DECODING JEZEBEL (Part 2 of 3)

Jezebel’s case got to God in heaven, and the merciful God gave her and her followers “time to repent,” because He was “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).  Unfortunately, Jezebel was a stubborn woman, unwilling to repent.  Several Bible translations capture it that way.  According to the Complete Jewish Bible, “she doesn’t want to repent.”  The Amplified Bible says, “she has no desire to repent … and refuses to do so.”  According to the New International Version, “but she is unwilling” to repent. Many other translations present the same picture of a woman who was aware of the evil she was doing, aware of the mercy of God extended to her, but “unwilling” to repent, her will and choice poised against God; a woman whom none could advise; a stubborn woman who always chose what she wanted to do, and nobody could tell her otherwise, not even the God of heaven.  Anyone who said anything she didn’t want to hear got marked as an enemy, and was at once avoided or completely ostracised.

When no one would give Jezebel an office – perhaps because they knew who she was – she created one for herself, by force, and called herself a Prophetess.  She gave herself a never-before lofty title that even her husband, the pastor, did not bear.  She went for something higher than everyone around her.  As it would be said in Nigerian pidgin, “Dis woman get mind-o!” She was strong-headed, with a mind of her own.

Jezebel didn’t call herself a Deaconess.  Why should she, when everyone else should be serving her?  She didn’t call herself a Sanctuary Cleaner – how dare anyone bring her so low!  She called herself a Prophetess.  If nobody was going to call her, she would call herself.  Strangely, some men, even married men, followed a woman like that, unruly as she was!  Sadly, at last, as we shall find out soon, they were all going to pay for it by the great tribulations they would suffer.

Jezebel’s self-ordination was the public announcement that her husband had failed at home. Otherwise, if she honoured him and feared him, she would have waited for him or other leaders to confer the title upon her. Not Jezebel. They should not waste her time.

A woman who could make such implicit, impudent public declarations certainly did worse in the secret.  If she could do so in church, she likely did worse at home. If she could ‘snatch the mic’ in public and impose her voice upon the people, she did worse behind the scenes.  No wonder in the Old Testament she produced such deadlier killers like Athaliah, her daughter, who killed scores of her own grandchildren to seize the throne of Judah by force, for six years, until the sword took her away.  Usurper of the throne, like her New Testament namesake who was usurper of an ecclesiastical office (2 Kings 11:1-20).  The boys from that evil root were no better than the women, for they became kings of great concern, like Jehoram and Ahaziah (2 Chronicles 21:6; 22:3).

Jezebel was a rebel, an incorrigible ‘preacher,’ the only right person in the house; always right.  Not even her husband could handle her.  In fact, she handled him, as we shall soon find out when we visit her home.

How did a woman whom none could advise manage to take hold of the pulpit, to advise others?  How did a self-willed, unrepentant woman become a prophetess, who prophesied over others and poured oil on their heads?  What kind of anointing did she impart upon those miserable heads?  Why did none of her hearers judge her ‘great’ ministry by her cruel character?  Interestingly, all Jezebels are not females.

According to the letter to the church at Thyatira, the only problem that God had with that entire church was “that woman”: “I have a few things against thee … that woman Jezebel …”  Even heaven was on her case.   If there was fornication in the church, or adultery, or idolatry, it was all traced to her. She was a major portal for the abominable.  Her husband’s only problem with God – or rather, the only problem that Heaven had with her husband’s ministry was herself and her ways: “that woman Jezebel.”  It all started from the time she ordained herself, and nobody in that church could restrain her.

Jezebel did not target mere men; she went for men with substance; men with a home and a name; men in the church.  Her victims were godly men who had left the world and fled to the church.  She was the kind of woman about whom Solomon warned in the book of Proverbs: “For she hath cast down MANY wounded: yea, MANY strong men have been slain by her” (Proverbs 7:26).

