Image: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, UK/Bridgeman Art Library.įor more than two thousand years, Jezebel has been saddled with a reputation as the bad girl of the Bible, the wickedest of women.
As Jehu’s chariot races toward the palace to kill Jezebel, she “painted her eyes with kohl and dressed her hair, and she looked out of the window” (2 Kings 9:30). Jezebel’s reputation as the most dangerous seductress in the Bible stems from her final appearance: her husband King Ahab is dead her son has been murdered by Jehu. Israel’s most accursed queen carefully fixes a pink rose in her red locks in John Byam Liston Shaw’s “Jezebel” from 1896.
