Revelation: Thyatira’s Jezebel
Revelation 2:20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel…
Jezebel…Her name means chaste or unexalted.
This may have been a woman locally with the name Jezebel or it is a symbolic reference to the wife of King Ahab.
Jezebel the queen and wife of King Ahab of Israel was not a nice lady. King Ahab was not a good king and she was not a good influence.
1 Kings 21:25 Surely there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the Lord, because Jezebel his wife incited him.
Jezebel was from Sidon. She was a Phoenician. This would be modern day Lebanon north of Israel. She worshipped Baal and was an idolatrous woman.
1 Kings 16:31 It came about, as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he married Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went to serve Baal and worshiped him.
Jezebel surrounded herself with prophets of false gods.
1 Kings 18:19 Now then send and gather to me all Israel at Mount Carmel, together with 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of the Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.
While she loved the false prophets, she was hostile to God’s prophets. She promised to kill Elijah.
1 Kings 18:13 Has it not been told to my master what I did when Jezebel killed the prophets of the Lord, that I hid a hundred prophets of the Lord by fifties in a cave, and provided them with bread and water?
1 Kings 19:2 Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and even more, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.”
Jezebel had Naboth falsely accused and stoned. Naboth was the owner of a winery that King Ahab wanted. King Ahab offered to buy the winery and Naboth refused to sell. So Jezebel forged a letter in the name of king. She had two men bear false witness Naboth. As a result, Naboth was executed. Ahab got his winery. See 1 Kings 21.
Evil was allowed to run its course and eventually Jezebel got hers. Jezebel’s death was prophecy fulfilled. Where Jezebel colluded with two men to lie about a decent man, Scripture bears witness to her promised death two times.
1 Kings 21:23 Of Jezebel also has the Lord spoken, saying, “The dogs will eat Jezebel in the district of Jezreel.”
2 Kings 9:10 “The dogs shall eat Jezebel in the territory of Jezreel, and none shall bury her.” Then he opened the door and fled.
Jezebel could not manipulate her way out of death.
2 Kings 9:30 When Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it, and she painted her eyes and adorned her head and looked out the window.
Her end was a violent death without burial as prophesied.
2 Kings 9:33 He said, “Throw her down.” So they threw her down, and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall and on the horses, and he trampled her under foot.
But there would be no burial for Jezebel…
2 Kings 9:35 They went to bury her, but they found nothing more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands.
And as a reminder…
2 Kings 9:36-37 Therefore they returned and told him. And he said, “This is the word of the Lord, which He spoke by His servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, ‘In the property of Jezreel the dogs shall eat the flesh of Jezebel; and the corpse of Jezebel will be as dung on the face of the field in the property of Jezreel, so they cannot say, “This is Jezebel.” ‘ ”
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