JEHU KILLS QUEEN JEZEBEL

(For the prelude to this part of the story, go to 'SHOWDOWN AT JEZREEL' 

Ancient Cosmetics

Up on the watch tower of Jezreel stood the Queen Mother, Jezebel. She watched as her son was shot down and his body dragged away. She knew that Jehu would kill her too.

Jezebel was a woman who knew how to make an exit. For many years, as Queen Mother, she had been the most powerful woman in the kingdom.

She was almost certainly a high priestess of Baal, her favorite deity. In both these capacities she wore ritual clothing.

Now, facing certain death, she moved quickly. She donned her full queenly regalia and went out to meet the man who would murder her.

A Queen's Royal Regalia

She wore:

• a heavy wig of treated human hair, braided and formally arranged - like the wigs on mummified Egyptian bodies 
• stylized make-up - like the sister-wife of Pharaoh in Egypt, and with the same purpose, to suggest that the wearer was different to ordinary mortals.

This was the origin of 'a painted Jezebel'.

Now she stood at the palace window facing the central courtyard of the palace, and waited for Jehu. When he appeared she shouted scathing abuse at him - she was not the sort of woman to beg for mercy.

Looking up, he called to the palace eunuchs to throw her down. This, to their eternal discredit, they did.

She fell, and was smashed against the stone floor of the courtyard. The Bible says that the horses trampled her dying body, without mentioned the fact that Jehu was holding the reins as they did so.

Dogs Ate Jezebel

Jehu walked past her body and went into the palace, where he ate and drank. Later he remembered that her body still lay outside, and ordered it to be buried.

But by this time the palace dogs had been let loose. They mauled her bleeding body, ripping the flesh off the bones so that only her skull, feet and hands were left.      

See  for her story.

After this, Jehu ordered that the seventy male children of the royal family be killed. Their heads were placed in baskets, in two heaps, at the entrance of Jezreel. You can stand in the spot where these baskets and their grisly contents were dumped.

For the story, go to 2 Kings 10 in 'JEZREEL RESOURCES'

The ruined buildings of Jezreel: this is where it happened....