According to Solomon, her victims are not few but “many.”  Among them are even “strong men,” whom many expected could have resisted her: financially strong men, morally strong men, religiously strong men, intellectually strong men – like Solomon and Samson.  Her casualties lie prostrate in different states of injury: some are “cast down,” some are “wounded,” others are even “slain.” Notice the sad progression of the narration of her casualties:  cast down – wounded – slain; all different stages of deadly conditions.  Not everyone survived their injuries at her hand.  Even if they were not slain, none remained the same after intimate interaction with her.  Every man had a sad story to tell from the day they met with her – a casting down, down, down; and injuries, and deaths.  She was a ‘factory’ for depressions.  Because the crises that came from meeting her were spiritual, they couldn’t be solved by natural means such as medications or other therapies.

Jezebel must have been a woman of great charm, captivating charm, paralysing charm, irresistible charm.  Her charm came not just from her face and her voice but from a deeper source than mere eyes could see:  Baal – “Lord Baal,” the fiery celestial deity.  Yes, Baal was a “lord” who demanded everyone’s worship, which is why his priestesses and prophetesses would not stoop to serve anyone, but must sit on thrones before which everyone else should bow, even their men.

The fact that Jezebel’s targets were essentially married men meant that she destroyed homes, because her intimacy with those men brought scandals and crises to their marriages.  If she valued the home, she would not target it.  She did not value family or marriage.  She fought it, indirectly, by attacking the pillars that held up the homes.  Marriage for her was merely a convenient platform for launching her agendas.

Like the Mrs of whom Solomon warns in Proverbs 7, Jezebel was a woman of compelling words.  She spoke enticing words that ensnared her listeners who, unfortunately, were usually men “void of understanding”; men marked by a certain foolery in need of the “correction of the stocks” (Proverbs 7: 7, 22).  That “it was her fault” did not free anyone from the judgment she brought upon her victims.

Jezebel seduced.  She did not inspire or edify.  Her method and mission: “to teach and to seduce.” Her targets:er  H “my servants.”  Her goal:  to seduce especially God’s servants “to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.”   In other words, her aim was to set up the servants of God against their God; to get them into a posture where they made the battle easier for her as their God fought against them because of their abominations, which had come through her.  That was exactly the Balak-Balaam strategy against Israel (Numbers 31:16).  Prophet Balaam must have been her mentor, which explains the doctrinal affiliations between her church and her next-door Pergamos church with their “doctrine of Balaam” (Revelation 2:14).  It was all well planned.  Her tools:  sex and food, like Balak of old inspired by Prophet Balaam (Revelation 2:14).  “Her witchcrafts are so many” (2 Kings 9:22).

Jezebel targeted men who carried a special grace of God, to drain them of that treasure and turn them into enemies of the One who had anointed them – as Delilah did to Samson (Judges 16:6).  She targeted “servants” of God – not one, not two, but a handful.  She tempted them with “things” that appealed to their lusts: sex and food.  Poor preachers that some of them were, they couldn’t ask what food she served, where it came from, what it was celebrating.  Because it came from “Her Eminence, the Prophetess,” they ate, and were defiled.  She ensured that her poison was packaged attractively, so that even if someone didn’t want to eat, the royal package attracted them.  Seductions.   Whoever ate from her table left there feeling worse, feeling dry, feeling emptier.  She did not have the bread of life for their souls, so she pandered to their flesh with earthly vanities.

Jezebel was a skilful teacher, a manipulator, who knew how to twist the scriptures to say what she wanted, and lead the simple astray into “her fornication” (metaphorically, idolatry), and adulteries and unclean foods.  She was a woman of great influence as the wife of the King, the wife of the Senior Pastor, the daughter of a king, and a princess.  She exploited her social status (in the bank, the industry, politics, lofty global institutions, the church) to her evil advantage.  Mark you, all Jezebels are not females.

In the Old Testament, Jezebel was the wife of the ruler – Ahab, king of Israel. She had her place in the palace. In the New Testament, the identity of the In the Old Testament, Jezebel was the wife of the ruler – Ahab king of Israel.  She had her place in the palace.  In the New Testament, she was the wife of the pastor over the church in Thyatira.  According to some Bible commentaries, for example, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary and Robertson’s NT Word Picture, many excellent ancient manuscripts, and “almost all the ancient versions,” according to Adam Clarke’s commentary, read, “thou sufferest THY WIFE Jezebel …”  (Revelation 2:20).  In other words, “that woman Jezebel” would read, “thy wife Jezebel.”   She was the Mama of the church.

