SUMMER SERMON SERIES
2 Kings 9 Famous Last Words: Jezebel July 23, 2017
First Presbyterian Church, Birmingham Ordinary 16
J. Shannon Webster
Jezebel. For a non-Israelite and the villainess of any story, she certainly carved her name in the stones of time, becoming a synonym for a scheming, evil, and shameless woman. Down to modern times, the epithet “Jezebel” still carries power. There are dozens of songs about heartbreak that feature the name – from Wayne Shanklin’s: If ever the devil was born without a pair of horns, it was you, Jezebel, it was you, that Frankie Laine sang in 1951, to the reversal by Sam Beam (Iron and Wine) in 2005, Jezebel, you were born to be the woman we could blame. Beam gets some scholarly support from Old Testament scholar Gottwald who reminds us scripture is a collection of writings by males in a society dominated by males. He says “Polemics against women’s (church) leadership and office” equate women’s leadership as heresy.[i] He cites the only other place here Jezebel appears, Revelation 2, where a prophetess that John dislikes is nicknamed “Jezebel.”
There, I tipped my hat to Jezebel’s defense. But I really don’t think she has one. Even though her story is limited to 1st and 2nd Kings, she is larger than life and her story is clear. So we continue our summer sermon series of “Famous Last Words.” I picked Jezebel because hers are so much fun – pure trash-talk in the face of death. “Is it peace, Zimri?” Here’s the story behind her words…
Ahab was probably Israel’s worst king. He came to power 70 years after Solomon died. He married a Phoenician princess from Tyre named Jezebel. Jezebel had a bad case of religion – she was a true believer, and she brought Baal worship to Israel, forcing it on the people. As Fred Buechner wrote, “Jezebel had gotten religion in a big way back in the old country, and was forever trying to palm it off on the Israelites, who had a perfectly good one of their own.”[ii] Ahab tried to keep in the Yahweh religious camp instead of Baal’s, naming his children Ahaziah (God seizes), Joram (God is exalted), and Athaliah (God is just). But that wasn’t enough. Jezebel was the stronger personality and the real power on the throne. So Ahab had 2 afflictions – his wife Jezebel, and the prophet Elijah, whose career was spent hounding Ahab to return to the faith of Israel.
In a dramatic scene in 1 Kings 18, Elijah called down fire in a shootout and killed 450 prophets of Baal that Jezebel had imported from Tyre. Jezebel swore his death in revenge. Elijah was not a popular guy with anybody – a loner, an ascetic prophet. He was the moral standard-bearer though, the William Barber of his time. What Elijah did,” wrote Gene Peterson, “was purge our imagination of this world’s assumptions of how life is lived and what counts in life.”[iii] But Elijah never saw the end of this, and neither did Ahab. The old enemies died, leaving the conflict to Jezebel and Elijah’s successor Elisha. So at the time of our text today, Israel was at war with Aram. Greater Israel is divided into two kingdoms. Ahab’s son Joram was King of Israel, and Ahaziah was King of Judah.
The synopsis again, from the text Steve read, is that Elisha assigned one of his junior staff to go and anoint a military commander, Jehu, as King of Israel. It was treason, on the surface of it. Jehu at first shrugged it off, as he returned to the poker table. “What did he want?” they asked. “Oh, you know how those prophets babble on.” But they pressed him on it, and when he spilled the beans, the other military commanders proclaimed him king, and a military coup was underway.
It is a violent text. Jehu and his military officers took a big piece of the army with them, as he mounted his chariot and swept toward the capitol. As he neared the city, a messenger rode out to ask, “Is it peace, Jehu?” Peace meaning Shalom, well-being. He was asking, “Is the news from the Aramean front good?” Jehu’s answer: “What do you have to do with peace? Fall in behind me.” Twice more this happened, and always the messenger joined the uprising. The tension builds with each time the question is asked. Finally the two sons of Ahab, King Joram and King Ahaziah went out personally to ask “Is it peace?” As long as Jezebel was running amok, though, there would be no peace. Jehu shot Joram, and pointed to Ahaziah, “Shoot him, too.” It was done. The wounded Ahaziah made it as far as Megiddo before he died.
With both kings dead there was nobody between Jehu and the royal palace. They saw him coming from a distance, saying: “It looks like Jehu; he drives like a maniac!” Jezebel went to her rooms, fixed up her makeup, did her eyes, and fixed up her hair. Jehu entered the gates and she came to an upper window, and right up to the end was the arrogant manipulator. Her last words were to Jehu: “Is it peace, Zimri, murderer of your master?” In the face of death, she trash-talked him. Zimri had been, like Jehu, a military man who took the throne by killing his predecessor. He only reigned 7 days. By calling him “Zimri” she was saying – “You’ve only got a week until one of my relatives kills you.” As it turns out, she was wrong – Jehu reigned for 28 years and died of old age. But, in response to her last snarky comment, Jehu called up to a couple of eunuchs serving hr: “Who is on my side?” They threw her out the window and she died, trampled by horses and fulfilling one of Elijah’s long-ago prophecies. The dogs licked her blood, and later they found scant body parts.
