“[Esther] is fully visible, unlike Jezebel, but her intentions are concealed from the beholder. Esther is also beautiful, a familiar attribute of matriarchs in the [Hebrew Bible]. ….
Jezebel lacks a face and a figure, as though she is made of an evil spirit alone”.
Helena Zlotnick
Helena ZLOTNICK
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Biblica 82 (2001) 477-495
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From Jezebel to Esther:
Fashioning Images of Queenship in the Hebrew Bible
…. At the heart of this study stands the hypothesis that the story of Esther and Ahasuerus must be read as a rehabilitative narrative of the tale of Jezebel and Ahab. To be exact, the narrative of Esther, if read sensibly and sensitively, bears unmistakable allusions to that of Jezebel. Both share an ideological kinship that aspires to define the desired characteristics and behavior of Israelite/Jewish queens.
An investigation into the use of Jezebel as a shadowy foil to Esther highlights biblical (redactional) ideas regarding queenly images, queenly spheres of influence and the molding of ‘Israelite’/Jewish queens ….
I. The Royal Wife: Queens as Protagonists
Jezebel is remembered, above all, for her role in the famed episode of the vineyard of Naboth (1 Kgs 21) …. The story begins with direct negotiations between two men, a king and his subject, Ahab and Naboth, over the legal acquisition of a plot of land adjacent to a royal residence. The exchange is terminated with Naboth’s insistence on the inalienable character of his property. His refusal to comply with the king’s desire leaves Ahab with two options: he can abandon his rosy visions of a palatial garden (21,2) or he can exert his authority to prevail, by hook and by crook, over the scruples and the objections of Naboth. The king chooses neither. Returning home from his unprofitable dialogue with Naboth he retires to his bedchamber in a foul mood and plunges into a fast ….
As the scene shifts from the outside with its vineyards and hypothetical gardens to the royal bedroom the queen enters the picture. Her ‘credentials’ had already been established. Readers had been familiarized with this Sidonian princess as the moving spirit behind her husband’s devotion to the Baal (16,31), and as the mortal enemy of YHWH’s prophets (18,4.13)…. The fact that Ahab’s marriage with her also signaled the acceptance of the Omrides by their neighbors was deemed irrelevant by the biblical redactor. Yet, with the exception of Solomon, only Ahab achieved the kind of ‘international’ status that made him a desirable match in the eyes of neighboring kings.
Jezebel’s intrusion into Ahab’s self-imposed solitude re-enacts the tale of the vineyard verbally and in the intimacy of the royal bedroom. Within this familial context Jezebel emerges as the king’s solicitous spouse rather than as a bearer of idolatry. Her question, ‘What is the matter with you and why are you not eating’ (1 Kgs 21,5), supports this image. Ahab replies with a distorted version of the words exchanged with Naboth. According to his presentation Naboth was guilty of obstinacy if not of disobedience through an unreasonable refusal of complying with the king’s seemingly reasonable request.
On the surface, this brief and rare glimpse into a royal marriage reveals a model of spousal relations and an inordinate degree of marital harmony and trust …. Ahab admits his weakness to a sympathetic wife expecting, presumably, support and understanding. She expresses perhaps indignation perhaps surprise and promises the fulfillment of his desires. He refrains from probing her promise. Even before this bedroom snapshot the text refers to the couple’s closeness and her status, in spite of Ahab’s other wives. He shares with her not only her gods but also information about the management of the kingdom, including the difficulties attendant on the maintenance of correct relations with YHWH’s prophet, Elijah (1 Kgs 19,1). She issues a death threat to Elijah that effectively undermines Ahab’s conciliatory politics and demonstrates her standing at the court.
How extraordinary was the association of an ‘Israelite’ queen, even of foreign descent, with unlimited accessibility to the king can be fully appreciated through the fashioning of royal intimacy in the scroll of Esther …. Only three royal couples in the … [Hebrew Bible], Jezebel and Ahab, Esther and Ahasuerus, David and Bathsheba, are seen, or rather heard in direct verbal communication. But the nature of Bathsheba’s intercession is dictated by motherly and not by wifely concerns. Her appearance in the king’s bedroom, where another woman had been occupying the king’s bed, is carefully orchestrated by a prophet. She is neither Jezebel nor Esther.
Like Jezebel, Esther is one of many royal consorts. Unlike Jezebel, when Esther approaches her royal husband she is not only afraid of the consequences of appearing without summons but she also behaves as a humble petitioner rather than a royal consort (Esth 4,11). Even in the privacy of her own rooms Esther has to tread carefully. After obtaining permission to stage a private banquet for the king and a favorite minister (Haman) she dares not bring up her grievance before plying Ahasuerus with drinks (Esth 7,1.2.7). And even then she waits till Ahasuerus seeks enlightenment regarding the identity of the author of the anti-Jewish measures in his kingdom.
