Interview with Old Testament Figures – Queen Jezebel: No Biblical female figure has attracted as much attention as Queen Jezebel, wife of Ahab, one of the kings of the ancient Northern kingdom of Israel. Her character spans both the Old and New Testaments. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself mentioned her in Revelation 2:20.
As we have emphasised in previous interviews, God has not called us to sit in judgement against anyone. Scripture says that things happened to Old Testament figures as example, but they were written down for our instruction (1 Corinthians 10:11). Certainly, there are aspects of the life of Queen Jezebel that can enable us learn some useful lessons.
Shepherd Heart: Thank you for honouring our invitation Queen Jezebel.
Queen Jezebel: The pleasure is mine.
Shepherd Heart: Kindly give our readers a brief introduction of your person.
Queen Jezebel: I was originally from Tyre, and the daughter Ethbaal, the priest of Baal, before I married King Ahab of Israel.
Shepherd Heart: According to Biblical narrative, you replaced the worship of Yahweh, the only true God with Baal and Asherah, the gods of Tyre, thus setting the stage for the eventual collapse of the Northern Kingdom through the instrumentality of Assyria.
Queen Jezebel: Israel did not go into captivity during our reign. Other dynasties in the country had the opportunity to return to their Yahweh long after my husband and I left the scene. The fact that they continued to worship these gods shows the extent of the estrangement between Israelites and Yahweh. Moreover, I do not recall forcing its people to worship my gods. They did it of their own free will.
Shepherd Heart: I hate to agree with you on the last point you made, Queen Jezebel. Yes, the people of Israel could have returned to their God and called your bluff, even if you threatened them with death for not worshipping your gods. The fact that they chose to go along with the idolatry, despite the anticipated judgement from Almighty God is proof that they were enticed by whatever benefits they derived from serving Baal and Asherah.
Queen Jezebel: Seeing things from a better perspective after my decease, I would admit that the benefits you spoke of were not blessings. The truth is that humans want to control their destinies. They also want to serve the gods they can control. Offering sacrifices to a god might look like worship, but it is actually a bribe of some sort.
The humans who offer the sacrifices get to dictate the timing of the response to their quest. For instance, if you want to prosper in your business, the priests of the small gods would give you details of things required to appease them. Once these sacrifices are made, you get the results immediately. Not so with Yahweh. My husband and I discussed this at length. We did not have the patience to serve a God who answers our petitions in His own time. We wanted to be in charge of our own affairs.
Shepherd Heart: You have just described the situation in our day. Many people join the occult for the same reason. God is not under any obligation to attend to your petitions as you wish. Among other things, the fact that humans cannot control God encourages many of them to accept the “freedom” offered to them by the devil.
The Fall in the Garden of Eden was orchestrated by satan through his understanding of human nature. He knew that God had granted humans some measure of autonomy by giving them free will. Thus, he went out of his way to show them that they could not exercise this freedom and still be answerable to God. Back to your reign as Queen, how were you able to persuade your husband to abandon the God of his fathers?
Queen Jezebel: As I said earlier, we were not only a power couple, we were also exposed to things happening in the spirit realm. We wanted to succeed by all means, and that meant charting our own course. We felt that allowing the God of Israel to have control over us would be counter-productive. We could not get Him to do things our own way, or within our timeframe. It was not a difficult decision because I got into Israel with some of my father’s priests. They had already started converting many Israelites through their magic, before my husband and I decided to go the whole hog.
Shepherd Heart: One of the most grievous things you and your husband did was the murder of Naboth, the Jezreelite to take possession of his land. You also killed most prophets of the LORD. These brought the judgment of God upon both of you. With the benefit of hindsight, do you think the killing of these innocent people was worth God’s judgment that later caught up with you?
Queen Jezebel: When you are the queen in a dynasty, and your husband dotes on you, you do not reason like ordinary people. There is a saying in your generation that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I had that kind of power. In fact, I can truly say that I was the power in the kingdom, and my husband just my vassal.
Shepherd Heart: How were you able to turn your husband into your willing slave?
Queen Jezebel: (Laughs) Some people erroneously attribute the influence I wielded in the kingdom to my great beauty. Beauty has its place. Brainpower and intellect also have their uses. The power I exercised was more demonic than natural. My father trained me sufficiently to operate as a priest of Baal in my own right hence; I knew the right buttons to press spiritually to make people subservient to my will.
Shepherd Heart: Is it then true to say that you were very proficient in witchcraft manipulation?
Queen Jezebel: Witchcraft was just one of the spirits I used to control or terrorise my adversaries. I had the wherewithal to promote pervasive sexual perversions in Israel, as well as the ability to instil fear in its people. That was what I used to terrorise Elijah the prophet, which prompted him to flee for his life.
Shepherd Heart: Now that you are no longer in a position to use all these powers, can you tell us their antidotes?
Queen Jezebel: The only man who could withstand my spirits was Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat and grandson of Nimshi. Notice how Scripture described him in 2 Kings 9:20, “…The driving is like that of Jehu son of Nimshi – he drives like a maniac.” Jehu was not a “gentleman” as you would say in your generation. No “gentleman” can successfully deal with my kind of spirits. You need to be brave, and uncompromising in the fear of God. Of course, Elijah was brave and god-fearing but he did not possess Jehu’s kind of spirit. That was why God chose Jehu to end my reign of terror.
Shepherd Heart: What advice would you give to men that are married to manipulative women as you were in ancient Israel?
Queen Jezebel: A man must maintain God’s order at home. After the fall, one of the judgments God meted out to Eve was that she would be subservient to her husband. Anything other than this a reversal of God’s order, and an invitation to demons to take over that home.
Shepherd Heart: Was that what happened in your home?
Queen Jezebel: Absolutely! My husband, Ahab was a very weak man. The problem with being married to a wimp is that you gradually become resentful of him. No woman respects a wimp. Men should learn to exercise their God given authority and with that, enforcement of a healthy boundary in the marriage. When both the wife and the husband maintain and respect each other’s boundary, respect and love flow seamlessly.
Shepherd Heart: If you had the opportunity to make amends, what areas of your life would you have addressed?
Queen Jezebel: I would have been content to be a woman and to be loved by my husband. I would have steered clear of state matters and allowed my husband to be king indeed, instead of my vassal. I would also have loved to serve and worship the LORD God of Hosts, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Being used by satan has no benefit in the long run.
You may think that you are in charge of your destiny, but demons deceive humans into depriving themselves of their God given liberty or free will. My candid counsel to all your readers is for them to take the advice given by Solomon – seek God while you can for nothing else matters now or hereafter.
Shepherd Heart: Thank you very much Queen Jezebel for your candour. We hope that our readers would indeed understand that everything is vanity except God.
Queen Jezebel: Thank you for having me.