Jezebel and Elijah, the Shunammite woman and Elisha: women and prophets whose encounters in the biblical books of Kings draw me back to these texts again and again. As I was re-reading their stories recently, I happened to read an article by Elizabeth Pritchard in which she talked of theology being "engaged in the construction of a theater of belief" (1999: 62).1 Her metaphor reminded me of the Javanese shadow plays, with the wayang puppet figures waiting for the puppeteer’s hand to pick them up and bring them into life across the screen. His skill is in knowing the repertoire of moves, in how to turn limbs this way and that as the audience gazes, seeing the figures as shadows on the screen moving as the pattern of tradition has dictated. So the audience is lulled into accepting this patterned action and reaction as natural and appropriate, as the "big questions" of life and death, good and evil are played out and resolved in the age-old performance. Elizabeth Pritchard’s metaphor seemed fitting to my reading, for in much the same way the biblical storytellers took up their characters and moved them across the surface of their scrolls. In much the same way each of us, as reader, is invited to nod acceptance and leave the reading satisfied with the resolution. This is the power of the drama, the power of the scroll.
But do we, and should we, always nod acceptance of the storyteller’s construction? I wanted to tease this out as I followed some of the encounters between women and prophets in the books of Kings in the Hebrew Bible. I’ve long had warm feelings for the 'great' woman of Shunem. At the beginning of 2 Kgs 8 she is 'blessed' with the return of her lands. It is a fitting closure to the story of a woman, whose welcoming invitation to the prophet Elisha in 2 Kgs 4: 8-10 had such unforeseen consequences. For hers is very much a story of life and death, played out in a sequence of birth, death, and death returned again to life, as told in 2 Kgs 4: 8-37, with its sequel of land lost and regained in 2 Kgs 8. But in the book of Kings her story is interwoven with that of the Phoenician queen, the Baal and Asherah worshiping Jezebel. Hers is a story with a very different ending, for, as prophesied by the prophet Elijah, her deathly remains are to lie as dung on, and not in, the land of Israel (2 Kgs 9:37). A tale of blessing for the Shunammite, a tale of cursed death for Jezebel.
But do I nod acceptance of such contrasting blessed Shunammite and cursed Jezebel? Do I leave their interwoven narratives satisfied that all has been fittingly resolved? In an attempt to understand this textual demand, and to have a sense of the hand of the scribal puppeteer, I decide to move back through the scroll to follow some of the earlier scenes of the Elijah/Elisha drama, in which women are players, all with roles in significant "prophet meets woman" scenes. And yet at times one has to look twice to distinguish which woman is which. For it seems that the textual puppeteer has simply taken the Phoenician widow of Zarephath used in 1 Kgs 17, and replayed her again, but as two women, in 2 Kgs 4, dividing her into the prophetic widow of vv.1-7 and "great" woman of Shunem of vv.8-37. But not only has the story now been shared, what is even more striking is that the storyteller has altered the ethnic identity of these women; there has been a move from a Phoenician Sidonian to an Israelite in what is virtually the same story. But wasn’t that a risk? People might think the two were really interchangeable! Judges 1:31 even implies that Sidon's survival at all was a failure of the conquest: in the Hebrew Bible it is made very clear that Phoenicians are not Israelites. So is there not a disturbing slippage here, an instability to be resolved? Yet here in 1 Kgs 17 there is a tale of Elijah and a good Sidonian woman. Was the scribe responsible for the final collection for the scroll of Kings so intent on gathering all the pieces of the received tradition that told of the miraculous power of Israel’s god revealed through his prophets, that he had no concern at all for the matter of identity politics?2 Or is there something else going on here? Do I question whether the differences were as the bible has them? Were the Phoenicians in fact so different? For the view that the Phoenicians, with the Canaanites, were markedly different, both culturally and ethnically, from the Israelites is becoming increasingly questionable (Lemche 1990; Sáenz-Badillos 1993:38-39).