When Esther exposes Haman Ahasuerus, like Ahab, retires in anger not to his bedroom but rather to an adjacent garden. That the scroll conjures up for the king’s inflamed spirit the exact same soothing landscape that Ahab had desired to create out of Naboth’s vineyard seems hardly a coincidence. Ahasuerus’ brief stroll in the queen’s garden is staged as a prelude to the climax of the plot and marks the end of Haman’s career. Ahab’s urge to enlarge the palace’s garden sets in motion a series of crimes and signals the demise of his dynasty.
Both the Dtr historian (= the redactor of 1 Kgs 21) and the author of the scroll cloth with mockery the marriages they delineate. The former casts the king’s bedroom as a launching pad for queenly crimes; the latter places the queen in bed with her enemy rather than with her lawful consort. In both narratives communications between king and queen, although direct, are marked by evasions and half-truths. Ahab and Jezebel communicate through deceptions. He provides an edited version of his dealings with Naboth while she avoids further delving into both his statements and her own strategies. Esther hides her true identity from Ahasuerus when she joins the harem. She also conceals her true intention from him when she solicits permission to hold a private banquet for Haman. If Ahasuerus believed his beautiful wife, a rather doubtful proposition, he elected to humor her by pretending ignorance.
An interplay between the words and the actions of the protagonists further reveals parallels between the tales of Jezebel and Esther. Jezebel reminds Ahab of his royal status only to undermine her own assertion by assuming kingly power. Mordechai, ostensibly a caring relative, reminds Esther of her position at the court solely to prompt her to use it in spite of danger to her life in obeying his order. Neither Ahab nor Esther, of course, requires the admonition. But the reminders also imply an admission of Mordechai’s own helplessness and of Ahab’s inability to deal with the situation. As the action shifts into the hands of the two queens the scroll is still careful to entrust the initial urging into the hands of a male relative, thereby ‘correcting’ the Dtr history that had cast Jezebel as the prompter and the actor.
A choice of seminal gestures and phrases in the scroll’s description of critical preliminaries appears to recall, somewhat perversely but accurately, the earlier narrative. When Esther hears that Mordechai has been seen donning mourning clothes at the gate of the palace she orders an inquiry into this seemingly inexplicable and apparently inexcusable public display (Esth 4,1-5). Jezebel addresses her grief-stricken and fasting spouse in a similar mode, likewise implying that his behavior is uncalled for. At the heart of the familial encounters on the eve of a crisis are two difficult phrases that emphasize the addressee’s status. ‘Who knows? Perhaps you have attained royalty for just such a time as this?’ (Esth 4,14) …. Jezebel addresses Ahab with a similarly pregnant question: ‘Do you now govern Israel?’ (1 Kgs 21,7). In both instances a rhetoric of timeliness is intended to spur the protagonists to action. Mordechai succeeds in coercing Esther to act; Jezebel becomes an actor rather than a prompter.
Structurally, the later narrative also encodes the making of Esther as a queen in a sequence that echoes Jezebel’s queenly progress. In the wake of the fateful exchange between Esther and Mordechai Esther, like Jezebel after her interchange with Ahab, appropriates control over the course of events. She issues an order to summon the Jews of Susa for a three-day fast (Esth 4,16). In the reconstructed order of events in 1 Kgs 21 Jezebel acts along precisely the same lines: she summons the council of the elders in Naboth’s town and calls for a fast (21,9). In both cases the queen effectively transfers the gestures (fasting; mourning) that launch fatal encounters between kin (Ahab/Jezebel; Mordechai/Esther) to a wider circle of the public, thereby opening the door to an outbreak or a resolution of a crisis.
Lest, however, these close analogies inspire unwary readers with either sympathy towards Jezebel or hostility to Esther, the latter narrator carefully parts the ways of the two queens. Jezebel disappears, physically, from subsequent proceedings. Her invisible presence, however, is constantly referred to in the text. By contrast, Esther appears in all her regal splendor in the inner palace court as she implements the first part of her plan to save the Jews from extinction. She is fully visible, unlike Jezebel, but her intentions are concealed from the beholder.
Esther is also beautiful, a familiar attribute of matriarchs in the … [Hebrew Bible]. Jezebel lacks a face and a figure, as though she is made of an evil spirit alone. Moreover, readers are aware of Jezebel’s aim from the start as she sets out to fulfil her husband’s wish. Her method of achieving it soon becomes apparent. In the scroll neither husband nor its readers are familiarized with Esther’s schemes to deliver her promise.