Jehu was no Zimri, contrary to her taunting. The last words of Kurt Cobain, who formed the band Nirvana, are said to be “It’s better to burn than to fade away.” To which the poet Nathan Brown commented, “If your plan was to burn out as some tortured poet, maybe your last words should have been your own, instead of Neil Young’s”[iv]
It is a graphic and entertaining tale, but hard to make a sermon or moral teaching from, other than that the rich and powerful who oppress and badly use others will get their comeuppance. Famous last words. I think of Sitting Bull, the Lakota war chief who took out General Custer, who was killed years later, in 1890, unarmed and being unjustly arrested, whose last words were: “I am not going. Do with me what you like.”[v]
Maybe the question for us, in this story, is what do we do with these very violent texts in the Bible? Jezebel was a murderous character, no question. Maybe an editor sympathetic to her would have written differently. But the two prophets, Elijah and Elisha, used harsh rhetoric against those like Jezebel who abused their power.[vi] Was God really behind all this bloodshed and violence? Behind Jehu’s rampage? Is peace created that way? Sometimes it seems so, though Quakers would demur. Our ethical decisions are generally compromised, giving us a best partial peace, nothing lasting. Baal is a violent God, and when Shalom has been destroyed – peace, wholeness, well-being – by the bad rule of Jezebel, based on Baal’s values – have we been corrupted by Baal even when we bring it down by violence? Peterson writes: “There is an addictive quality to Baal. Giving up Baal means we give up our control over God… that we can no longer use our religion to scare or bribe or bully other people. Giving up Baal means we have to grow up.”[vii]
There are even more troublesome texts, as when God seems to clearly order the Hebrews to take possession of the land of Canaan and kill every living soul in it, even the animals. Did God really say that? It is those sorts of texts that are hauled out by non-Christians to prove how horrible we are. (Some Christians use similar archaic texts from the Quran to show that Muslims are inherently violent, but when we start comparing texts of violence we would all seem to be implicated. We are hoisted on our own petard.) I will say, no, that is not the true voice of God. How do we read these texts of violence? In light of two tests: the overall story of scripture, and the person of Jesus Christ.
God’s intentions toward humankind are shown in Genesis, in the creation of the world itself. God brings order out of chaos, and creates harmony and abundance, planting humans in the Garden of Eden. God creates without doing battle or overcoming conflict. When disobedience, and later violence, happens and we begin to harm each other, it is an obvious rejection of God’s intentions for humankind. There are occasions where the Bible “presents and approves destructive action for the sake of liberation from oppression”,[viii] and those texts are usually directed against the great ancient empires – Egypt, Babylon, Rome. Even then, justice and judgment are shown to be God’s prerogative, not ours.
Some texts that seem to promote violence are in a self-correcting context. That is, there may be a command to destroy all life in Canaan when Israel possesses it, except that never happened, even in the Bible itself. Instead we have stories of people converting to Yahwism, to the covenant, and an occupation as peaceful as it is violent. Most of the accounts of wars and bloody conflict were written years later, very possibly exaggerated, and are contradicted by archaeological evidence. The enemies in the stories – Canaanites and Philistines, no longer existed in any recognizable form at the point the stories were written down! But we do know from Egyptian texts that people wanted to be part of the covenant people forged at Sinai. Rahab the harlot is not destroyed but becomes a model of faith. Egyptian records talk of whole towns “becoming” Hebrew. Generations later, in Psalm 137, the Hebrews would sing of dashing Babylonian babies’ heads against the rocks. That never happened. It was just anger talking. The texts are self-correcting. The great French philosopher, Paul Ricouer, wrote about the function of language, pointing out that “written texts stand between language and lived experience” and are therefore open to the life of the reader.[ix]
Then there is, for us, the real way to read and interpret the texts of violence – and that is in the light of Jesus Christ. Jesus identifies who the neighbor is for us. Jesus reveals God’s concern for those victimized by power, and the most vulnerable to violence, as those for whom God has the greatest care. From the time of John Calvin on, we of the Reformed theological tradition have held that we read the Bible both forward and backward from Jesus Christ. Jesus himself is the authority who interprets the Old Testament, not a repudiation of it (Creach, p. 4). We are a species prone to violence – our history, our stories, our current events tell that clearly. But we have a model and a corrective. It is not Jehu, as much fun as that text is. And it is absolutely legitimate to ask, “Who would Jesus kill?” What do you think the answer to that is? All I can think of is his words from the Cross: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
1
[i] Gottwald, Norman. The Bible and Liberation, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, 1984, p. 404.
[ii] Buechner, Frederick. Peculiar Treasures, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1979, p. 9.
[iii] Peterson, Eugene. The Jesus Way, Eerdmans Press, Grand Rapids, 2007, p. 126.
[iv] Brown, Nathan. To Sing Hallucinated, Mezcalita Press, Norman, OK, 2015, p.125.
[v] ibid, p. 62.
[vi] Creach, Jerome. Violence in Scripture, Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, 2013, pp. 154-156
[vii] op cit Peterson, p. 125
[viii] op cit Creach, p. 10.
[ix] Ricouer, Paul. Conflict of Interpretations, Athlone Press, London, 1969, p. 66.