454 Word Studies In The New Testament.

of Sidon (1 Kings xvi. 31), formerly a priest of Astarte, and who had made his way to the throne by the murder of his pre- decessor Pheles. Ahab’s marriage with her was the first instance of a marriage with a heathen princess of a king of the northern kingdom of Israel. This alliance was a turning-point in the moral history of the kingdom. From the times of David and Solomon many treaties had been concluded between Pheenicia and Israel; but it was at the same time the special business of the kingdom of the ten tribes to restore the ancient rigidness of the nationality of Israel. Jezebel looked down with perverse pride upon a people whose religion she neither understood nor respected. Though the ten tribes had yielded to idolatry in the worship of the calves, the true God was still worshipped and the law of Moses acknowledged. From the time of Ahab’s marriage the apostasy of Israel became more decided and deadly. She was “a woman in whom, with the reckless and licentious habits of an Oriental queen, were united the fiercest and sternest qualities inherent in the old Semitic race. Her husband, in whom generous and gentle feelings were not wanting, was yet of a weak and yielding character which soon made him a tool in her hands. . . . The wild license of her life and the magical fascination of her arts or her character became a proverb in the nation. Round her and from her, in different degrees of nearness, is evolved the awful drama of the most eventful crisis of this portion of the Israelite history” (Stanley, “ Jewish Church”). She sought to exterminate the prophets of Jehovah (1 Kings xviii. 18), and inaugurated the worship of Baal thet Sun-god on a magnificent scale. Two sanctuaries were estab- lished, one for each of the great Phoenician deities, at each of the two new capitals of the kingdom, Samaria and Jezreel. The sanctuary of Astarte or Ashtaroth (the Phoenician Venus) at Jezreel was under Jezebel’s special sanction, and there is reason to suppose that she ministered as a priestess in that licentious worship. Four hundred priests or prophets were attached to this sanctuary and were supported at her table. The sanctuary to Baal at Samaria was large enough to contain dll the worshippers of the northern kingdom. Its staff con- sisted of four hnndred and fifty priests, and the interior con-