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Esther is not only Jewish but a woman with impeccable royal (Jewish) blood in her veins. Jezebel is constantly branded a foreigner in a manner that reflects not only her ethnicity but also her proclivities…. In the redactional history of the Hebrew Bible the Deuteronomist antipathy to foreigners, and particularly to foreign queens, has been associated with a deep-seated fear of idolatry through contamination. ….
….
The scroll depicts the decree of Ahasuerus-Haman ordering the elimination of the Jews as a writ of national emergency. The clash between Ahab and Naboth appears, at first, as carrying little import beyond the king’s petty desire to expand to plant vegetables. Yet behind the issue of the vineyard versus royal garden lurks the larger question of the legitimate scope of monarchical actions vis-à-vis the king’s subjects. ….
….
Underlying Jezebel’s assumption of royal authority in the case of Naboth is the pitting of her patron-god, the Baal, with the national Israelite divinity, YHWH. Within this context the queen’s uncompromising loyalty to her husband, in itself a commendable wifely trait, is completely obscured. Esther is not even expected to display spousal loyalty to her royal husband but rather a commitment to her own community of origin. Her dilemma as a wife and a queen is staged as a predicament of the Jewish people as a whole. Ahab’s reflects the king’s own pettiness.
In the name of Ahab Jezebel communicates the king’s alleged commands to the local authorities in Naboth’s hometown. The redacted story does not explain whether she had been empowered to do so. It implies that she abused, rather than used the king’s implicit trust in her. …. In the scroll of Esther not a single person, wife or otherwise, is allowed to issue royal commands without the king’s explicit seal of approval. Jezebel acts on her own initiative and without the prompting of a male relative. In her eyes she is embarking on a just vindication of the injured royal dignity.
The theme of writing on behalf of the king, with or without explicit permission, and of using the royal seal to convey the legality of the message dominates both the Jezebel and the Esther accounts. …. 1 Kgs 21,8 depicts Jezebel as writing a royal letter to Naboth’s peers by herself but in Ahab’s name, and using his seal. She is thus engaged in a pursuit that is not only unacceptable when undertaken by men without duly conferred authority but is the height of impropriety when practiced by a woman. Yet, according to 1 Kgs 21,9 the letter merely contained a call for a local fast although the redacted sequence of the events strongly suggests that it also contained instructions regarding the staging of the whole affair.
Esther’s sojourn at the court is marked from the very start by directions incorporated in written commands. She is joined to the harem upon the publication and dissemination of a royal order to gather beauties from all over the kingdom (Esth 2,8). Ahasuerus endorses Haman’s request to eliminate the Jews with his own seal (= ring) (Esth 3,10) and the royal scribes articulate the command in a series of letters that they distribute (Esth 3,12-13). The fact that such orders had been issued in the name of the king and not of his minister is tacitly ignored by Esther when she pleads in front of Ahasuerus (Esth 7,4-6). The king’s implicit or explicit permission is precisely the aspect that the redactor of the Naboth affair never lets the readers forget when he insists on the concealed authorship of Jezebel. Finally, to illustrate the changing fortunes of Haman, Ahasuerus allows Esther and Mordechai to issue in his name and with his seal commands relating to the fate of their enemies (Esth 8,8). According to the scroll’s redactor, such royal orders, albeit not a royal initiative, nevertheless possess full legal validity and are irreversible (Esth 8,8).
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Casting Jezebel as a usurper of the king’s authority through stealth reflects both the real limits of queenly power and the redactor’s own biases. To rehabilitate this queenly image the scroll carefully invests Esther with direct royal authority to issue empire-wide commands in the king’s name.
Without, evidently, Ahab’s knowledge or permission Jezebel bids the leading men in Naboth’s town to announce a public fast and to appoint Naboth to head this solemn occasion. No reason is given to account for the fast, nor is objection offered. …. Perhaps the drought that had marked Ahab’s reign provided the pretext. Unlike Naboth, his peers obey the royal desire without demure or protest. …. The fast, as in other biblical narratives, serves as a preliminary to a critical public occasion. In Neh 9,1 a fast precedes the ceremony of the renewal of the ancient covenant between YHWH and the exilic community in Yehud. In 1 Kgs 21 the fast is concluded with a judicial murder that signals the demise of the Omride dynasty. Throughout Persia the news of the decree ordering the execution of the Jews prompts a general fast (Esth 4,4). Like Jezebel, Esther calls for a fast as she prepares herself for what can become a fatal encounter with the king (Esth 4,16). ….
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