I leave these questions hovering and return to the text, noting the details of the plot, the variations and repetitions of the storylines more carefully, and recognize another key player: the land itself. In 1 Kgs 17 Elijah has fled into the very territory of Baal, the god of Sidon. I begin to suspect that such boundary crossings are significant in this belief theatre, and so move back a few verses, and read of that other boundary crossing in the opposite direction, from Sidon to Israel, by the Phoenician princess Jezebel.
As might be expected, Jezebel is first introduced in the context of her marriage to king Ahab, whose own introduction in the verses above is telling, as one who did evil in the sight of Yahweh more than all who were before him (1 Kgs 16:30). The marriage notice then serves as evidence, and as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jereboam son of Nebat, he took as his wife Jezebel daughter of King Ethbaal of the Sidonians (1 Kgs 16: 31). And the consequence of that? He went and served Baal and worshipped him, setting up an altar to Baal and even an asherah pole. The implication being that Jezebel, as daughter of Ethbaal, a name meaning with Baal3, was an obvious issa zara, that archetypal dangerously foreign woman against whom the sages of Israel warned their students.4 Her boundary crossing must therefore have dire consequences. While there are clear questions about the historicity of the Jezebel tales (Camp 1992: 103; Provan 1997: 23), as the text has it, it is she who is responsible for Ahab worshipping "other" gods. As if to underline her malign influence, the text moves to Hiel of Bethel's building programme at Jericho, costing the sacrificial deaths of his firstborn and youngest sons, Abiram and Segun (1 Kgs 16:34). Guilt by association. With this dangerous Phoenician Jezebel now resident in Israel, the scene is set for the contest between the gods of Israel and Phoenicia. The dramatic question for the audience in this “theater of belief" is already hovering: can Jezebel’s Baal be foiled?
Israel's prophet makes the first move, staking the claim of Yahweh over the elements (1 Kgs 17:1). Round one: Israel's god sends drought and Elijah is marked out for special mention and protection (vv.5-6). This sequence of seven verses in good folktale style ends with a problem, a lack, a need; Elijah needs drinking water, so the move to Baal's province, Sidon, where another Sidonian woman just happens to appear in his path (v.10). Coincidence? No. Israel's god is responsible for this too, as both we and Elijah have been told (v.9). The actors, Elijah and the woman, play out their appointed roles, but not without the twists that good stories demand. Elijah, the prophet of Yahweh, requests drinking water and then bread as well, but the woman cannot produce even the morsel of bread he begs. She and her son have so little they are near death. We, the audience, catch our breath; will Elijah's god permit all three to die of starvation? Can Israel's god act in Sidon? Elijah announces the "do not fear" cue (v.13) and the audience relaxes, anticipating the divine command: the woman's morsel will be made into a cake and a divine oracle announces a continuous supply of meal and oil, until Yahweh sends the rains. As we pause to take in the idyllic scene of the woman and her son and the prophet eating together, we realize why the story has been told: to signal the winner of the godly contest. Yahweh, the god of Israel can order food and rain, even in the land of Baal.
But there is more. Throughout these chapters the overarching question is who is the god of life and death: Baal or Yahweh? The small tale of the Sidonian widow is the larger narrative in miniature. Food is one thing, but life itself? The next move can almost be anticipated: the woman's son falls ill. We, the readerly audience, watch as breath fails and death itself is present. So the tension: is Yahweh a god of death or life (v.20)? For we are persuaded both by the woman and by the prophet that Yahweh has something to do with this death. Have they got it right? But the prophet's threefold prayer and action brings the child back to life. This whole chain of events in Sidon has been framed by life, from the oath sworn before Ahab in v.1 to the statement to the mother in v.23. But the climax awaits one more verse, the response of the woman; she, the Sidonian, the Phoenician, recognizing the word of the Israelite god, Yahweh, spoken through the prophet as the truly life-giving divine word, finally declares that the word of Yahweh is truth.5 Baal has been foiled on home territory.
