Why Remember Jezebel?

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Why Remember Jezebel?

Carey Walsh

Villanova University

INTRODUCTION

Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab of Israel, is remembered in the books of Kingswith undisguised contempt. While all of the northern kings are portrayed assinful, it is in the house of Omri, especially with Ahab and Jezebel, wherethings reach their despicable apex:

Ahab, son of Omri, did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all that were beforehim. And as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam,son of Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of theSidonians. (1 Kgs 16:30–31)

Normally in the ancient Near East, it was a wise and pragmatic policy for a kingto form political alliances with neighbouring peoples via marriage. It ensuredstability, trade relations, peace, and other collaborative endeavours, such asdefence and construction. For the Deuteronomistic History (DH) envisioningIsrael’s monarchic past, though, marrying this Phoenician princess was justenraging idiocy on Ahab’s part. Sin escalates, with Jezebel its embodied cul-mination. Jezebel clearly is the focal point for narrative disgust.And so the question becomes, why remember her at all? Would not erasure

prove more effective for a truly reviled character in the community’s nationalpast? The history of Israel’s past is a construct of memory being fashioned andrecalled in the post-exilic period, and so the narrative portrait of Jezebel isserving a purpose beyond mere data retrieval. Cultural memory posits thatthere are reasons why people like Jezebel were remembered, and we see tracesof those reasons in how her story was shaped. Narrative disgust makes clearhow Jezebel was to be remembered, but it also signals something of the socialreasons for why she was. The scribes of Yehud were charged with shaping boththe events and people of the past and also their meanings for their owncontemporary society. What function, then, was served for the Persian-period

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community by remembering Jezebel? Her father, Ittobaal, the king of Tyre, isattested in extra-biblical sources,1 as is the house of Omri and Ahab, in theMesha Stele and Kurkh Monolith, respectively.2 But Jezebel is rememberedonly in Kings (1 Kgs 16:30–32; 18; 19:1–3; 21; 2 Kgs 9:7–37), where she isreviled.3 Notoriety surrounds her name even up to the twenty-first century.4

There is a considerable irony evident in the historical memory of Jezebel inKings. She has no grave by which to be customarily remembered, but thenarrative depiction of her non-burial renders her unforgettable. Gravesites aretraditional sites for cultural memory (e.g. Gen 25:9; 1 Kgs 2:10). Both Omriand Ahab were buried in their capital, Samaria, according to royal custom(1 Kgs 16:28; 1 Kgs 22:37). Even Jehu, the man responsible for the death ofJezebel, recognizes that she deserves burial since she is a king’s daughter (2 Kgs9:34). But her death is so violent and so deserved in the DeuteronomisticHistory that it does not leave enough remainder for burial. Instead, Jezebel’scorpse—mere skull, feet, and palms (v. 35)—is like dung on the field with nograve ‘so that no one can say, “This is Jezebel” ’ (v. 37).

Such an ignominious end, stripped even of customary burial, should haveoccasioned erasure of Jezebel’s memory. Forgetting as well as remembering areboth essential facets of cultural memory. In remembering the past, societiesmake choices about what to foreground in sacred texts authoritatively distrib-uted in the canon and what to background or keep ‘archivally’.5 The authori-tative texts of ancient Israel were collected, edited, and read, with new textsbeing written during the Persian and Hellenistic periods.6 The archival mater-ials symbolically keep past data latent, unused in active cultural memory.If the scribes of Yehud had really wanted Jezebel forgotten, they simplycould have exercised more narrative restraint. With a mere verse or two,Jezebel would have been archived in the long list of northern apostasy, like,

1 Specifically, in sources used by Menander of Ephesus (L. Grabbe, Ancient Israel [London:T & T Clark, 2008] 142); and Josephus, Ant. viii 13.2.

2 Grabbe, Ancient Israel, 142, 144.3 There exists a seal with the name ‘Jezebel’, but no real consensus about whether or not this is

Queen Jezebel. N. Avigad, ‘The Seal of Jezebel’, Israel Exploration Journal 14 (1964) 274–6, andplate 56C.

4 Jezebel is a ubiquitous image in products of popular culture: in film, Jezebel (W. Wyler,1938) with Bette Davis and The Sins of Jezebel (R. de Borg, 1953) with Paulette Goddard; inliterature, I. Asimov, Caves of Steel (New York: Doubleday, 1954) and M. Atwood, The Hand-maid’s Tale (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985); and in music, ‘Jezebel’ by 10,000 Maniacs,Edith Piaf, Sade, Depeche Mode, and Iron & Wine, and ‘Hardheaded Woman’ by Elvis Presley,etc. In addition, a contemporary American magazine for women is entitled Jezebel.

5 The notion of archive in cultural memory theory is descriptive of a level of memory and nota literal deposit of writings. See A. Assmann, ‘Canon and Archive’, in A Companion to CulturalMemory Studies (ed. A. Erll and A. Nünning; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010) 97–107.

6 A. F. Segal, ‘The Second Temple Period’, in The Cambridge Guide to Jewish History,Religion, and Culture (ed. J. Baskin and K. Seeskin; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2010) 36.


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say, Nadab (1 Kgs 15:25–26). Instead, Jezebel was apportioned distinctivecanonical memory. She was foregrounded rather than forgotten in the archive,because her memory was culturally useful. For the Deuteronomistic History,Jezebel’s notoriety damns her, but it also memorializes her.How, then, might the memory of Jezebel have aided the community of

Yehud in its formation and expression of identity? From the perspective ofcultural memory, the past deeds of Jezebel were recounted by the historiansof Israel with a view about how they would shape present (and future) gener-ations hearing these tales. The community that was hearing about Jezebel in itspast was continually shaping its own identity, its sense of self, and its values as adistinctive people. The people shared a past monarchic history and were nowforging an identity without self-rule, as a province within the Persian Empire.The project of Israel’s historical memory built social cohesion, as if to say, ‘weare the people that have this shared past and retain certain values now’. We canimagine, then, that certain topics would figure prominently in post-exiliccommunal reflection. Among these were political autonomy, accommodationto Persian policies, the role of religion, and determinations about who consti-tuted the true Israel and who was excluded.

