Who was Jezebel? | Stacy Davis

The Bible is full of vivid, fascinating characters: heroes and antiheroes, tricksters and villains. One of the most memorable biblical villains is Queen Jezebel, wife of King Ahab in Kings 1 and 2. Jezebel shows up in multiple stories: persecuting the prophet Elijah, trying to institute the worship of the god Ba’al, conniving to steal a vineyard, and finally dying a gruesome death. She is mentioned in the book of Revelation, too, when the author refers to a woman in the church at Thyatira who “calls herself a prophet and is teaching and beguiling my servants to engage in sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols” (Rev. 2:20).

Because she lured her husband to worship a false god, and because she is remembered as wearing makeup and finery, she has come to be associated with ideas about women as dangerous, immoral temptresses. The name “Jezebel” has become a slur for a promiscuous woman who leads men astray, and this slur has been used especially to demean and demonize Black women.

But who was Jezebel really? Was she the sexually promiscuous character these slurs imply, and why does scripture depict her as a super-villain?

On this episode of Glad You Asked, theologian and biblical scholar Stacy Davis talks to the host about the character Jezebel and the history of using her as a weapon against Black women. Davis is a professor of religious studies and Theology at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, and the author of Haggai and Malachi in the Wisdom Commentary Series (Liturgical Press). She is an associate editor of The Africana Bible: Reading Israel’s Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora, as well as for the forthcoming Westminster John Knox Bible.

You can learn more about this topic in these links.