But what has this to do with Jezebel or the Shunammite back in Israel? Jezebel may have moved out of sight after that ominous introduction, but allusions, asides and reports keep her in the audience’s mind. The widow's accusation that Elijah has come against me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son (17:18) finds echoes in the later narrative of Jezebel and her sons (Smelik 1990: 242); move only a few verses on from the confession of the “good” Sidonian, and a report tips us off that dark deeds have been afoot in Samaria. While Elijah has been nourished in the land of Baal, in Yahweh's own land Jezebel, the Sidonian queen, has been busy killing off his prophets (1 Kgs 18: 4, 13) and in ominous contrast to the idyllic threesome dining at Zarephath, she has been hosting no less than four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and four hundred prophets of Asherah at her own table (1 Kgs 18:19). It is interesting to find certain commentators, such as Montgomery (1951: 310), and the editor of BHS, suggesting that the four hundred prophets of Asherah should be deleted from the text. While these four hundred may not be mentioned again in the Mt Carmel contest, 16:32-33 implied that both Asherah and Baal were Jezebel's deities (Jones 1984:317). The addition is significant for with Asherah as part of the Baal cult, a human queen and a divine queen are spelling double danger. But be careful! The word nabi', used both for Yahweh's prophets and for Baal's, heightens the tension. We have to look twice to see which is which. Baal has yet to be foiled in Israel.
The contest, however, is not yet over; the familiar scene of the test by fire at Mt Carmel follows. Fire comes down and burns the watered offering and wet wood, the drought ends, the rains fall, and Israel's god is undisputed winner. But the drama continues; Jezebel, the “bad” Phoenician is stalking Elijah. Reversals and repetitions abound; with his god's divine warrant Elijah is now the killer of Baal's prophets (18:40). The Septuagint has a significant addition to Jezebel's threat of death to Elijah (19:2), if you are Elijah and I am Jezebel, their very names spelling out the contrast in their divine allegiances.6 Is Jezebel winning the contest on the human level? For Elijah is cowering. Again the irony; the one who could say so authoritatively to the widow do not fear is now fearful for himself, a fugitive fleeing for his life and sharing the stage not with a life-giving Phoenician widow, but a dangerous death-dealing Phoenician queen. In the space of three verbs (v.3) he is off to the wilderness. In the context of Jezebel's threat, earlier delivered by a messenger, it seems he should be very wary of the messenger (the same word, mal'ak) who now appears before him (v.5), but the tensions, the apparent slippages, are soon resolved. This is a messenger from Yahweh, who once again provides the wherewithal of life with yet another spread of food (vv.6-8). Jezebel, Baal's agent, has been foiled.
Another small tale reinforces this. In contrast to Elijah's miracle of life for the widow's son in her upper chamber, in 2 Kgs 1:2 Jezebel's son Ahaziah falls out of his upper chamber to his eventual death, but not before sending to the god Baalzebub for help. The very name of this god acts as a reminder that this is Jezebel's son7, although the concluding verses of the first book of Kings have already announced that this king did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh, and walked in the way of his father and mother.
Yet before Jezebel makes her own fateful exit in 2 Kgs 9, two more women appear, in 2 Kgs 4, in an apparent retake of that first scene in Zarephath in 1 Kgs 17. This time, however, the scene is set in Israel, allowing the director some variations. It is these, of course, that are telling. Both these women are Israelites; no doubts can be cast on the religious credentials of the first, introduced as part of the prophetic community. Once again, much needed oil flows freely, but it is only the woman who mentions Yahweh, the miracle is attributed to Elisha, who makes no mention of his god at all.
