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There was a queen of great intelligence, integrity and independence named Jezebel who was descended from the Queen of Sheba through political marriages between Phoenicia and Sheba. Jezebel was a princess of Phoenicia who became Queen of Israel when she was married off to an insignificant, whimpering king of Israel by her cruel, power-hungry father. Making the best of a bad situation, she became a great social reformer and stateswoman. This alone was enough to make her run afoul of mad prophet Elijah, but there was more- she also believed in cultural diversity and religious tolerance! Elijah ambushed and murdered 450 of Jezebel's friends and colleagues, who were members of a wide-ranging, pantheistic, ecumenical movement designed to insure religious freedom for all the peoples of Canaan. Involved were priests of Baal, prophets of Ashteroth, representatives of Chemosh, Succoth-benoth, Nergal, Ashima, Jibzah, Tartak, and even the despised Philistine god Dagon. There were priestesses of the goddesses Lakshmi, Maat, Isis, Maya, Kwan Yin, Bridgit, Athena, Aphrodite, Demeter, Eos, Tyche, Persephone, Selene, and Metis, whom the Men's Bible doesn't even acknowledge as ever having existed, so gynophobic and provincial were its authors.

Elijah gathered the religious leaders together by inviting them to a rigged contest between Yahweh and their gods. He determined what the contest would be: cooking a bullock by spontaneous combustion to be started by the most powerful god, and then he cheated by using flammables to make sure that Yahweh won. The Israelites were fooled by the cheesy pyrotechnics and, believing Yahweh to be supreme, obeyed Elijah when the homicidal maniac commanded them to slay the 450 leaders of the other faiths in the brook of Kishon. Imagine Jezebel's fury and emotional distress. Under the circumstances, she behaved with incredible restraint. She sent soldiers to arrest Elijah, but he fled. Here's a theme that you'll see repeated in the New Testament: Elijah went into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights and hallucinated about god.

Realizing his days were numbered, Elijah took on a young protege' mad prophet, Elisha. The Men's Bible  uses yet another redundant miracle to mark the death of Elijah at the hand of Jezebel's soldiers (which punishment the Men's Bible neglects to mention): Elijah parted the waters of the Jordan with his mantle, then passed it to Elisha, who  parted the waters with it right after Elijah died, to symbolize his inheritance of Elijah's mad prophethood. A couple more water partings. Yawn. Jezebel's soldiers should have killed Elisha, too, because he harassed her for the rest of her life, but she was too fair and just to kill a person who had not yet committed a crime.

It wasn't long before the crazy bastard committed his own heinous offense. He murdered 42 boys. (2 Kings 2:23-24) He went up to Bethel and there came forth little boys out of the city and mocked him, saying, "Go up, you bald head, go up you bald head." And he turned back and saw them and cursed them in the name of the lord. And there came forth two she-bears out of the forest and tore forty two of the boys. Isn't that a charming Bible story? If they told that in Sunday school, kids wouldn't be able to sleep for a month. Killing 42 boys for making fun of his baldness- you can see where Queen Jezebel would have had a problem with that. She issued a warrant against him. But before she could capture him and bring him to justice, he got a political ally, Jehu, to murder her son in an ignominious ambush. Then Mad Prophet Elisha went about Israel and Canaan vowing to smite Queen Jezebel and ranting that her body would rot in the fields and be eaten by dogs. He was so rabidly against her because she was trying to reform Israel by eliminating religious discrimination, and because she had put to death his mass murdering mentor. Oh, and apparently he was insanely vexed by her use of make up. Mad Prophet Elisha continued his political harrassment of Queen Jezebel her entire life, which indicates she must have been a pretty effective champion of common sense, justice, and religious tolerance.

When she died of old age, as Queen Jezebel's solemn state funeral procession passed Naboth's vineyard, which she had rescued from confiscation by her miserly husband, Elisha's corpse was being devoured with gusto by wild dogs. Elisha had been summarily executed by one of Queen Jezebel's bereaved guards, who caught him lurking in the vicinity, spying on the services. The soldier had then left Elisha's body lying in the vineyard, while he rejoined the pallbearers.

E-mail me at: bahamil@hotmail.com

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* Note- the idea of Queen Jezebel as an advocate of religious freedom was taken from an A&E Biography of her.

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