THE COSTS OF ISRAEL ’S POLITICAL AUTONOMY

In his chapter on Abraham in this volume, E. Ben Zvi points out howAbraham was remembered as linked to the land, even though Joshua andDavid had actually secured it. Since the Israelite kingdom was eventually lost,it is the memory of Abraham that comes to the fore because he encoded thepromise of land, and this fuelled hope and optimism in the Persian period forthe residents in Yehud who lacked political autonomy. Promise, Ben Zvi nicelyhighlights, is an encoded attitude over conquest because the post-exilic com-munity knew too well that its period of self-rule ended badly.7 In this regard,then, it is clear why important characters like Abraham had a vital function incultural memory for the post-exilic citizens of Yehud. They would help in thecultural work of reassessing and reformulating the community’s identity aschildren of Abraham. They had, as it were, a future (and a present) with thismemory of the past. But the villains of Israel’s past also played an importantrole in fashioning the contours of the community’s self-understandings.The memory of Jezebel served an important, multifaceted function for the

community’s formation of identity in Yehud. First, she baldly represented thenegative for that community, what they were not; what they agreed they would

7 E. Ben Zvi, ‘The Memory of Abraham in Late Persian/Early Hellenistic Yehud/Judah’ in thisvolume.


Why Remember Jezebel? 313


not be. The figure of Jezebel provided the important outer boundary for whoIsrael was. She clarified precisely where that line was for a communitystruggling to recast its understanding of itself still as Israel in the post-exilicworld. This negative reinforcement occurred in at least two ways. First, a senseof social cohesion was enhanced by the shared disgust her story elicited.Jezebel is the most reviled character in the Hebrew Bible. A more nuancedportrayal might well have split hearers in their reaction to her, but not so withthe Deuteronomistic History’s colourful character study in nastiness. Jezebelwas the queen everyone could hate. A collective memory and sense of Schad-enfreude (‘gloating’) ensued that forged unity in the remembering community.Since no one in the community was likely to be as despicable as Jezebel hadbeen, all could feel included.

Secondly, hearing Jezebel’s evil escapades would occasion further sombrereflection on the limitations of political autonomy itself. Remembering Jezebel,the Omrides, and the entire line of wicked kings recalled that monarchic self-rule was fraught with dangers, corruption, and risk. And, the communitywould likely view monarchic rule itself as fragile, since it had lost bothnorthern and southern kingdoms in its past, and more recently, had witnessedthe fall of Babylon to Persia.8 Ideologically, such critical memory engenderedacceptance of the community’s present circumstances. The scribes of Yehudhad a practical reason for shaping historical memory: to support accommo-dation to Persian imperial control. By recalling the damage Jezebel wrought,Yehud’s acceptance of its situation could be more than sour grapes. It couldapproach something closer to gratitude. The residents of Yehud under thePersian Empire could reasonably have come to appreciate that they certainlyhad it much better than Israel did under Ahab and Jezebel. Jezebel acted as acipher in Israel’s cultural memory for monarchy’s ugly underside, viz., that itspower was often absolute and treacherous. As such, she stood also as a goadagainst nostalgia and idealization of Israel’s monarchic past.

THE CRIME AGAINST NABOTH

When Ahab wanted to buy Naboth’s vineyard, he triggered the issue of custom-ary inheritance laws. Naboth could not sell his inheritance. Ahab acceptedbegrudgingly and returned home depressed. Jezebel, though, did not even seewhat the problem was. She asked her husband stingingly, ‘Do you now governIsrael? . . . I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite’ (1 Kgs 21:7).Monarchic power in her eyes had no limit.9 She used custom to conspire with

8 J. L. Berquist, Judaism in Persia’s Shadow (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 18.9 And is apparently lacking in her husband’s passivity.


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village elders in order to frameNaboth.Hewas then falsely accused and stoned todeath under Israelite law and she promptly seized the vineyard. She had learnedIsraelite custom only to circumvent it and mastermind a conspiracy whereNaboth’s own people killed him instead of her. Of course, the prophet Elijahsaw right through this subterfuge. But here, Jezebel demonstrated that politicalautonomy was expedient, total, and ruthless.Naboth’s tale also encoded values about land tenure and the role of civic

leaders that would have been useful for the post-exilic community. Land rightswere contested when those who returned from exile clashed with those whohad remained in the land. Both groups would have understood Naboth to bethe true Israelite, with his inalienable right to the land. His memory mightinitially have supported the rural population, the ‘am ha’aretz who hadremained in Judah with a tribal structure of governance.10 Hearers of thetale would undoubtedly have been sensitized to issues of land usurpation andrights. At the same time, the returnees, who had not originally expected toreturn, would naturally have wanted to assert their land claims. They viewedthemselves as the rightful owners of property once lost in the exile. Indeed,since they had been deported, many viewed the land of Yehud as essentiallyempty (Ezek 11:17; 12:20; 33:23–29).11 The story of Naboth’s vineyard offeredpotent counter-testimony to this metaphoric erasure of the remainees.The governance of the city elders in the story encoded values useful to

Persian-period Yehud. Elders would have continued to adjudicate local dis-putes, especially in the rural areas surrounding Jerusalem. But they would alsohave had to work with the centralized government in Jerusalem, including thegovernor, administrative officials, both Jewish and Persian, and priests andscribes. The failure of the city elders to protect Naboth would likely provide acautionary tale for all civic officials. It offered a critique of capital interference(Samaria) in village governance (Jezreel) and so acted as an ideological checkon the governor and officials of Jerusalem in rural affairs.This theme of the ruthless power of monarchy was reinforced again in

Jezebel’s story as political murders were endemic to it. Earlier, Jezebel hadmarshalled a successful campaign to slaughter Yahwistic prophets. Her daugh-ter, Queen Athaliah of Judah, continued the treacherous tradition by killing theroyal family (2 Kgs 11:1). A monarchy in these memories could do whatever itwanted and leave whatever victims it needed to. It could ignore andmanipulateIsraelite custom, law, and values about land rights, life, and the social status ofelders. These issues would be essential concerns in the restoration of Yehud as

10 Berquist, Judaism, 132.11 The returnees would have felt a dual allegiance to the Persian crown and to those who

elected to remain in Babylon. So J. Kessler, ‘Persia’s Loyal Yahwists: Power, Identity andEthnicity in Achaemenid Yehud’, in Judah and Judeans in the Persian Period (ed. O. Lipschitsand M. Oeming; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 103.




a community. Recalling Jezebel’s violation of values held dear in Israel’s pastwould have renewed efforts in the community of Yehud to define custom, law,and values without the corrupting influence of monarchy.

Unity was a primary encoded value in reciting Israel’s past and was en-hanced with the story of Jezebel. For the returnee, remainee, and other factionsliving within Yehud, their differences would have proved small in the face of athreat as large as Jezebel’s had been. Jezebel’s negative example offered thepost-exilic community a chance to celebrate how the similarities in Yehud’sdiverse population far outweighed any differences. By way of analogy, the112th Congress (2011) in America recently tried a similar tactic in its publicreading of the Constitution. It was a response to the harsh negativity ofpartisan politics, and it sought to effect social cohesion. Members of congresshoped to invoke the memory of the founding as a reminder that Americans,despite partisan hostilities, have a shared history of agreeing at least on sometruths. In recalling history, similarities are pushed to the front of conscious-ness as differences momentarily fade.

