[Music] The most evil queens in the Bible. Some of the wicked kings we know in the Bible were also married to wicked queens who either encouraged their husbands to do evil or they themselves did evil in the name of their husbands. Examples of these wicked queens mentioned in the Bible are Jezebel, queen of Israel.
An Israelite was not supposed to marry a heathen, so the Lord commanded them to do so. Ahab forsook the word of God and went and married Jezebel, princess of Sidon, daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Zidonians. Jezebel and Ahab, her husband, further thrust the Kingdom of Israel deep into idolatry, for they established the religion of Baal in the kingdom.
Jezebel was the child of the priest-king Ethbaal, ruler of the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon. Her name in Phoenician meant "Primrose," but the exact name in Hebrew, Jezebel, meant "garbage," which was how she was known in the Old Testament. Jezebel was King Ahab's wife.
Ahab was the monarch of the Kingdom of Israel during that time. Not only did Ahab follow Jeroboam into idolatry, but he also married Jezebel, who was the daughter of the king of the Sidonians. Both of these actions contributed to Ahab's reputation as an extremely wicked king.
According to the book of Kings, Ahab was recognized as the king who was the worst of all the kings. He was able to create a great deal of destruction over his 22 years of rule. This was the man that Jezebel was married to.
It was abundantly evident that she utilized Ahab to accomplish her nefarious goals, and he did not require much convincing. This was the first time that a king of Israel had allied himself by marriage with a heathen princess. She worshiped Baal.
Jezebel came to the conclusion that she would practice the satanic cult of Baal in place of the worship of the Lord God (1 Kings 18:19). "Now therefore send and gather to me all Israel unto Mount Carmel and the prophets of Baal, 450, and the prophets of the groves, 400, which eat at Jezebel's table. " The practice of Baal worship became widespread in Israel during the reign of Ahab, and the practice of Baal worship also affected Judah.
Various parts worshiped Baal in different methods, and Baal proved to be a highly universal god. Various locales highlighted one or another of his attributes and designed special sects of Baalism. Baal is depicted in sculptures wearing a helmet embellished with a bull's horns, a symbol of strength and fertility.
He holds a club or mace in one hand, probably representing thunder, and a spear adorned with leaves in the other, possibly representing both lightning and vegetation. After they were married, Jezebel was successful in convincing Ahab to accept Baal. She was a woman who craved more power and sought to silence anybody who tried to challenge her authority.
She was not directed by any principles, was not constrained by any fear of either God or man, and was zealous in her commitment to the pagan worship that she practiced. She spared no effort to retain idolatry in all of its grandeur around her. Her actions were, in many ways, extremely detrimental to the kingdom of both Israel and Judah.
Chapter 21 of Kings traces the events leading up to Jezebel and Ahab's death. There aren't many couples in the Bible that are less appealing to look at than King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. At the conclusion of 1 Kings, we are introduced to their obscene, distasteful crime.
Because they suffered from an almost complete absence of charismatic leadership, they were forced to resort to deceit, selfishness, and cunning in order to achieve their goals. The location is Jezreel, where Ahab and Jezebel had a palace. Adjoining the palace was a vineyard possessed by Naboth the Jezreelite, and Ahab desired to annex the vineyard so he could plant a vegetable garden.
Naboth refused to sell or exchange his land since the law of Israel decreed that property should remain in the family to which it was originally assigned (Numbers 36:7, Amplified Bible). "So no inheritance of the Israelites shall be transferred from tribe to tribe; for every one of the Israelites shall hold to the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers' tribal ancestors. " When Jezebel found her spouse annoyed and grumpy and learned of Naboth's refusal to sell his vineyard, she assured Ahab that the vineyard would soon be his (1 Kings 21:8-16).
"So she wrote letters in Ahab's name and sealed them with his seal, and sent them to the elders and nobles who lived with Naboth in his city. Now in the letters she wrote, 'Proclaim a fast and seat Naboth at the head of the people and seat two worthless and unprincipled men opposite him, and have them testify against him, saying, "You cursed God and the king. " Then take him out and stone him to death.
