Such a spectacularly humiliating fall, capped by the assertion that “they shall not say, ‘Here lies Jezebel,’” was necessary in a text like the Old Testament, which was at pains to undo the legitimacy of previous religions and social arrangements. A certain amount of overkill was required to thoroughly void the authority of the prior world order, one embodied by a woman with power who attempted to backseat drive a patriline and who worshipped the old, established way. Baal was a god of the earth and of fertility, likely based at least in part on earlier fertility goddesses. And in Jezebel’s
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