The contrast between these past stories of Jezebel’s abusive courtly mayhemand the benign administrative policies of Persia’s oversight could not have beenclearer. Yehud under Persian rule had peace and enjoyed Persia’s hands-offpolicy in its own internal social arrangements. There simply was not the kind ofdrama Jezebel had brought. With the loss of political autonomy, Yehud hadgained a respite frommonarchic abuse. The scribes and elders of Jerusalem andits environs were left to manage their communities and regulate law andcustom without a queen or king manipulating them. The freedom, stability,and order offered under imperial administration would have become clear andappreciated in remembering Jezebel as a murderous political actor in Israel’spast. In fact, the negative historical construction of Jezebel served an ostensiblypositive role for the residents of Yehud. She became ideological code againstself-rule, which was a major element in Yehud’s identity formation.12

The tales of Jezebel’s ruthlessness highlighted that there was nothing to envyin the Persian Empire because the considerable downsides to monarchic rulewere recalled. The residents of Yehud became unified by the memory that theydid not suffer such abuse. In this way, Jezebel was an effective, if negative,cultural memory for social cohesion in post-exilic Israel. Positively, her storyencoded a shared moral vision of how true Israelites behaved, namely, likeNaboth and not like the corruptible city elders, nor certainly the murderousJezebel. She was the consummate ‘outsider’. The citizens of Yehud, adminis-trative officials and farmers alike could agree to envision their civic leaders aspower brokers who do not abuse their charge. In addition to the political

12 J. L. Berquist, ‘The Process of Imperialization’, in Judah and Judeans in the Persian Period(ed. O. Lipschits and M. Oeming; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 64.


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reflection afforded Yehud in its recollection of Jezebel, she was a rich site forcommunicating the post-exilic community’s religious identity and practices.

RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY

We can assume a variety of religious expression within Yahwism in the Persianperiod. Politically, the residents were part of another’s empire, but in religiousmatters, they enjoyed autonomy.13 Traditionally, scholars have emphasizedreligious identity formation in the Persian period to the exclusion of otherfactors. Those Yahwists who remained in Yehud probably would have con-tinued some sort of family-based or village-centred cultic practices in responseto the temple’s absence. The locus of religious activities would have remainedcloser to home. The returnees camewith imperial, financial, and administrativesupport to repopulate the province of Yehud. The Bible narrates the reason forimperial support as primarily religious, namely, that Cyrus sanctioned thereturn for the rebuilding of the temple (2 Chr 36:22–23; Ezra 1:1–3), but thismotive reflects a priestly ideology of the centrality of temple religion. The CyrusCylinder notes the return of cultic statues and deported peoples but only tovarious places around Babylon. There is nomention of Jerusalem and Yehud asthere is in Ezra’s depiction of Cyrus’ proclamation (Ezra 1:1–4; 6:2–5).14 In fact,it had been the policy of Darius I (520–486 bce) to sanction the rebuilding ofthe temples in the empire as public works projects that pacified the localpopulations.15 Overall, changes to Yehud during the reign of Cyrus wereminimal, as his attention remained on Babylon.16 By supporting the return ofpeoples to Judah and the surrounding areas of Samaria and Phoenicia, Persiastabilized the western flank of its empire, provided a buffer against potentialdisruption by Egypt, and enhanced its tax base.17

With the backing of the empire, the returnees would have held considerableeconomic and ideological power and so settled where administrative powerwas centralized, in Jerusalem.18 Since the returnees were coming back withPersian support, we can expect tension between the returnees and those whoremained in Judah after the exile. The former would have been viewed by thelatter with some suspicion for their accommodationist stance with Persia and

13 Berquist, Judaism, 140.14 A. Kuhrt, ‘The Cyrus Cylinder and Achaemenid Imperial Policy’, JSOT 8 (1983) 83–97;

L. Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian, Vol. 1 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992) 57;J. Middlemas, The Templeless Age (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2007) 12.

15 Middlemas, Templeless Age, 13; Berquist, Judaism, 53, 57.16 Berquist, Judaism, 29.17 Kessler, ‘Persia’s Loyal Yahwists’, 102–104; Berquist, Judaism, 24–26, 140.18 T. Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History (London: T & T Clark, 2007) 168.




their intentions to reclaim lost land. One benefit of the exile was that farmtenants who remained in Judah came into land of their own after the deport-ations.19 The social solidarity of the returnees cannot be assumed,20 as the ideaof the temple and return would have elicited varied attitudes and loyalties. Forsome, plans of a restored temple likely ignited latent eschatological hopes ofYHWH’s return and the return of the Davidic monarchy (Ezek 43:4; Hag 2:23;Zech 12:6–8).21 For others, a loyalty to the Jewish community remaining inBabylon would foster the legitimacy of the Diaspora, with less stress or eveninterest in restoring Judah’s monarchy.22

Those who remained in Babylon would have practised their Yahwismwithout the centrality of a Jerusalemite temple or the land. Perhaps observanceof the Sabbath lent a sense of shared liturgical experience for the communitiesof Babylon and Yehud (Isa 56:6). R. Albertz has suggested that the exilic periodexperienced a greater hallowing of the Sabbath as a subsidiary of family culticpractices for the Babylon Jewish community (Ezek 20:12, 20; 46:1; Exod 31:13,17).23 So, too, monetary support and prayers for the temple project could haveserved as symbolic sacrifices for the Jews remaining in Babylon and otherDiasporic locations. At the same time, their patronage was also accommoda-tion to the Persian policy of support for religions in its provinces. There werealso Yahwists in Samaria, Jezebel’s former kingdom. Some of them, accordingto Ezra 4, objected to the plans for rebuilding the temple.24 The sheer diversityof groups calling themselves Yahwists would have bolstered theological reflec-tion about the nature of religion in post-exilic Yehud and the Diaspora.Certainly, the formation of the canon and the Second Temple became focalpoints for post-exilic religious understanding.25 The cultural memory ofJezebel would have generated a whole range of associations and concernsfrom this diverse community of Yahwists.

19 Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian, 121.20 Berquist, Judaism, 27–8. The extent of sectarian divisions is unclear, but the post-exilic

situation likely fuelled various groups with different solutions to their existence under Persianrule. Also, we can expect socio-economic tensions since those deported in the exile were mainlythe upper class. Grabbe, Judaism From Cyrus to Hadrian, 111, 117.

21 While Haggai and Zechariah cast the governor Zerubbabel as a potential Davidic king,these prophetic images reflect nothing of Zerubbabel’s own aspirations (Grabbe, Judaism FromCyrus to Hadrian, 128).

22 Kessler, ‘Persia’s Loyal Yahwists’, 103; exile and return effected a community with twocentres, one in Yehud and one in Babylon (Grabbe, Judaism From Cyrus to Hadrian, 120).

23 R. Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, Vol. II (Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox, 1994) 408–10.