'" So the men of his city, the elders and the nobles who lived there, did just as Jezebel had sent word to them, just as it was written in the letters which she had sent to them. They proclaimed a fast and seated Naboth at the head of the people. Two worthless and unprincipled men came in and sat down opposite him, and they testified against Naboth before the people, saying Naboth cursed and renounced God and the king.
Then they brought him outside the city and stoned him to death. Then they sent word to Jezebel, saying Naboth has been stoned to death. When Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned and was dead, she said to Ahab, "Arise, take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused to sell you because Naboth is no longer alive but dead.
" When Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, he arose to go down to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite to take. . .
Possession of it, Jezebel, being the devious person that she was, set up Naboth in such a way that it appeared as though he was being executed for disobeying the law of Jehovah. Jezebel ordered the deaths of Naboth's boys because she knew that, following their father's passing, the inheritance would go to them. The wicked Queen was as methodical as she was evil in her approach to her schemes.
Elijah ran into Ahab as he was on his way to seize ownership of the vineyard, and he pronounced judgment against Ahab for murder as well as theft. Elijah said that Ahab would be slain, that the body of Jezebel would be devoured by dogs in Jezreel, and that Ahab's descendants would not be given a proper burial. The harshness of Ahab's punishment can be understood by considering the depths to which he sank in his pursuit of idolatry.
The Bible states that there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do wickedness. After Ahab learned of his impending destruction, he bowed down before the Lord in repentance. In response to this, the Lord issued a decree that the judgments that were to be passed on Ahab's wife and children would not take place until after Ahab had passed away.
She slayed God's prophets (1 Kings 18:4, Amplified Bible) for when Jezebel destroyed the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifties in a cave and provided them with bread and water (1 Kings 18:30). "Has it not been told to my Lord Elijah what I did when Jezebel killed the prophets of the Lord, how I heard a hundred of the Lord's prophets by fifties in a cave and provided them with bread and water? " She also tried her best to slay Elijah (1 Kings 19:1-4, Amplified Bible).
Now Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets of Baal with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, "So may the gods do to me and even more if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like the life of one of them. " Elijah was afraid and arose and ran for his life.
He came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and he left his servant there. But he himself traveled a day's journey into the wilderness, and he came and sat down under a juniper tree and asked God that he might die. He said, "It is enough now, O Lord; take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.
" Elijah, fearing for his life, made his way to Horeb. Her death happened according to prophecy. Prophesied a few years later, Ahab was slain in a battle against the Syrians, and Jezebel continued to rule for nearly another ten years after his death.
As Elijah's successor and a prophet in his own right, Elisha resumed Elijah's crusade to wipe out the worship of Baal. He installed a militant commander named Jehu to be king of Israel, an order that prompted civil war as Jehoram, Ahab and Jezebel's son, then ruled. Jehu was a commander of chariots for the King of Israel, Ahab and his son Jehoram, on Israel's frontier facing Damascus and Assyria.
In the annals of history, Jezebel is remembered as the personification of all that is cunning, sneaky, nasty, vindictive, and vicious. As Jehu rode into the gates of Jezreel, she looked out at the palace's window and said, "Had Zimri peace who slew his master? " He raised his head and signaled her chamberlains who hurled her out the window.
She was quickly consumed by the street dogs according to the word of Elijah the Tishbite after the incident of Naboth and his property (1 Kings 21:19). "And thou shalt speak unto him saying, Thus saith the Lord, Hast thou killed and also taken possession? And thou shalt speak unto him saying, Thus saith the Lord, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.
" Her name afterward came to be used as a synonym for a wicked woman. Nevertheless, I have this against you: you tolerate that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching, she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols (Revelation 2:20).
If you think Jezebel was the worst, let me introduce you to her daughter number two, Athaliah, Queen of Judah. Athaliah was the daughter of Ahab, king of Israel. She got married to Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat.
She proved herself to be a wicked Queen just like her mother, Queen Jezebel, and her father, King Ahab, and her brothers, King Ahaziah and King Joram. Athaliah, whose name means "afflicted by God," reigned as Queen of Judah between the years 841 and 835 BC. She sat on King David's throne; her name means afflicted by God.