The text moves swiftly to the longer second tale, with its focus on the "great"8 woman of Shunem; the story of the oil has functioned, as David Jobling so nicely puts it, as "a warm-up for the main event" (1999: 191). This time it is her son who dies, with Elisha providing the miracle of life. But why tell these tales twice over? Yahweh clearly foiled Baal chapters ago and Jezebel has dropped out of sight. Although there was, perhaps, an uneasy echo of Hiel's sacrifice (1 Kgs 16:34) in the Moabite king's sacrifice of his firstborn immediately before the entrance of these two women (2 Kgs 3: 27). But the differences in the replays are notable. Now it is the women who call out or invite the prophet. Where the earlier Phoenician mother only gradually came to recognize the prophet as a man of god, the Shunammite recognizes this from the start (2 Kgs 4:9). It is the prophet himself who needs convincing! Elisha even has difficulty in responding, for although he is so grateful for the Shunammite's generosity that he wants to do something for her, he is seemingly so patronisingly patriarchal that she refuses his offer to speak for her in the high places with a dignified dismissal.9 He, of course, is not put off, but he has to go and consult with his servant Gehazi to decide what it is that she needs. No-one consults her! There is a further nice irony here in the echo of Yahweh's announcement of Isaac's birth in Gen. 18:4 (Shields 1993: 63; Roncace 2000: 115); with Elisha a divine birth announcement requires Gehazi's prompting!
The story then moves to the replayed scene of the child’s death and miraculous revival. But, again ironically, when the child dies the prophet proves incapable of reading the situation. If Jezebel was bent on destroying the prophets, even the great prophet Elijah, this woman of Shunem seemingly has to entice Elisha to be Yahweh's life-giving channel. As readers, we are now sharing the mother's frustration as she clasps the prophet's feet and blames him for what has happened, a frustration that mounts as we watch the failing attempt of Gehazi, astutely anticipated by the woman who has virtually had to force Elisha to accompany her home. The outcome, of course, is inevitable: Elisha at last follows the moves of Elijah, the miraculous takes place once more, the child lives, and the woman falls at the prophet's feet, this time bowing to the ground in worship. Once again the tale has ended with the woman's recognition of the prophet as a “Man of God”, but the Shunammite has had to work hard for this result. Whereas the widow of Zarephath quite simply allowed Elijah to demonstrate his prophetic powers, this Shunammite woman has had to prod Elisha into prophetic action. Does the note of her bowing to the ground serve quite literally to bring her down to earth, reining her in for straying too close to the front of the stage? But if she leaves without a word, that doesn't matter; there is no need for a final affirmation of faith, as in the earlier episode, for this Shunammite woman has not only been a believing Israelite from the beginning, recognizing Elisha as a holy “Man of God”, she has been pivotal in his acting as one. It is she who has demonstrated the power of Yahweh. David Jobling has suggested that the Shunammite is Jezebel’s alias, on the grounds that "any strong woman is every strong woman" (1999: 190). But I would suggest that she, as Yahweh's agent, has been functioning as the foil to Jezebel.
Although at this point in the prophetic cycle, the women move out of sight, this is not the end of either Jezebel or the Shunammite. Land and boundary crossing return as players, for what follows for the Shunammite in chapter eight reads almost as a Job test. If a Phoenician can become a good believer in Israel's god, then what is to be expected of an Israelite woman who is moved across the borders of Israel to live in "foreign" territory? Will she maintain her faithfulness to Yahweh? So test her by sending her off to the land of the Philistines for seven years. What will she do on her return? The dynamics are interesting. As the tale in chapter eight continues, once back in Israel the Shunammite moves into action in order to reclaim her land, but is immediately subsumed into a narrative eulogy of Elisha. Four times the text refers to the miraculous raising to life of her son, attributed solely to Elisha, without mention of Yahweh. Gehazi tells this to the king, who ironically is none other than the son of Jezebel, although the text delicately refrains from giving his name. Here too there is a subtle contrast, a further poignancy, for this son will soon be dead, shot by the murderous but Yahwistic Jehu in contrast to the Shunammite’s son who is present as a living symbol of Yahweh’s gift of life (v.5). But while the focus may be on the prophet, this again is a tale of blessing, with her land, plus the revenue owing, being returned to the woman. As so often, there are details of the story which we are not told; if the famine was so severe that she had to leave, how is it that there is any revenue from the fields to be returned to her? And why does she have to plead for her lands? (Cogan and Tadmor 1988: 87). We are not required to ask, but simply to accept the ploys of the plot. What we are required to note is that life and blessing come from the true god, albeit in this case through the agency of the king’s official.10 By way of contrast, the next chapter has the unbelieving Jezebel - unbelieving, that is, in Israelite terms, for she too was faithful to her god even on foreign soil - thrown out of her window to her death, her body left to the dogs. Life contrasts with death, and return of land with the denial of burial in the land for Jezebel whose remains are to have no lasting place in Israel.