24 The charges maintain that Jerusalem was threatening to restore the monarchy by buildingthe temple and the city walls. In any case, the Persian Empire confidently envisioned therestoration as primarily cultic rather than political, since it had appointed Zerubbabel, a memberof the Davidic line, as governor. See P. R. Ackroyd, Exile and Restoration (Philadelphia:Westminster, 1968) 144; Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, Vol. II, 451, 458.

25 Grabbe, Ancient Israel, 159–60; Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, Vol. II, 438.


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Jezebel’s aberrant religious behaviour would have been an important occa-sion for self-reflection on the religious character of the community living inYehud. In constructing Israel’s monarchic past, the authors of the Deuterono-mistic History assigned blame for the division of the kingdom after Solomonand then for the demise of the Omride dynasty to the religious syncretismfostered by the foreign wife. Solomon’s foreign wives (1 Kgs 11:2) were thecause of Solomon’s support for religious syncretism, as Jezebel was for Ahab’s.Jezebel incited her husband to build a temple and altar to Ba‘al (1 Kgs 16:32;22:25). For Ahab, this led to his downfall, the violent end of his familymembers, and the eventual fall of the northern kingdom.Jezebel herself was a zealot for Ba‘al. She slaughtered and threatened

YHWH’s prophets while supporting the prophets of Ba‘al (1 Kgs 18:4, 13;19:2). Her meddling and manipulation of religious personnel would representa wanton abuse and overreach of the crown’s power. It may have also struckan additional nerve for the citizens of Yehud. Josephus mentions a Persiangovernor of Yehud, Bagoas/Bagohi, who, in 410 bce, levied a steep tax onevery animal sacrificed in the temple for a period of seven years.26 If true, thenthe audience of 410 bce and beyond would have been especially disturbed byJezebel’s state interference with religious practice.Jezebel served as patron for 450 prophets of Ba‘al and the 400 prophets of

Asherah (1 Kgs 18:19), both through her influence on Ahab’s domestic policyand by supplying provisions for them even though they numbered in thehundreds. In terms of cultural memory, Jezebel was much more and muchworse than a bad influence on her husband; she was a zealous practitionerof another religion. The Deuteronomistic scribes construed the presence ofreligious diversity in Israel’s monarchic past as leading to apostasy fromYHWH. Hence, even though as a foreign queen Jezebel could not reasonablyhave been expected to convert to Yahwism in pre-exilic Israel, the dangers ofher not having done so are made clear in the cultural memory of the Persianperiod. There, she symbolized a dissolute age of a northern kingdom racked byapostasy. The distance of that memory, it should be noted, and that ofSolomon is not the determining factor in cultural memory. Instead, it wasthe prevailing interests of a social group that shaped those memories.In the Persian period, prophecy went into decline after Haggai and Zechar-

iah, perhaps because their hopes for a restored monarchy had not materializedor were viewed as too disruptive for life under foreign rule. Prophets thenfunctioned as teachers in the community (2 Chr 15:3, 34:13).27 In this respect,Jezebel’s patronage of the prophets of Ba‘al and Asherah would represent a

26 Josephus, Ant. XI. 297–301; Grabbe, Judaism From Cyrus to Hadrian, 62–3.27 L. L. Grabbe, Priests, Prophets, Diviners, Sages (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity International,

1995) 51; Albertz also notes that prophets in the late Persian period became teachers and scribes(History of Israelite Religion, Vol. II, 454).




dangerous conduit for false teachings. With 850 prophets at her behest, Jezebelhad a veritable army to disseminate her ‘teachings’ of other gods. The Yehu-dite audience most likely would have picked up on the dangers lurking inJezebel’s influence over so many prophets.

These recitations of northern apostasy, then, were not distant curiosities butpalpable social performances of a community’s present issues.28 Self-definitionand formulations about how Yahwism was distinct from other religions wouldhave concerned the post-exilic community and these values provided the‘mapping’ for understanding past apostasies.

We saw above that in Yehud’s recollections about Israel’s political past,Jezebel could remain isolated as ‘Other’, the villain to revile and not emulate.But this memory of religious syncretism implicated the people as well as theirqueen. As a people, Israel had been complicit in this memory of religiousinfidelity. The religious crisis under Ahab29 proved useful for subsequentreflection on notions of cultic purity and obedience to one God. And Jezebel’sBa‘alistic activities helped the authors of the Deuteronomistic History furthertheir monotheistic ideology.30 In the hands of the Deuteronomistic scribes,Jezebel became a provocative symbol for adjudicating where present condi-tions of religious plurality could lead to apostasy.

For the community of Yehud, Jezebel functioned as a scapegoat of collectiveguilt for Israel’s religious infidelities, past and present.31 Her memory couldhave evoked a catharsis of sorts for whatever religious failures and temptationsthe community was experiencing amidst all the other peoples in the PersianEmpire. J. Assmann has stressed the importance of guilt as an incentive for theproduction of memory and self-thematization.32 The community of Yehudwould have needed both to recognize its past errors and the consequences theyhad provoked and move beyond them towards the establishment of a temple-centred Judaism. To construe past sufferings as punishment at least gavemeaning and purpose to having endured them.

Assmann argues that part of what is going on ideologically in the Deuter-onomistic History’s account of the wicked kings was a need to assert a‘connective’ justice, a community’s binding idea about its past. In this in-stance, the story of Jezebel’s comeuppance would have built social cohesionand solidarity in the community’s idea of what constituted justice. This idea is‘connective’ to past and present and future because it is held to be an enduring

28 P. Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 37.29 Namely, that the contest between YHWH and Ba‘al reflected a widespread religious

plurality that was not limited to the king and queen (Grabbe, Ancient Israel, 148).30 Römer, So-Called Deuteronomistic History, 177.31 And, for the male literati, Jezebel’s gender would have been understood to contribute to her

role as scapegoat.32 J. Assmann and B. Templer, ‘Guilt and Remembrance: On the Theologization of History in

the Ancient Near East’, History and Memory 2 (1990) 5–33 (14).