Athaliah's reign as Queen was sandwiched between several centuries during which Judah and Israel were ruled by wicked kings and queens. Athaliah was a fervent follower of Baal, and as a result, she was every bit as wicked as the monarchs who came before and after her. Athaliah's husband, Jehoram, was king of Judah until he passed in 841 BC.
Unlike his father, Jehoram was a wicked King. Athaliah's son, Ahaziah, ascended to the throne at the age of 22 and established himself as evil as his father. Athaliah guided her son in his devilish schemes (2 Chronicles 22:3, Amplified Bible), for his mother was his advisor, and she encouraged him to act wickedly.
Ahaziah served as king of Judah for less than one year, for he was assassinated along with Israel's ailing King Joram. Their assassin was Jehu, who had originally been a commander in King Ahab's army (2 Kings 9:25). Then Jehu said to… Bidcar, his officer, picked him up and threw him on the property of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite; for I remember when you and I were riding together after his father Ahab that the Lord uttered this prophecy against him.
Jehu was anointed as the new king of Israel by the prophet Elisha, who also commissioned him as an instrument of the Lord to carry out the punishment that God had pronounced against King Ahab and his entire family because of their idolatry. As part of Jehu's goal to put an end to the dynasty established by Ahab, Jezebel, and her sons were put to death. It just so happened that her son Ahaziah was visiting Joram when Jehu arrived to carry out the plot to kill Joram; as a result, Ahaziah also lost his life (2 Chronicles 22:10-12).
When Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, saw that her son was dead, she proceeded to destroy the whole royal family of the house of Judah. But Jehoshibah, the daughter of King Jehoram, took Joash, son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the royal princes who were about to be murdered, and put him and his nurse in a bedroom. Because Jehoshibah, the daughter of King Jehoram, and his wife of the priest Jehoiada, was Ahaziah's sister, she hid the child from Athaliah so she could not kill him.
He remained hidden with them at the temple of God for six years while Athaliah ruled the land. Athaliah, who had already lost her husband and then her son, took the kingdom for herself by executing her own grandchildren. After she had already lost her husband and son, Satan was the hidden force behind this savage massacre of the royal family, and he was seeking to cut off the Messianic line, as he had attempted to do in the past and would strive to do in the future.
Jehovah moved Jehoshibah to hide her nephew Joash because the promise in Genesis 3:15 guaranteed that the Lord would preserve the line through which the Lord Jesus would eventually come. Jehoshibah's husband, Jehoiada, who was a priest, took care of him for the next six years while he was hidden away in the temple (2 Kings 11:2). But Jehoshibah, the daughter of King Joram of Judah and half-sister of Ahaziah, took Joash, the son of Ahaziah, and abducted him from among the king's sons who were to be killed and hid him and his nurse in the bedroom, so they hid from Athaliah, and he was not put to death (2 Chronicles 24:7).
For the sons of Athaliah, that wicked woman, had broken into the house of God and also had used all the holy and dedicated things of the house of the Lord for the Baals. Unbeknownst to Athaliah, a single grandchild escaped the massacre. Just like her mother, she worshipped the god known as Baal.
During the reign of Ahab and Jezebel, at the peak of Baal worship in Israel, God directly confronted paganism through his prophet Elijah. First, God showed that he, not Baal, controlled the rain by sending a drought lasting three and one-half years. Baal was the name of the god who was worshipped throughout Canaan and Phoenicia in old times.
During the judges' period, the practice of Baal worship entered Jewish religious life. After Athaliah had reigned for six years, the high priest Jehoiada placed guards around the temple and publicly crowned the young Joash as the fitting king. As the new king was anointed, the people clapped their hands and shouted, "Long live the king!
" (2 Kings 11:12). Then Jehoiada brought out the king's son and put the crown on him and gave him the testimony, a copy of the Mosaic Law, and they made him king and anointed him, and they clapped their hands and said, "Long live the king! " (2 Chronicles 23:12-13).
