Last week we saw that Jezebel was at work trying to establish new gods as the central belief and trust of Israel. She went about it with vengeance and violence as well as with money and propaganda…pretty much as the elite does today.   Jezebel not only sidelined the prophets of YHWH, but she also hunted them down, took away their rights which had been given them by God, and carried out political executions. Ahab’s own palace steward, Obadiah, was secretly faithful to YHWH. Ob

God has instructed Jeremiah to tell the people that they might as well go ahead and call professional mourners so they can practice their dirges and be ready to sing.   The previous section began with one word: “ Consider.” Derivatives of the root of this word occur nearly 200 times, often used by God through the prophets, including Job. God told Jeremiah to be wise and skillful with God’s word; to discern what God is saying and attend to its meaning.   Now, God gives the nex

For such an apostate king as Ahab and his wife Jezebel, at this time the great prophet Elijah shows up in Scripture (I Kings 17). For their sins, Elijah warns that there will be a drought in the land over the next three years. Then God sends Elijah to the wilderness where ravens bring him bread, hiding out from Ahab’s threats on his life. Later God sends him on to a town called Zarephath where a widow and her son sheltered and fed him while he was in hiding.   When the drough

There is an old movie from 1943 called “Guadalcanal Dairy.” It was just a year after the actual battle for Guadalcanal in the South Pacific, and it was part of Hollywood’s effort to portray us as capable of winning the war  if everyone played their part. I remember one scene where three soldiers in a foxhole were running out of ammunition, so one of them went back to get more. He picks up the ammunition boxes, then notices something boiling on the fire. “Is that coffee, Mac?

That pretty much says it, doesn’t it? Jezebel! That name has become a symbol of evil that begins in the Bible and weaves its way through Jewish and Christian folklore. Jezebel has become a symbol of a woman who is sexually aggressive yet shameless. We will examine that turn at the end of this mini-series about Jezebel.   Who was Jezebel? Does she have a story of her own? Does she deserve the meme that she has become? Let’s start at the beginning and work our way through the m