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value. He notes the stabilizing effect that ‘ . . . justice creates a memory-space,one in which what is valid today is what was valid yesterday’.33 Of course,Assmann points out, the litany of wicked kings and their downfall is reallyretribution rather than justice. In our case, then, Jezebel got what she deserved,and it is both satisfying and unifying to recount it.34

Hearing the tales of Jezebel and the wicked kings generated a renewedconfidence that justice and the ‘true’ Yahwistic community could prevailin post-exilic restoration. Jezebel was a foreigner and a Ba‘al-worshipper.But as queen over Israel, her actions were more than any private expressionof religious practice. They constituted an attempt to ‘de-Israelitize’ Israel. Thesense of connective justice is evident in Jezebel’s downfall. There, the socialand ideological boundaries of the people as Israel are forcibly reclaimed byrejecting Jezebel.As Assmann states, what is remembered in cultural memory is what binds a

community together and is binding, which in this case was the rejection ofsyncretism. Jezebel was an object lesson to the community for what happenedto someone who violated the first commandment to have no other gods beforeYHWH and threatened the very core of what it was to be Israel. And so, whilethe community built the walls of the temple architecturally, the scribes werebusy crafting an ideological wall with Jezebel’s story around a real, renewed,and enduring Yahwism. In this way, Israel’s chequered past was put to goodideological use. It helped fashion the parameters of a refined, contemporaryYahwism in the Persian period.By evoking Jezebel’s memory, the people of Yehud remembered that they

could remain Yahwists by omitting religious plurality within their own reli-gious sphere. There is a certain irony here as well, since they were thebeneficiaries of Persia’s open tolerance of religious plurality in its empire. Itwould seem that they had accommodated to Persian policy by benefittingfrom it but were not to imitate such tolerance within the orbit of Yahwism.The scribes construed what makes Israel and Yahwism distinctive in its

past and for its present. The Israel within Persia was remembering that themonarchic policies of religious plurality nevertheless led to apostasy, a com-promised or forgotten fidelity to YHWH. At the same time, they were map-ping out how to avoid that danger in the post-exilic world. The stories yieldedcautionary instruction on fidelity to YHWH amidst the diverse populationand religions in the Persian Empire. Jezebel’s story would have facilitatedcoalition building among the variety of Yahwists to reject the syncretisticthreat occasioned by religious plurality.It should be noted that two important elements of post-exilic religion,

namely, the temple and resurgence of Sabbath observance, are missing in

33 Assmann and Templer, ‘Guilt and Remembrance’, 21.34 Assmann and Templer, ‘Guilt and Remembrance’, 21.




Jezebel’s immediate story.35 But they figure in the story about her daughter,Athaliah, the queen of Judah. When the time came for Jehoidah the priest tokill her, Athaliah was in the temple.36 She must first be brought out of thesanctuary. Perhaps this scene encoded the value of a more vigilant cultic purityfor the Second Temple. A cultic context is further evident in the description ofJehoidah’s assembled troops. Jehoidah divided them into thirds based on theirshifts in relation to the Sabbath: ‘one third of you, those who come off dutyon the sabbath’ (2 Kgs 11:5). The organizing principle is striking. It depictsJehoidah’s care in observing the Sabbath and allowing his soldiers to do soas well. This concern would likely have delayed or at least complicated hismission to assassinate Athaliah. By mentioning the Sabbath three times (2 Kgs11: 5, 7, 9), the Deuteronomistic History highlighted its value over and abovemilitary and political duties.

In the parallel version of Jehoidah’s revolt in 2 Chr 23, the cultic context iseven more pronounced and established before Jehoidah’s arranging of troops.Jehoidah first makes a covenant with the boy king-to-be, Joash, and all theassembly inside the temple. Priests and Levites, because they are holy, remainon guard in the temple with all the people gathered out in the courts of thetemple (v. 6). The Levites are sworn to protect Joash at all times. As addedsecurity, Jehoidah takes from the temple the spears and shields that had beenKing David’s and provides them to his guards (v. 9). Once Joash is crowned,temple singers and musicians celebrate loudly enough to catch the attention ofAthaliah (v. 13). After Athaliah is killed, Jehoidah makes a covenant with theking and all the people to be YHWH’s people and then they destroy the templeof Ba‘al (v. 16). There, they destroy the altar and images and kill the Ba‘alisticpriest. The destruction concludes with priests and Levites offering sacrifices toYHWH (v. 18). Liturgy, in the Chronicler’s account, has cleansed the impurityAthaliah had been to Israel.

For Yehud, the emphasis on the importance of Sabbath observance wouldhave been clear. It also might have summoned an association, expressed by theChronicler, of the land having kept Sabbath during the exile (2 Chr 36:21). Atany rate, both temple and Sabbath figured prominently in the demise ofJezebel’s daughter. The scene—with priest, temple, and Sabbath—purifiedIsrael of this last trace of Jezebel and Ahab, which signalled to the communityof Yehud that it was cleansed for Second Temple worship. Its purification wasvouchsafed by having Athaliah killed outside the temple and, figurativelyspeaking, ‘outside’ of the Sabbath.

35 Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, Vol. II, 409. Berquist argues that Sabbath observancewould have a conservative effect on the people, who would feel gratitude to the powers that be,i.e. Persian imperial policy, for the time to rest and participate in temple worship (Judaism, 142).

36 Priests were more dominant in defining the religion of Yehud than they had been inmonarchic Israel (Berquist, Judaism, 155).


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ETHNICITY

As citizens of the one of the western provinces of the Persian Empire, theresidents of Yehud would have used historical memory to ‘package’ themselvesasmore than that and certainly, asmore than the ‘residuum of a ruined state’, asWellhausen suggested.37 They would have sought to define themselves in self-chosen terms rather than those of their colonizers, who knew them as citizensof Yehud in the satrapy of Transeuphratene (‘Abar Nahara, Ezra 7:25). Apartfrom their religious distinctiveness, how did people in the province of Yehudview themselves in relation to others? Jezebel would have proven an effectivecipher for Otherness because she was a triple qualifier: she was a Phoenician, anortherner (= Samarian), and a woman. Persian-period attitudes about thepeoples of the neighbouring areas, Phoenicia and Samaria, and otherness ingeneral, would likely have shaped the narrative construal of Jezebel’s character.At the same time, attitudes and values about foreignness and otherness neednot have been restricted to specifics. Jezebel’s status as a Phoenician or womanwould have evoked a range of associations and felt perceptions about othernessthat were not confined either to nationality or gender. The scribes effectivelyharnessed these associations in Jezebel’s memory as a means to negotiateYehud’s current experiences with foreign government.The Persian period was a time of reflection about who Israel was, along with

an accentuated openness to other peoples.38 Life under Persian imperial rulemeant increased contact with Persians coming through the region but alsowith a variety of ‘Others’ under the rule of Persia. In this regard, it is worthnoting that Jezebel’s foreignness was not stressed to the degree that her royalposition or religious behaviour had been. And this is telling. It may show thetrace of Yehud’s greater familiarity with and acceptance of other peoples in thePersian period. Foreigners were included in the Yehud’s communal celebrationof Passover (Ezra 6:21), covenant commitment (Neh 10:29), and even in therenewed cultic activity in the temple (Isa 56:3, 6). Conditions of greater diversityin the Persian and Hellenistic periods yielded significant new perspectives onforeigners and women in the canonical writings of the time. For the first time,sacred books appear in which themain character is a woman: Ruth, Esther, andJudith. In addition, the context for these novellas widened to an internationalstage where contact with foreigners was viewed as commonplace: e.g. Estherlanded in the Persian palace of King Ahasuerus; Ruth emigrated fromMoab toYehud; Joseph rose in the foreign court of an Egyptian Pharaoh.39

37 E. Zerubavel, Time Maps (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003) 4; J. Wellhausen,Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel (trans. from an 1882 German original; New York:Meridian Books, 1957) 422.