When Athaliah heard the noise of the people running and cheering the king, she went to them at the temple of the Lord. She looked, and there was the king standing by his pillar at the entrance. The officers and the trumpeters were beside the king, and all the people of the land were rejoicing and blowing trumpets, and musicians with their instruments were leading the praises.
Then Athaliah tore her robes and shouted, "Treason! Treason! " Queen Athaliah came to the people in the temple to investigate the cheering and shouting, only to find a child rival she thought long dead, now wearing a royal crown.
But what must have alarmed her even more was the realization that the people were solidly behind him. No one listened to her charge of treason; after all, she was the usurper, not Joash. Jehoiada ordered her to be slain, but not just inside the temple.
She was taken to the horse gate where she was slain for her atrocities in Judah. Some people rise to positions of authority because of their passion for their cause and their feeling of duty; others want leadership positions for no other reason than to achieve power over others and to enjoy the arrogant feeling that comes with being in a position of superiority. In most situations, figuring out what kind of leader you have won't take you very long at all.
In the case of Athaliah, coming to a decision did not take any time at all. As soon as she learned that Jehu had taken the life of her son, King Ahaziah, she arose and destroyed all the royal heirs of the house of Judah, which included all of her grandchildren. She failed to slay Joash, the only child left alive, because a devout young woman named Jehoshibah concealed him in the temple of God for a period of six years, allowing him to escape her homicidal rampage, the act that God had promised his people: that the Messiah would come via.
. . The royal line of David made absolutely no difference to Athalia in the least.
This is a picture of a leader so thirsty for power that she would do anything to attain and hold her illegitimate title, including murdering her own kin. Athalia ruled over Judah for seven years; in the end, the people violently removed her from power. Queen Athalia is an extreme example of a leader motivated not by love, but by power, prestige, and position.
It never takes long to spot the difference. Number three: Herodias, queen of Galilee. Herodias is known as an evil queen, and the fact that she was responsible for the execution of John the Baptist will ensure that she is never forgotten.
In the Bible, she is referred to as Philip's wife, who also happens to be Herod the Tetrarch's brother. Despite this, Herod the Tetrarch, also known as Herod Antipas, married her in violation of the law while her brother Philip was still alive. John the Baptist had the audacity to preach against this adultery, and Herodias was so enraged by John the Baptist that she even wanted him to be put to death.
She persuaded Herod Antipas to arrest John and throw him in jail, which Herod did as a result of her efforts. In point of fact, she had desired for John to be put to death; however, Herod Antipas was hesitant to carry out such a plan because he dreaded the reaction of the people and also because he believed John to be a virtuous man. At one point, Herod celebrated his birthday by hosting a feast, and during the celebration, the daughter of Herodias came in, danced, and delighted both Herod and the guests who were with him.
Herod made a rash promise in the form of an oath that he would grant her any request she might have (Mark 6:17-28, Amplified Bible). For Herod himself had sent guards and had John arrested and shackled in prison because of Herodias, the wife of his half-brother Philip, because he—Herod—had married her. For John had been saying to Herod, "It is not lawful under Mosaic law for you to have your brother's wife.
" Herodias had a grudge against John and wanted to kill him, but she could not because Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he continually kept him safe. When he heard John speak, he was very perplexed, but he enjoyed listening to him. But an opportune time finally came for Herodias.
Herod, on his birthday, gave a banquet for his officials, nobles, courtiers, and military commanders, and the leading men of Galilee. Now Salome, the daughter of Herodias, came in and danced for the men. She pleased and beguiled Herod and his dinner guests.
The king said to the girl, "Ask me for whatever you want, and I will give it to you. " And he swore to her, "Whatever you ask me, I will give it to you, up to half of my kingdom. " She went out and said to her mother, "What shall I ask for?
" And Herodias replied, "The head of John the Baptist. " As she rushed back to the king and asked, saying, "I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptist on a platter. " The king was deeply grieved, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, who might have regarded him as weak, he was unwilling to break his word and refuse her.
So the king immediately sent for an executioner and commanded him to bring back John's head. He went and had John beheaded in the prison, brought back his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her mother.
