Ahab Marries Jezebel

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 16, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 27.

Ahab Marries Jezebel

AND he took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal. The weakness and the sin of Ahab is seen in his putting himself deliberately in the strongest temptation to forsake God, by marrying such a heathen as Jezebel. This woman came of a fierce and profligate family, and united in herself stern religious fanaticism with the luxurious dissoluteness of an oriental queen. Her father, Ethbaal, or "with Baal," was a priest of Astarte, who assassinated the reigning king of Sidon, and usurped the throne for fifty-two years. His kingdom embraced Tyre also. These two cities, Tyre and Sidon, were Phoenician cities on the seacoast of Syria, north of Palestine. They were powerful cities, but proverbially wicked (Matt. 11 : 21). Their wickedness seems to have been concentrated in Ethbaal and his family, and especially in Jezebel. Her strong and fierce character soon acquired resistless influence over the weak Ahab, and introduced untold mischief into the kingdom, and even into the kingdom of Judah, through the marriage of Athaliah to Jehoram.