.

On the one hand, having your life threatened by a queen is no minor thing. But when it comes from the loser over whose god you’ve just won a major victory, you can’t help but wonder how a person could fall from the heights of faith to the depths of fear so instantaneously. Or rather, how such a man of God who had experienced the power of God, unlike any of us, could be so weak in faith.

And therein lies Elijah’s relatableness to us. For who hasn’t wondered at their own pathetic lack of faith or easy fall into temptation? Who hasn’t questioned their own relationship to God as fraudulent because of some besetting sin? It would be doubly tempting to conclude that holiness is just too difficult to achieve. That great people of God like the prophets are simply impossible examples of unattainable heroism. 

But Elijah is an attainable model after all. He is one of the most important prophets in God’s plan, and yet he is one of the most human—the most like us—precisely because he acts just like us even though he has experienced much more of God’s power and glory than any of us likely ever will. 

He is also similar to the Israelite nation, who after being delivered through the parting of the Red Sea, just a short time later cast and worshipped a golden calf. They just couldn’t wait long enough for the ten commandments.

I find great comfort and hope in following the example of a man who, when he fled in fear, didn’t just run away from evil but ran toward his God—at Mount Sinai in Horeb, the mountain of Yahweh’s presence. It was faith that made Elijah run to God in his fear. We’ll talk about cosmic mountains later. But my goal in exploring Elijah’s character was a personal journey of struggling with trying to understand the nature of faith and fear in all of us. 

Then Elijah has the experience at Sinai where he observes great miraculous spectacles of wind, earthquake, and fire and yet discerns that “God is not in” these traditionally understood means of theophany. God, it turns out, speaks to him instead in “a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:9-12). At least that is how some have translated it. But looking more closely at the Hebrew of the text, I found that the phrase isn’t really about an audible voice at all. It’s more like an oxymoron, like saying “the sound of silence.” The New Interpreter’s Bible explains it this way:

The traditional translation of the phrase as “a still small voice” (so KJV) has been popularized in hymns, but it does not convey the oxymoron. The NRSV takes it to be “a sound of sheer silence,” which is what the words mean, and yet Elijah is able to hear something (v. 13)… In any case, the structure of the text implies that it is in this stillness that Elijah somehow encounters the Lord.

It wouldn’t make sense to conclude that God speaks through soft whispers or internal feelings instead of external spectacle. In fact, that would contradict the Bible. After all, God had just spoken through the external spectacle of fire from heaven, not to mention previous spectacles of food multiplication and resurrection of the dead (1 Kings 17) with more spectacle to come (2 Kings 2). He couldn’t be saying that he really didn’t speak through those things.

Rather, I think the picture being painted here is more of an object lesson for Elijah’s faith. Perhaps the point was more about walking by faith than by sight, for when we see spectacle, we believe. But as soon as we don’t, our faith falters and we worship idols. We are a fickle lot, we humans. We tend to trust only what we can see or experience. But the Scripture’s focus is on the life of faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

Perhaps God was using one instance where he was not in the usual theophany to draw Elijah to him through his seeming absence. It is the times in life when we are suffering or dry and don’t feel God’s presence, when we don’t “experience” him, that we start to wonder where he is because he appears silent. It isn’t that we have to calm down and listen because he’s whispering, but rather that he is in the silence itself. It is the silence that cuts through our distractions and self-delusions and forces us to long for eternity and for our Maker. And it is in that longing of silence that we find him. 

The cliché “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is quite relevant here for our character growth, even if not something some modern believers want to hear, especially those who may highly value “spiritual experiences.”

Perhaps there is some truth to the mystic’s claim that God’s presence can be found in his “absence.” Of course as infinite Creator, God is always everywhere present, so this isn’t a theological proposition of God being literally absent, but more an expression of our own lack of experiencing that presence. When we have that realization, we connect with God whether there is spectacle or not, in pleasure or in pain, in presence or in absence, in joy or in suffering. My attempt at translating that biblical event at Sinai in the novel was another journey of attempting to make sense of a truth through narrative that couldn’t really be as effectively expressed through systematic theology.

Forgive me for quoting pop culture to conclude, but I think I now have a stronger appreciation for the words of a famous song whose lyrics many may have listened to without ever hearing the echoes of Scripture within The Sounds of Silence by Simon and Garfunkle.

And the people bowed and prayed

To the neon God they made,

And the sign flashed out its warning

In the words that it was forming,

And the signs said, “The words of the prophets

Are written on the subway walls and tenement halls,”

And whispered in the sounds of silence.