38 Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, 450.39 These novellas are characteristic of the Persian and Hellenistic periods.




The specific nature of Jezebel’s foreign status, i.e. that she was Phoenician,did not occasion virulence in her memory. Scribal shaping of materials leftthat detail largely as an incidental. The scribes’ decision may also reflect tracesof the economic conditions of the Persian period, since trade with the westernregions of Greece and Cyprus was conducted through access to the vitalPhoenician port cities. Sidonians and Tyrians were used again for the rebuild-ing of the temple (Ezra 3:7). Merchants from Tyre seem to reside in Jerusalem(Neh 13:16).40 Negative attitudes towards foreigners might well have existed insome sectors of the population in pre-exilic Israel, but these would have beeneconomically ruinous in the Persian period. Social norms affirming culturaldiversity helped to shape the historical memories of Jezebel’s story at the sametime as they engendered economic prosperity.

Since Jezebel had been the treacherous queen of the northern kingdom, wemight expect the scribes of Yehud to have exploited this fact in formulatingYehud’s distinctiveness from Samaria. It would also be a convenient pretextfor asserting Judah’s superiority over the richer, well-populated region ofSamaria. The status of Samarians/Samaritans indeed provoked some contro-versy in biblical material from the period. Ezra 4 depicts Samarian protestsover the temple and wall construction in Jerusalem, and these are said to havereached the Persian government. Yet, Jer 41:5 details a pilgrimage of north-erners from Samaria, Shechem, and Shiloh to the temple site in Jerusalem.41

Nehemiah expelled the Judean son-in-law of the Samarian governor Sanballatas an outsider (Neh 13:28). Some believed that the northern Yahwists hadbeen overly influenced by the foreign peoples imported into the region by theAssyrians (2 Kgs 17: 34–40) and so should be considered separate from theYahwists in Yehud and the Diaspora.42

The status of Jezebel as a Samarian would seem to support Nehemiah’s viewof the exclusion of Samarians from Yehud. But, the Chronicler is overall morepositive about the northern kingdom. And the material evidence—pottery,coins, paleographic similarities in Aramaic use—suggests that Samaria andYehud had strong relations.43 Most tellingly, G. N. Knoppers notes theevidence of the Jews at Elephantine appealing to both Jerusalem and Samaria

40 J. W. Betlyon, ‘People Transformed: Palestine in the Persian Period’, Near Eastern Archae-ology 68 (2005) 4–58 (11–16); E. Stern, ‘Between Persia and Greece: Trade, Administration andWarfare in the Persian and Hellenistic Periods (539–63 B.C.E.)’, in The Archaeology of Society inthe Holy Land (ed. T. E. Levy; New York: Facts on File, 1995) 432–45; D. V. Edelman, ‘Tyriantrade in Yehud under Artaxerxes I: Real or Fictional? Independent or Crown Endorsed?’, inJudah and Judeans in the Persian Period (ed. O. Lipschits and M. Oeming; Winona Lake, IN:Eisenbrauns, 2006) 207–46.

41 Middlemas, Templeless Age, 18.42 Albertz, History of Israelite Religion, Vol. II, 529–30.43 G. N. Knoppers, ‘Revisiting the Samarian Question in the Persian Period’, in Judah and

Judeans in the Persian Period (ed. O. Lipschits and M. Oeming; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns,2006) 265–89 (274).


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for help in gaining permission from the Persian authorities to rebuild theirtemple.44 This suggests at least a perception of functional unity in religiousmatters between Jerusalem and Samaria. Overall, the biblical material ismixed. The Samarians represented a distinct area of the Persian Empire butwere part of Israel’s past and so had a special status in Yehud’s culturalmemory. Whatever superiority Judah might have felt by having survivedlonger than the north was mitigated by its eventual conquest. Neither king-dom survived; both were now ruled by Persia. Hence, they shared a presentand the connective memory of the nation’s past. Oddly enough, we get aclearer sign of Samaria’s inclusion in Yehud’s formal act of public exclusion,the communal oath to divorce their foreign wives (Ezra 10:25–44). Here thecontroversy over mixed marriages—and Jezebel’s example—became crucial tothe community’s identity.It is difficult to untangle the precise targets of the Deuteronomistic History’s

contempt for Jezebel. Strong emotion tends to bleed into all aspects of a hatedsubject. Nevertheless, the negative values encoded in the tale of Jezebel seem tohave less to do with her Samarian or Phoenician background specifically andmore to do with the contested issue of intermarriage between a Yahwist and aforeign woman. The cultural memory of Jezebel might well have cut againstthe returnees to the land, at least those who had married exogamously. Jezebelwas a foreign woman with her own outsider religion to import and this hadhad a disastrous effect on Israel. Ahab was already viewed as a wicked king, buthe worsened simply by having married Jezebel, who incited him (1 Kgs 21:25).And so, the troubles that a foreign wife brought to religion would certainly

be heard by the community of Yehud. Ezra (and Nehemiah) lamented thejeopardy Yehud was in as a result of intermarriage and so commanded that allmales cut off their foreign wives and the children produced with them (Ezra9:1–2, 10:2–5, 7–8; Neh 13:23–27). The purging of foreign influence wouldlikely have been seen as a means to protect the religious purity of the post-exilic Yahwists. Resistance to the drastic policy would have softened with thememory of Jezebel’s Ba‘alistic intrusion on Ahab and his kingdom.Earlier, Solomon had made political alliances with marriage and then

supported religious diversity by building cultic sights for the variety of godsworshipped by his foreign wives. From the perspective of the DeuteronomisticHistory, it, too, had compromised his loyalty to Yahweh. With Jezebel, thefocus shifted to one wife and the religious damage she wrought. What mighthave been seen as Solomon’s effective domestic governance having ruinous,yet unintended religious effects on Yahwism became deliberative choice withJezebel. Foreign spouses brought abominations to Yehud (Ezra 9:1), as thestory of Jezebel had so clearly exemplified. The ideological message in her

44 Knoppers, ‘Revisiting the Samarian Question’, 274.




cultural memory would be clear to the Persian period community: better todivorce foreigners than risk religious contamination. Jezebel would haveserved as a vivid, memorable symbol of the dangers of intermarriage.

