JEZEBEL was the Clytemnes-
tra, the Lady Macbeth, of He-
brew history. Though by no
means an attractive person-
age, she is invested by her ex-
traordinary force of charac-
ter and her appalling fate with a tragic
grandeur which belongs to no other woman.
of the Bible.

MADISON

that Solomon built up his extensive commerce
with India by way of the Red Sea, and all the
carrying trade of the Mediterranean was for
a long time in their hands. It was thus by
their agency that the arts, the letters, and
the religions of the East, as well as the prod-
ucts of its industry, were first introduced into
Europe. Their influence on the Greeks, es-
pecially, the first of European peoples to re-
spond to the touch of Oriental civilization,
was varied, deep, and lasting. Greek mythol-
ogy is full of Semitic legends, which, to-
gether with bales of costly merchandise, were
borne westward in Phœnician ships. And if
they did not invent the alphabet which we are
still using, but obtained it from Egyptian
sources, it is still one of many precious things
which we owe to this enterprising race.

The first noteworthy thing connected with
her is the fact that she was not of the stock
of Israel, but of another and a very remark-
able race.
She was the daughter of Ethbaal,
King and High-Priest of the Zidonians. That
is to say, she was a Phoenician. Now the
Phoenicians were the great commercial and
maritime people of the ancient world. They
were akin to the Canaanites, and indeed to
the Hebrews, whose language was almost
identical with their own, but they represent
an earlier migration from the Arabian cradle
of the Semitic race, and they finally settled
on the narrow strip of fertile sea-coast north
of the headland of Carmel and between the
mountain range of Lebanon and the Mediter-
ranean. Here, with no opportunity of ex-
pansion toward the east or north, the way of
the sea alone lay open to them, and they made
the most of it. They improved the few poor
harbors which the bleak coast afforded, and
Tyre and Sidon especially became populous,
rich, and splendid seaports. They construct-
ed merchant - vessels equipped with two or
three banks of oars and capable of carrying
large cargoes, and they became the most skil-
ful sailors of that age. It was with their help

They were not, however, contented to be
merchants and seamen only. Colonization
followed commerce. They settled at various
points on the islands of the Mediterranean
and along both its shores, as far westward
even as the Straits of Gibraltar. About 800
B.C. some fugitives from Tyre founded Car-
thage, which was long the rival and enemy of
Rome, in whose history the Punic-i. e., Phœ-
nician-wars form so memorable a chapter,
and the Phoenician language continued to be
spoken in that part of northern Africa for
nearly sixteen centuries. They established
themselves in the south of Spain, where Tar-
shish became an important emporium, though
its exact site has long been forgotten. And
thence their adventurous navies made their
way to the Canary and Scilly islands and the

shores of Britain, while " an admiral of Tyre circumnavigated Africa in 600 B.C., or 2000 years before Vasco da Gama."-(G. A.

Smith.)

All this happened long after the time of Jezebel, who lived in the ninth century B.C., but it shows from what an energetic stock she sprang-the same which afterwards produced the greatest soldier of antiquity, Hannibal, whose temper was not more daring and unforgiving than hers. It was a rash and impious act for Ahab to set her beside him on his throne, and the evil consequences of it soon appeared. It brought about a state of things very different from the friendly commercial relations which had existed between the Israelites and the Phoenicians in the days of David and Solomon. And yet, if Dean Stanley is right in his suggestion that the forty-fifth Psalm, with its references to the "daughter of Tyre" and the " ivory palaces," and the absence of any allusion to Jerusalem, was really composed as an epithalamium for the marriage of Ahab and Jezebel, the alliance which was to have such far-reaching and tragical results was at first greeted with rejoicing. But it was the union of a weak as well as wicked man with a woman of indomitable will, to whom fear and pity and conscientious scruples were alike unknown. Like Clytemnestra and Lady Macbeth, the woman was the evil genius of the man, and a frightful series of crimes and massacres ensued, involving not only the kingdom of Israel, but, through the marriage of Athaliah, Jezebel's daughter, with a prince of the house of Judah, the southern kingdom as well, in an inconceivable succession of horrors.

There are three acts in Jezebel's dramatic career. The first begins with her attempt to supplant the worship of Jehovah by that of Baal, and ends with the flight of Elijah. The story is powerfully told in the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters of I. Kings. It was natural enough that she should carry her religion with her into her new home. Regarding Jehovah as only a local divinity, "the god of the land," why, she reasoned, should not Baal and Ashtaroth also have their shrines and their worshippers? Yielding to her strong will or half converted to the widespread idolatry in which she had grown up, Ahab erected in his new capital at Samaria a magnificent temple to the sun-god, at which no less than four hundred and fifty priests officiated. In addition to this, at the royal residence which

he had himself constructed in the beautiful plain of Jezreel, with its palace of ivory and its elaborate gardens, a sanctuary was built by Jezebel herself to Ashtaroth (or Astarte), whose four hundred priests were fed at her own table. At both places the cruel and licentious rites of these divinities were celebrated. But Jezebel was not satisfied with this. She undertook to exterminate the worship of Jehovah. She inaugurated the first great persecution in the history of the Church of God. And she appears to have almost sueceeded in her attempt. Only a hundred prophets seem to have escaped her fury, and at one time not more than 7000 persons were left in all the kingdom who had not bowed the knee to Baal.