Unfortunately, the pastor, her husband, could not restrain her.  Maybe he feared her – or feared “her witchcrafts,” which were “so many” (2 Kings 9:22).  She was probably as deadly as her Old Testament counterpart whom even Elijah dreaded, or she was deadlier in other ways.  The Jezebel of the New Testament was to the church in Thyatira what the Old Testament Jezebel was to her husband Ahab, the king of Israel.  They influenced their husbands to do evil.  They were not a helpmeet, as we read in Genesis 2:18; they were hell-meet, as one preacher said in her book; destroyers of what their men had laboured to build.

Of Jezebel’s seduced casualties, God said, “MY servants,” but of her, as if pointing to her in the distance far away from Him, God said, “THAT woman …” – “THY wife Jezebel …”  She was in the house of God, but she was not of God.  She worked in the house of God, but not for God.  She served a different interest, a different kingdom, a different agenda, but she was the pastor’s wife.

Jezebel was not a woman who loved to sit incognito in the back pew. She loved the front seats, the high tables, and the headlines. She loved titles, lofty titles. She was not a woman of “shamefacedness and sobriety,” as godly women and wives are admonished to be in 1 Timothy 2:9. She was the opposite. She loved to be noticed and acknowledged. If you did not give her recognition, she took it herself – by force and by every means possible, straight or crooked. She went for the loftiest titles, not because she would perform well in that office, but because the title offered a platform for self-promotion. God have mercy on the master of ceremonies who called her up without a “proper introduction” that recognised and catalogued all her “achievements” and titles.

If she was the one who “called” herself a prophetess (v.20), and if she ordained herself within a church where her husband was in charge, then she was a usurper. She would not wait to be ordained. Nobody was fit enough, noble enough, or holy enough to do that for her. After all, she was a princess and a queen. They should all be glad that she would ‘bring herself low’ to their level to be their wife, sit with them, or even pastor them. She took honour by force if nobody gave it to her. She was the kind of usurper against which the Bible warns in 1 Timothy 2:12: a woman who is not prepared to learn, let alone learn in silence.

Despite her frail feminine appearance, Mrs Jezebel was not a “weaker vessel.” Like the tender-looking Delilah who overthrew the heavyweight Samson, her appearance was as deceptive as her name. Lady Jezebel was a strong woman, and she usurped “authority over the man” (1 Timothy 2:12). Any woman who could conquer so many men – not only in the secrecy of her home and the private bedrooms of her adulteries, but also in the public pulpit of the church – was not weak at all.  God was not deceived by her victimhood public tears, her clever soft voice, her shallow tender looks.

Prophetess Jezebel emasculated her man.  He couldn’t talk to her, and nobody could.  She put all the men into her handbag through her pollutions.  Only God could warn her, but even the warning of God, she would not receive, for she “refused” to repent.  Jezebel was incorrigible.  Her husband could not tame her at home, and she took it to church, where she corrupted other men, who took the trouble further into their own homes.  Some homes split, some were “cast down,” some were “wounded,” others were “slain,” but none dared to challenge Big Mama! She was ambitious and powerful, deploying her powers to unscrupulous ends in the church, until God Himself had to call her out.  She was in a marriage, but it was not because she believed in the home.  Marriage was only a convenient platform for her schemes.

I wonder how her husband felt before other men, when his wife was the known opposite of what he preached.  I wonder if he could look them in the face and condemn adultery and fornication when his wife slept around, and some of those men in the congregation were her clients and victims!  I wonder how embarrassed that man must have felt as his wife and her brood were not listeners of his sermons!  I wonder how many folks in his congregation mocked him silently because of his wife and her children!  If she dealt so with him before his congregation, I wonder how she presented him in places where he was absent!  I wonder how she advertised him on other networks, before other men!