At the same time, it appears that attitudes about mixed marriage changed orwere more varied in the Persian and Hellenistic periods than the materials inEzra and Nehemiah indicate. From the priestly perspective of Ezra, endogamyhad protected the holiness of Israel.45 The oath to dissolve mixed marriageserved an ideological agenda of purification before a second chance at living inthe land with a restored temple. It was not xenophobic by any means. Nor wasit long lasting. Both Ruth and Esther enter into mixed marriages and thebenefits ideologically sketched out to Israel are tremendous: Ruth gave birth tonone other than the grandfather of King David, and Esther saved the Jewishpeople from annihilation.46 Mixed marriages in these Persian-period storiesare openly endorsed.47

It is not until the account of Jezebel’s death that construals about genderand Jezebel’s role as a woman come into play, in curious ways. The narrative inKings has already detailed that Jezebel was a queen and a wife to Ahab, but nomore as yet has been made of her as a woman. That changes with the scene ofher death. When Jezebel learned that Jehu was coming to kill her, she paintedher eyes, adorned her hair, and waited by the window, all characteristicallyfeminized gestures for ancient Israel (2 Kgs 9:30).48 Yet, these gestures are notput to their expected use. Jezebel did not beautify herself in order to seduce orpersuade Jehu. Instead, she was defiant, proud, and unafraid of the meeting.The beautifying, then, was not for the man’s benefit, as it had been in Esther.Nor was it for deception, as it is in Prov 5:3–4. It was apparently done forJezebel herself as she readied for death. She stood in full command of herpower and would look her best at the end. Ideologically, the scribal shaping ofmemory might be allowing Jezebel her moment, especially since whateverpower she commanded in adorning herself is quickly circumscribed by herimpending death. The scene reflects, then, a contained power, signalling thatat this end point in her story, Jezebel was no longer a danger. She is permittedto beautify herself in cultural memory, because it was only a death mask shewas really making.

Cultural memory often generates associated relations and contrasts bycalling forth other images. Such associations enable a sharpening of ideas

45 Segal, ‘Second Temple Period’, 35.46 For more on Ruth, see A. Brenner, ‘Ruth: The Art of Memorizing Past Enemies, Ambigu-

ously’ in this volume.47 Kessler, ‘Persia’s Loyal Yahwists’, 109.48 The motif of the ‘woman at the window’ is well known; see for example Judg 5:28; 2 Sam

6:16; and Prov 7:6. For an example of the motif in Phoenician-style carved ivory, see <http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/c/carved_ivory_depicting_a_woman.aspx>.


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about, in this case, sexual power. Both Jezebel and Athaliah met their deathshead on, in a face-off with a powerful male. Jezebel’s beautifying of herselfrecalled Esther’s long beauty rituals to capture the king’s heart (Esth 2:12), buther defiant sexual presence recalled Vashti, the deposed queen who hadrefused to display her beauty for the king and his guests during a feast (Esth1–2). Jezebel’s sexual power is mocked, or at least contained, by the detail ofhaving eunuchs throw her out of the window to her death (2 Kgs 9:32–33).This detail may well reflect the conditions of the Persian period, since eunuchswere included in the community and the temple.49

In shaping the story of Jezebel’s death with such sexualized contrasts, theeunuchs played the military role—killing—that Jehu ‘their’ commanderordered. They were, in effect, united in battle against Jezebel. The scribalshaping of sexuality at Jezebel’s end shares affinities with the Wisdom trad-ition. In Prov 7–8, the figure of woman was used in part for lessons on sexualethics but also, more broadly, to illustrate the choice between prudent andfoolish behaviour. Women were used to symbolize both paths, and that of theFoolish Woman leads to death (Prov 7). This scene with Jezebel may beconsciously invoking this cultural trope, suggesting that she and the FoolishWoman shared in death.

THE DEATH OF JEZEBEL

And, in Jezebel’s case, what a death! After having been thrown out the windowby eunuchs, Jezebel was eaten by dogs. Only her skull, feet, and palmsremained (2 Kgs 9:35). Graves, we recall, are important markers of culturalmemory used to advance a sense of social continuity.50 Jezebel was denied thisquite explicitly: ‘so that no one can say, “This is Jezebel” ’ (v. 37). She did notreceive a burial because there was not enough of her left to bury. She is thendenied the security of a grave and the cultural memory it occasioned, of restingwith her people, like Ahab had in Samaria.The grave of Moses was also unmarked, but unlike Jezebel, he had one

(Deut 34). In his case, there presumably was an intact corpse for burial. Thecultural memory of Moses was thereby not erased or desecrated in any way.Instead, it was circumscribed to Israel’s past. Moses remained in an unmarkedgrave in Moab in sight of the Promised Land so that the people could continueto their future in that Promised Land. In this way, Joshua could lead the peopleinto the land without the overwhelming memory of Moses hindering theirnew chapter. The detail of Moses’ grave also served an important ideological

49 Berquist, Judaism, 152.50 Ben Zvi, ‘The Memory of Abraham’.




function for the post-exilic community. It provided a strong legitimacy for theBabylonian Jewish community that had elected not to return. The Torah ends,then, not in the land, but with its central character buried beyond the JordanRiver. This signalled to those in the Diaspora, that is, outside the land, thatthey were not excluded from Israel’s foundation story. At the same time, thoseliving in Yehud could draw comfort from the notion that Moses’ grave, thoughunmarked, was in sight of the Promised Land, and so symbolically watchedover it.

With Jezebel, there was no grave, marked or unmarked: ‘so that no one cansay, “This is Jezebel.” ’ The imagined utterance is itself a shaped memorywhereby the story located the loss of reaction subsequent generations wouldhave. It was, in other words, a memory of how she would not even beremembered. No one would be able to say ‘this is Jezebel’ outside the culturalmemory crafted of her in Kings. She was denied a place in the land of Israel shesought to tamper with as queen. Jezebel was literally dismembered, not to be re-membered, yet the Deuteronomistic History’s gory spectacle in fact renderedher unforgettable. The unintentional message was that there is real pleasure toremembering wickedness, and this undercuts the scribal ideological agenda toquell it. Jezebel’s memory flies well beyond Samaria where her husband Ahabwas buried and is vividly recalled in the Deuteronomistic History’s account ofher disgraceful, effacing end. There, Jezebel is more memorable than any gravecould ever have rendered her. Gore and ignominy guarantee it.

The curse that a royal family would be eaten by dogs was meant as acondemnation of their reign and a literary deterrent to others who wouldfollow in their wicked ways. It was a threat that their memory would not bepreserved through customary burial rituals. They would not know the rest ofSheol or the company of surrounding family burials. Previous wicked kings ofthe northern kingdom earned this ignominious prediction of their end: Jero-boam (1 Kgs 14:11–12) and Baasha (1 Kgs 16:3–5). And the curse was couchedin similar terms: corpses would be eaten by dogs if in the city, birds of prey ifoutside the city. The same dreaded end was predicted of Ahab’s family: whenone of Ahab’s line dies in the city, dogs will devour him; when one of them diesin the field, the birds of the sky will devour him (1 Kgs 21:24).