66

This crisis brought upon the scene "the very chief of the prophets." Elijah, coming no one knew whence, suddenly stood before Ahab. He arrested the King's attention by foretelling the three years of drought that followed. At the end of that period he unexpectedly appeared again. To the King's angry challenge, Art thou he that troubleth Israel?" he replied, in a tone not less defiant; "I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house!" He summoned the eight hundred and fifty prophets of Astarte and Baal to a supreme test of power, a stupendous battle of the gods, on the top of Mount Carmel, overlooking the great Phoenician plain. In language of unparalleled audacity he taunted them with the impotence of their boasted deities, and when the strange contest ended in the triumphant vindication of Jehovah, he incited the people to seize and massacre them all on the banks of the Kishon, not more than twenty miles from the gates of Tyre. The terror which he thus inspired is shown by the remarkable fact that the Phoenicians made no attempt to avenge the sacrilegious insult. Ahab was completely cowed. But there was one person with whom Elijah had yet to reckon. It was Jezebel. The King told her "all that Elijah had done, and withal how he had slain all the prophets with the sword." Not for an instant did she cower before the victorious prophet or before his God. She swore the terrible oath, "So let the gods do to me and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to-morrow about this time!" The fury of this undaunted woman was more than even Elijah could face. He had defied the King; he had stood out alone against the vast multitude of the priests

and worshippers of Baal. But when he heard the words of Jezebel, "he arose and went for

his life"- -across the kingdom of Judah,

across the Arabian desert, to the remote solitudes of Mount Sinai. In the first act of the tragedy, the haughty Queen remains in undisputed possession of the stage.

The second act comprises the familiar story of Naboth's vineyard, in itself a literary masterpiece so often alluded to by modern writers that no person can be called well read who does not know it by heart. Ahab was a splendor-loving monarch, and he lavished his wealth and taste on the city and palace which he built in the plain of Jezreel, the most famous battle-ground of history, and the broad passageway through which the great currents of travel and traffic between Asia and Europe flowed for centuries. Adjoining the royal palace was a vineyard which he desired to purchase, that he might transform it into a flower-garden. Like the Prussian miller of modern times who dared to oppose his legal rights to the imperious will of Frederick the Great, its owner, Naboth, refused to sell it. In petulant anger at his obstinacy, the King, like a sulky child, went to bed and refused to eat. It does not appear, however, that he thought of accomplishing by criminal means what he could not honestly secure. His Queen was at once bolder, more determined, and more utterly unscrupulous. Instantly her design was formed. In contemptuous impatience she exclaimed, "Dost thou now govern the kingdom of Israel? Arise, and eat bread, and let thine heart be merry: I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite." How precisely these tremendous words anticipate Lady Macbeth's, "Infirm of purpose! Give me the dagger!" and her sharp aside at the banquet table, " Art thou a man?" Nor is Jezebel troubled by any such womanly weakness as that which prompted the Scottish heroine's, "Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done 't," nor does conscience waken in her sleep and paint the ineffaceable drop of blood on her "little hand." Coldly and without faltering she carried out her purpose.

She wrote letters in Ahab's name, and sealed them with his seal, and sent them to the elders and nobles of the city. In these letters she directed them to proclaim a fast, and setting Naboth on high among the people, to accuse him of blasphemy against God and against the King. They were to have ready two false witnesses, to support the

unjust charge, and when he should have been convicted on their testimony, they were to carry him out and stone him to death. The foul plot was promptly executed and reported to the Queen, who quietly announced it to Ahab in the words, "Arise, take possession of the vineyard; for Naboth is not alive, but dead." According to one version of the narrative the King's miserable soul was pierced by remorse when he learned what had been done. At all events, he quailed again when the terrible prophet once more "found" him and pronounced the doom which was to fall upon him and upon his house. It was a sentence of such awful import, foreboding the utter extinction of his race and the exposure of their unburied bodies to the dogs and to the vultures, that the guilty and craven King, who had "sold himself to work evil," was frightened by it into a genuine repentance. But Jezebel his wife, who had "stirred him up to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord," was as incapable of remorse as of fear. She gave no sign of repentance, but went proudly on to meet her doom.

Many years passed before the dénouement of the tragedy. Ahab was killed in battle. Athaliah had carried the fatal influence of her mother into the southern kingdom. Jehu had been anointed as the avenger of Jehovah and had begun his bloody work. The King of Israel, Jezebel's son, and the King of Judah, her grandson, met him under the walls of Jezreel, in the ill-omened garden which had once been the property of Naboth. The former Jehu slew with his own hand, the latter. was overtaken in his flight and killed The last hour of the aged Queen had come, but her proud spirit was not yet subdued. Greatgrandmother though she was, she stopped in that terrible moment to arrange her hair and paint her eyebrows,

Pour réparer des ans l'irréparable outrage, as Racine says in his "Athalie." Then placing herself at the latticed window of the watch-tower, she awaited the coming of Jehu. As he entered the gate, she shouted down to him the bitterest, most insulting taunt that she could think of. As the Revised Version reads (II. Kings, ix. 31), she called him by the detested name of the usurper and assassin who, after reigning only for a week, had fled into the palace and burned it over his own head. "Hail," she cried, "thou Zimri, thy master's murderer!" She must have known