Baal * eat (18), Ahab chides Elijah as the author of a famine, but he does not seek his life. On the contrary, he did sincere penance (2177) when Jahweh’s decree of rejection on account of the judicial murder of Naboth had been announced to him by Elijah. From 1 K 22° (the closing period of Ahab’s reign) it is evident that a very large number of Jahweh’s prophets as well as Micaiah ben-Imlah had been left unmolested. Noteworthy, further, is the judgment of Ahab put in the mouth of Jehu in 2K 10!8. All this, indeed, does not imply that Ahab was not seriously blameworthy in conniving too much at the conduct of his un- scrupulous wife, but the principal guilt plainly lies at the door of Jezebel.
All the more on that account we must ask what was the real aim of Jezebel’s conduct. In view of the complaint of Elijah (194) about the throwing down of Jahweh’s altars, it looks as if she sought to destroy the cult of Jahweh root and branch and to put that of Baal in its place—in short, to intro- duce a change of religion. But this appears im- possible in face of the attitude of Ahab to Elijah (gee above), and especially in view of 2 K 10%. In the latter passage (in the last days of Jezebel) the presence of a very large number of Jahweh wor- shippers is assumed alongside of the worshippers of Baal, otherwise Jehu would have had to extir- pate not only the dynasty but almost the whole nation. According to y.7!, however, the wor- shippers of Baal throughout the whole land were not more than could be assembled by Jehu in the temple of Baal at Samaria. Hence the bloody persecution of the prophets of Jahweh is doubtless to be explained on the ground that they, with Elijah at their head, oftered the most violent opposition not only to the according to Baal of equal rights with Jahweh, but even to the intro- duction and spread of his cult at all. Their acting in this way is an evidence that, at least on the part of thinking representatives of Jahwism, the syneretism that formerly prevailed had been com- pletely overcome, and that their conscience had been sufficiently quickened to apprehend the full meaning of the principle, ‘Jahweh alone is the God of Israel.’ And they rightly recognized, in that form in which syncretism was sought to be revived by Jezebel, a doubly serious danger. Now it was no longer a question of long-established local divinities, in whose place Jahweh could be put without difficulty, but of a foreign god—the same god who had made Tyre the proud mistress of the seas, and the possessor of dazzling wealth. The danger that thus threatened was not simply that Jahwebh would be held in less esteem, bes that He would be absolutely rejected as weak in comparison with this Baal. Jezebel herself doubt- less wished devoutly for this consummation, and many a one, to gain her favour, or in dread of her wrath, may have displayed such an excess of zeal for Baal as to have gone the length of tearing down altars of Jahweh (1 K 18% 194). We shall have to show presently that Jehu’s destruction of the work of Jezebel was actuated, if not exclusively, yet mainly by religious motives.
If Jezebel’s zeal for the Tyrian Baal occasioned a serious danger and led to a bitter conflict in the. Northern kingdom, the cult of Baal is only a quickly passing episode in the kingdom of Judah. ¥rom 2 K 11 we do not at all derive the impres- sion that ‘Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, after her attempt to extirpate the Davidie dynasty, took any measures to prevent the con- tinuance of the worship of Jahweh in Solomon’s
* The 400 prophets of the dsherah named along with them are a later (perhaps in allusion to the Deuteronom. note in peal addition to the text, as is plain from v.40, where they could no possibly have failed to be mentioned.
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temple. On the contrary, the high priest Joiada is so notable a personage that he has no difficulty in enlisting the royal bodyguard in a conspiracy against ‘Athaliah. It is only at the close of the narrative (v.18) that we first learn that there was then, even in Jerusalem, a temple of Baal under the charge of a priest named Mattan. The zeal with which ‘all the people of the land’ tear down this temple, destroy Baal’s altars and images, and slay the priest, proves how hateful to the Judahites was the cult imported by “Athaliah.
iv. THE ORGANS OF GENUINE JAHWISW: PRIESTS, PROPHETS, NAZIRITES AND RECHA- BITES, ‘JUDGES’ AND KINGS.—Iin the foregoing section the conflict between Jahweh and Baal is described as primarily one of different religious ideas and needs. As a matter of fact, the latter may gather such strength that they lay hold of wide circles of people and make them their half- unconscious instruments. But this excludes the existence neither of regular, official representatives of particular religious interests, nor the appoint- ment of extraordinary instruments called and equipped by God. Examples of both these are found in considerable numbers in Israel in the period prior to the rise of written prophecy. The official character belongs to priests and kings; the extraordinary mission is represented by the various species of prophets, in which category may be in- cluded also the Nazirites and Rechabites, and in a certain sense even the so-called ‘judges.’