There is, however, one key difference. With the demise of Ahab and Jezebel,we witness the curse come to fruition. Nothing is left to imagination; thescribes wanted the violent scene to be remembered. Ahab, while wounded inbattle, died by bleeding out in his chariot, where ‘the dogs licked up his blood,and the harlots washed themselves in it’ (1 Kgs 22:38). The additional detail ofharlots bathing in the blood was not part of the curse. The cultural memory ofAhab’s death, surrounded by harlots, functioned as a further indictment of hismixed marriage with Jezebel. Scribal memory condemned Ahab’s marriageonce again by suggesting that his post-mortem association with the wrong sortof woman was as thoughtless as his marriage to Jezebel had been.


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With Jezebel’s death, the dogs did more than lick up her blood. In fact, it firstsplashed around on the wall and next on the horses, which trampled her (2 Kgs9:33). The dogs then devoured her corpse, leaving only the skull, feet, and palms(2 Kgs 9:35–36). It is genuinely hard to imagine a scene of greater overkill thanthis death in Israel’s cultural memory. It is only with the shaping of Athaliah’sdeath that the gory details of dogs devouring was omitted. There is perhaps afaint allusion to Jezebel’s death by having Athaliah killed in ‘the horses’ en-trance’ (2 Kgs 11:16), but otherwise, the text mentions no burial for her. Incomparison, her death was downplayed in the memory of the community ofYehud. Perhaps this was because she had been a queen of Judah and leaving herend obscure was a way to ‘forget’ the power she had exercised in their past.Clearly, the social memory fashioned in Jezebel’s death was about the

horrors of exclusion and erasure with the denial of customary burial. Herdeath would have been understood by people in the Persian period andbeyond as a disgraceful and desecrating end. The social memory constructedaround Jezebel’s death was admonitory to subsequent generations, to avoidthis at all costs. For the residents of Yehud, having one’s corpse eaten byanimals reduced one’s memory to that of trash. They would have viewed beingeaten by birds of prey as even worse because it occurred outside the boundar-ies of the community. There would have been a greater stigma and loss ofremembrance in a death beyond the city and out in the wild where carrionbirds were. Ideologically, the scribes would have sealed Jezebel’s erasure in thememory of Israel’s past by throwing her outside the city. And so, we have toask why it is that dogs figure in the demise of Jezebel as well as her husband,rather than birds of prey in the field. It would seem the heuristic value ofJezebel’s memory to the present community was worth the cost of retainingher death within the city.The scribal aim of finishing Jezebel off was shaped for greatest effect for

remembering rather than forgetting her. Jezebel was so hated that she wouldhave been better off forgotten by the community. But her demise was narratedwith something close to relish. Being eaten by dogs ensured that her deathremained a spectacle in cultural memory. In constructing her death in thisway, the social purposes of memory become clearer. The retribution ideologic-ally inflicted on Jezebel, for social reasons, had to be a public and utterlyhumiliating comeuppance for her life. Being eaten by birds of prey out in afield might well be the more fitting end for an outsider, but it was a private andquiet demise.Jezebel’s death needed to be metaphorically witnessed by the remembering

community. It functioned as a ritual really, a communal retribution of herbehaviour. She died within the city, so that the community hearing thetale could in a sense participate in purging any of her potential influence.The death of Jezebel in cultural memory was configured as very public, as if thecommunity hearing it were surrounding her. The social cohesion of the




community would have been significantly enhanced by its vicarious participa-tion in her death. The community’s own unity is strengthened in the symbol-ism of Jezebel being torn apart. Her death became a communal event more forthe Persian period than it likely had been in Jezebel’s own period. As such, itwas used as a performative avenue for the present community to reject herpractice of religious syncretism and (re)commit to Yahwism.

For the community in Persian-period Yehud, another influence might havehelped to shape the story of Jezebel being devoured by dogs. Ashkelon was acoastal, Phoenician city in the province of Yehud at the time, along withAshdod and Yavneh Yam.51 It boasts the largest dog cemetery ever found inarchaeology and is from the Persian period. Thus far, well over 800 completedog burials have been excavated along with hundreds more partial burials.52

The precise reason for the cemetery is not known. Theories tend to suggestsome sort of cultic association or healing cult. Trade, commerce, and Persianadministrative needs put Ashkelon and Jerusalem in contact with one another.Hence, it is possible that the dog cemetery or use of dogs at Ashkelon wasknown to the people of Jerusalem and its environs. If so, then an associationbetween this Phoenician use of dogs and Jezebel, a Phoenician princess, mightaccount for this detail at her death.

If the excavator of Ashkelon, L. Stager, is correct and the dogs reflect ahealing cult, then the scribes could be expanding the ritual resonances inJezebel’s death by having dogs ‘heal’ Israel of any traces of her. Even if thisnotion cannot be substantiated, a more general, cultural association of Phoen-icians using dogs in some fashion and the death of Jezebel is probable for thePersian period. The citizens of Yehud could simply have had an awareness of alarge presence of dogs in Ashkelon, without any understanding of theirfunction. The very uniqueness of their number in the port city would likelyoccasion talk and surprise by merchants and the surrounding peoples. Thememory of Ashkelon’s dog population also would have outlasted the relativelyshort duration, approximately fifty years, of its dog cemetery.53

The association of Phoenicians and dogs was put to deft, ideological use inshaping the memory of Jezebel’s death. The scribes could have used dogs as acipher for Phoenicians and thereby had them take care of their own scoundrel.In other words, just as Jezebel had earlier used Israelite custom to have Nabothkilled by his own people, here the scribes, via the vehicle of dogs, have Jezebelkilled by her own people. Such a construal would be payback in kind for theNaboth incident. And even if the scribes did not have such a specific intent inmind by using dogs at Jezebel’s death, the general association of Phoenicians

51 Grabbe, Judaism, 84.52 Betlyon, ‘A People Transformed’, 14; P. Wapnish and B. Hesse, ‘Pampered Pooches or

Plain Pariahs? The Ashkelon Dog Burials’, Biblical Archaeologist 56 (1993) 55–80.53 L. E. Stager, Ashkelon Discovered (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1991) 25.


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with dogs would have been enough to sharpen the group identity of Yahwistsas distinct from the Phoenicians also in Yehud at the time. Earlier, in theaccount of the contest atop Mt Carmel between YHWH and Ba‘al duringJezebel’s time, the fire of YHWH triumphed when it first burned the offeringand wood and then ‘licked up’ the water that was in the trench (1 Kgs 18:38).Now, at Jezebel’s death, the Persian period Yahwists could again have allowedhim a triumph over religious syncretism by having the dogs lick up the furtherspill of Ba‘alism in the blood of the king and queen that had supported it.



Why Remember Jezebel?

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