King Ahab And His Wife Jezebel

By Dr. Rick Chesher

 

 

          I wanted to talk a little more about what is going on in the United States today, and maybe see in the Bible where some of this began, and the impact it had on Israel and it will have on us today. At this minute Rand Paul, the U.S. Senator from Kentucky, is wanting all people to send petitions to congress to end abortion. The idea is that the courts, when they allowed abortion, did not define when life begins, they left it up to the law makers to do that. So, Rand Paul wants this petition to come to congress so they will be able to define that life starts at conception, thereby ending abortion on demand.

          This idea of abortion is not a new idea, and in fact is thousands of years old, and we can see Israel struggling with this from the very beginning. We find this in Numbers 25:1-11, Israel is staying in the Acacia grove, and the people began to have sexual relations with the women of Moab. The women that they were having sex with invited them to come and worship with them, by sacrifices and the eating of meals to their gods. If you will look at Numbers 25:3, it identifies this as Israel aligning with Baal of Peor. This is where the idea of not eating meat sacrificed to idols came into play. The idea was that they would sacrifice the meat to Baal and then eat the meat they sacrificed sitting before the idol.

          Baal was one of the gods of Canaan which is where Israel was being taken to take over the land there, and is the land that Yahweh had promised to Israel. Baal had a mistress that went by the name Asherah, which is where the Asherah pole came from. This Canaanite goddess was the goddess of fertility, and according to the Canaanites she gave birth to many other gods. All of these other gods covered all of the things that the Canaanite life would cover, food, sun, weather, etc. Baal won his dominance by defeating other deities.

          It is interesting that Yahweh had told Abraham that He would be leading him to Canaan where this Baal worship was taking place. Later, when Abraham was on his way to Canaan Abraham would be tested in Genesis 22:1-19, Abraham is told to take his son Isaac to Mt. Moriah and sacrifice him to Yahweh there. Abraham headed off to do just as he had been told to do by Yahweh. When Abraham got there, Abraham was stopped and Yahweh had provided the sacrifice that was needed, and in Genesis 22:17-18, Yahweh rewarded Abraham for being obedient to Yahweh. I also believe that part of passing that test was the idea that Abraham listened so closely to Yahweh that he stopped and sacrificed the lamb that was provided, thus passing the test of not sacrificing his son as they were doing in the land where he was headed.

          If you look at Psalm 106:34-39, we see that Yahweh described the practices of the gods of Canaan to be vile and describes the practices of Baal as offering their children to demons. So, this was a practice that was expressly forbidden by Israel. So, you might ask what are you getting at? I want to establish what took place and maybe point to what is taking place in our nation today.

          Turn with me to 1 Kings 16:29-34, it says that Ahab was the son of Omri who was the King before Ahab. Now this is interesting because in 1 Kings 16:25, it says that Omri had not only done what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh, but was more evil than any King before him. And as we look at Ahab it says, that Ahab was even more evil than his father was. Notice, Ahab was a legitimate King, in that he would be next in line for King of Israel. The problem was that Ahab married the wrong woman, and didn’t have the back bone to run the country, so he gave all authority to his wife.

          So, who was his wife? None other than Jezebel! Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal who was King of the Sidonians, so this makes her a princess. It is said that Ethbaal also was a Priest. The Sidonians worshiped many gods, the main one being Baal, and if you will notice, the name Baal is in his name. It is also believed that Jezebel was the chief priestess in Baal worship. She had absolutely no regard to Yahweh at all. In fact, she had Ahab set up an altar in the temple of Baal in which he had built in Samaria. It says that Ahab also made a Asherah pole. So, Ahab had this done because that is what she wanted. You can see this in 1 Kings 16:29-23. Now, to put this in perspective, their ancestors are the Canaanites which helps us see the ancestral ties with these religions. And Jezebel’s marriage to Ahab was a political alliance. Which causes me to think about some of the alliances we are taking on today in America.

          But look at 1 Kings 16:34, this passage shows just how far things had gone. This actually is a reference to Joshua 6:26, where Joshua tells them cursed is the man who rebuilds the walls at Jericho, and warns that whoever does this will do so at the expense of his sons. This man had total disregard for his children.

          Now, let’s look at 1 Kings 18:4, this is the second mention of Jezebel’s name. In this verse, we find that there was a need for Obadiah to hide the prophets of Israel because she had set out to kill the prophets of Israel, and in fact had slaughtered some of them. This seems and probably is a military strategy that one might follow to take over a country. I don’t know about you but this sounds like some very similar stuff going on today. In this country today, our faith is under attack as well as our moral values that we hold dear to our hearts.

          I believe it was Stalin who said that, “The way to the heart of America is through the minds of the young”. If you look at Nazi Germany, they set out to retrain how the young thought about things, and the old ways they had been taught. Could it be that we are in that same trend today? Look at the things that are being taught today, and virtually unchallenged by the majority. The people that we are to be able to trust, the leaders of out country are changing the way we think.

          I watch a video this morning of Jonathan Cahn, who is the writer of the Book, “The Harbinger” talk about the Clinton’s who are the promoters of abortion, and they became the champions for abortion, and she is still promoting it today Not only that but she is one of the champions for allowing Sharia Law being part of or even replacing American Law. I have been doing a lot of thinking and studying about this stuff lately and praying about where we are headed in this country.

          I think that America is at a cross road, and the discussion we are faced with is do we want life or death? Do we want curses or blessings? This is in Deuteronomy 11:26-28, Yahweh said that to Israel and it applies to us today. I think we are in a place in history that we need to consider the choices that Yahweh offers to us. I think that if we don’t repent as a nation it will determine what happens to America next. Something to prayerfully consider.