Now that Jezebel has finally been foiled the Israelite reader can relax; the characters may be safely put away, and the scroll rolled up. The ancient textual puppeteer has done his work well. But I am not an Israelite. I could, of course, simply consider it an ancient text, think of myself as someone who has crept into someone else's dramatic storytelling time and go away satisfied. Any further reflection on my part would accept the text on "its own terms"; I would delight in the strength and initiative of the Shunammite, and rejoice in the blessings that finally came to her. She is a Hebrew Bible heroine, a true woman of worth. The fact that she and the other believing women are nameless reminds me, however, of their roles as ciphers in the prophets' stories; only Jezebel, their would-be foil, is given her distinguishing faecal name. To read the text on "its own terms" means, of course, not only reading as an Israelite, but as an Israelite male, for these are texts told by the scribal elite, whose focus is primarily on the male prophets, Elijah and Elisha, and the male gods, Baal and Yahweh.
Yet what the text has allowed me is a scrutiny of its own ways of persuading its readers of its ideological rightness, for this has indeed been "a political and linguistic project, a matter of rhetoric and judgement" (Smith 1985: 46). In a world that is currently dividing itself this way and that on the grounds of ethnic and cultural identity, and doing so with apparent increasing violence, it is timely to stop and watch an ancient Israelite ordering texts where such issues are a key concern. In these texts the identifying feature of the women has been the religious factor, the god(s) they worship. This has been the boundary marker above all else. It is this that has justified the textual discrimination against Jezebel; it is this that has brought the Shunammite to the forefront of Israel's story. She has briefly emerged from the shadowy female underside of Israel to be a key figure in the confession of Yahweh, the god with power over life and death. But I am suggesting that at the same time this has been the story of the foiling of Jezebel, that marker of "otherness". She too was brought out of the gaps in the kings' history to be the marked figure whom the audience could boo, the one against whom the "true-believing", whether Phoenician or Israelite, could be measured. Jezebel, the boundary crosser, foiled not only by prophets but by women set up against women, "good" Sidonian against "bad", Israelite Yahwistic believers against the lone Phoenician adherent of Asherah and Baal. If the skill of the textual puppeteer has lulled us into an acceptance of this conclusion and this strategy in the theatre of belief, then perhaps it is timely to look again and reassess.
Camp, Claudia V. 1992. "1 and 2 Kings." In The Women's Bible Commentary. Edited by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 96-109.
Cogan, Mordechai and Hayim Tadmor. 1988. II Kings. New York: Doubleday.
Dijk-Hemmes, Fokkelien van. 1994. "The Great Woman of Shunem and the Man of God: A Dual Interpretation of 2 Kings 4.8-37." In A Feminist Companion to Samuel and Kings. Edited by Athalya Brenner. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 218-230.
Jobling, David. 1999. "A Bettered Woman: Elisha and the Shunammite in the Deuteronomic Work." In The Labour of Reading: Desire, Alienation, and Biblical Interpretation. Edited by Fiona C. Black, Roland Boer, Erin Runions. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 177-192.
Jones, Gwilym H. 1984. 1 and 2 Kings. Vol. II. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Lemche, Niels Peter. 1990. The Canaanites and their Land: The Tradition of the Canaanites. Sheffield: JSOT Press.