Logically, a woman who sleeps around tells the other men that her man is a misfit.  She says that not only in her actions but in her words, as that is the only way to give legitimacy to her illicit ways.  Prophetess Jezebel rubbished her husband to establish herself.  She put him down to promote herself.  She made him less, so she would gain more – or gain all.   I wonder how that pastor survived that home.

As adultery is not something that anyone was proud to publish in the newspaper, the actors usually did it secretly and kept it very private, even while they acted as angels.  To that extent, Jezebel often hid to do her stuff, and always lied about it.  When she claimed that she was going for a vigil in the next church, it was another excuse to meet the next man at another address.  When she said that she got home late because traffic held her down for six hours, it was a lie to cover another adulterous escapade.  That is the point that God was making when He eventually warned that He was bringing upon her a judgment by which “ALL the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts” (v. 23), a judgment that would prove Him as One who sees even the hidden things of the heart when people cover up rottenness with pretty church clothes and wear designer perfumes that cannot drown the stink in their souls.  Jezebel was a secret sinner whom God was going to expose in a way that should make all to know that He “searcheth” even the secrets in the heart.

A woman like that certainly didn’t raise godly children.  She bred serpents like herself, some of whom became more venomous.  A woman like that didn’t keep a peaceful home to which the husband retired and refired for his next sermon or mission.  She often frustrated him so much that he had little peace or rest at home, so he frequently ran dry of sermons to preach.  When therefore the people began to complain that his sermons were no more edifying, she finally had what she had been waiting for, the reason to ‘step in’ as his superior minister, as Prophetess, to fill his sorry ‘gap.’  So, she often created a problem, then offered herself as the solution to the very problem she had cooked.  It was the agenda: emasculate him, drain him, drive him off the pulpit, then take his place.  When she took that office, she probably intended to give the general impression of a wife committed to supporting her husband, but it was another lie.  Her motive was herself, not another.

Her husband had been wifed, silenced, and castrated. Unlike the virtuous woman whose “husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land” (Proverbs 31:23), this man dared not raise his voice too high where other men were, let alone sit “among the elders of the land.” Even women had questions, because Mama Jezebel was not the best example for them to follow, although they minded her out of respect for her husband, their pastor, whom she herself did not respect. The lifestyles of some of their husbands reflected her wrong influence: adultery, fornication, idolatry, and an indiscriminate appetite that ate anything with a bold face empowered by scriptures she had distorted for them. How could they follow her? The women saw through her schemes more easily than the men did, so they were not listed among her many victims. Her victims were mostly men, some of whom would not listen when their wives and other wiser women warned them.

The New Testament Jezebel had a weak husband who could not call her to order.  Also, because she happened to be the pastor’s wife, it seemed traditional that she should share in the altar, whether she was also called into that office or not.  He dared not put up a billboard that did not position by her his side.  He dared not start a service in which he did not ‘recognise’ her properly.  Her soft husband didn’t want a public fight that should embarrass him before everyone, so he gave in, and let her to teach, even when the fruit of her ‘ministry’ was fornications among the young “servants” of Christ, adulteries among the older men, and meals and feasts and parties that polluted everyone else.  Still, the man could not talk to her, until God’s letter of warning arrived.

We hear of Jezebel as a teacher; we hear nothing of her husband’s voice, the pastor. She had emasculated the man at home and silenced the other men outside with her sexual corruptions and other abominations. That is Jezebel: she castrates men. The Old Testament Jezebel surrounded herself with eunuchs – castrated men (2 Kings 9:32). Their emasculation was her strength.  Her husband was her first victim; a man who cried home to her when he got beaten in public vineyards that his greed could not capture (1 Kings 21:1-9). That woman was a strategist. She knew how and when to get what she wanted. In the Old Testament, she deployed a fast at the end of which bribed men were silenced and used as tools to silence a holy man, Naboth.  In the New Testament, she unleashed a title that never existed in that church until then, and she used it to destroy men.  Men were her primary targets.  Some she killed; others she castrated and deployed as weapons against other men.  Either way, by castration or by death, she silenced them all.