Daughter of Ethbaal king of Tyre and Zidon, and wife of Ahab king of Israel, 1 Kings 16:31 . She spent herself in efforts to establish idolatry in Samaria, and exterminate the worship of God and the lives of his servants. Obadiah saved a hundred of them, at the risk of his own life. Jezebel herself maintained four hundred priests of Astarte. When the prophets of Baal perished at Carmel, at the word of Elijah, she sought to avenge herself on him. Afterwards, she secured the vineyard of Naboth for her husband by perjuries and murder; and her tragical death, the fitting close of a bloody life, took place, according to the prediction of Elijah, near the scene of this crime,
1 Kings 19:1-21 21:1-29 2 Kings 9:1-37 . Her name has become a proverb, and is given by John, probably as a descriptive epithet, to a certain female at Thyatira in his day holding a like bad preeminence in station and profligacy, in malice and in ruin, Luke 20:18 Revelation 2:20 .