Long, Burke O. 1984. 1 Kings with an Introduction to Historical Literature. Vol. IX. FOTL. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Montgomery, James A. 1951. The Books of Kings. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.
Pritchard, Elizabeth A. 1999. "Feminist Theology and the Politics of Failure." Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 15(2), 50-72.
Provan, Iain W. 1997. 1 & 2 Kings. Old Testament Guides 11. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Roncace, Mark. 2000. “Elisha and the Woman of Shunem: 2 Kings 4.8-37 and 8.1-6 Read in Conjunction.” JSOT 91, 109-127.
Sáenz-Badillos, Angel. 1993. A History of the Hebrew Language. Trans. John Elwolde. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shields, Mary. 1993. "Subverting a Man of God, Elevating a Woman: Role and Power Reversals in 2 Kings 4." JSOT 58, 59-69.
Siebert-Hommes, Jopie. 1996. "The Widow of Zarephath and the Great Woman of Shunem: A Comparative Analysis of Two Stories." In On Reading Prophetic Texts: Gender-Specific & Related Studies in Memory of Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes. Edited by Bob Becking & Meindert Dijkstra. Leiden: Brill, 231-250.
Smelik, K.A.D. 1990. "The Literary Function of 1 Kings 17.8-24." In Pentateuchal and Deuteronomistic Studies. Edited by C. Brekelmans & J. Lust. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 239-243.
Smith, J. Z. 1985. "What A Difference a Difference Makes." In "To See Ourselves as Others see us": Christians, Jews, "Others" in Late Antiquity. Edited by J. Neusner and E. S. Frerichs. Chico: Scholars Press, 3-48.
Trible, Phyllis. 1995. “Exegesis for Storytellers and Other Strangers.” JBL 114(1), 3-19.
1 Taking the term “theatre of belief” from Elaine Scarry, Resisting Representation (NY: Oxford University Press, 1994), 40.
2 I take the view in line with "a persistent opinion”, as Long expresses it (1984:175), “that this block of material consists of a number of originally separate stories and fragments of tradition."
3 While the Sidonian king bears the Baalist name Ethbaal, it should be noted that Saul and Jonathan named sons Eshbaal and Meribbaal respectively (1 Chron. 8:33, 34; 9:39, 40), although the writers of 2 Samuel (chs.2-4) apparently found that an ideological challenge and so made the shameful change to Ishbosheth and Mephiboshet.
4 As in Prov. 2:16-19; 5:3-6, 20; 7:5.
5 As Trible (1995: 6) expresses it, “This Phoenician woman also does what Jezebel will not. She affirms Elijah and his god." Siebert-Hommes (1996: 234-235) charts the repeated significant placing of the term “the word of YHWH” in this narrative.
6 Elijah meaning “Yah(weh) is my God”, and Jezebel a distortion of “Where is the Prince?’ i.e. Baal, zebul, the title of Baal, having been changed to zebel meaning “dung.”
7 This appears to be another negative misnomer, zebub, rendered as "flies" in the LXX and Josephus (Ant. IX 19), being a further pejorative variant of zebul (prince).
8 The word can apply to both status and wealth. Clearly her building plans indicate a certain wealth, but the inherent ambiguity allows both meanings to be heard.
9 Although Roncace (2000: 114) points out quite rightly that “it is difficult to say what her response meant” and that in the three way conversation between Elisha, Gehazi and the woman “who is speaking to whom and who means what is not easy to determine.”.
10 Roncace (2000:125-127) argues that being absent from the scene Elisha “has nothing to do with the woman regaining her land,” that “the woman did not need her husband, Elisha, or her son … She appealed to the king on her own.” The repetition of Elisha’s name, however, does not allow him or the god he represents to slip out of mind, and indeed, Jobling suggests that the prophet has finally "bettered" the woman, and that the "diminishment" of a strong woman, as in the case of the Shunammite, inevitably "takes precedence over other textual programs"(1999: 190).