I want to talk about the scariest villain I have never actually encountered as an amateur detective.
She is not a vampire. She is not a zombie. She has never once shambled toward anyone in torn burial garments while making moaning, groaning sounds like a backed-up drain.
She has a crown. She has a plan. And she is always smiling while she ruins you.
She is a Jezebel — a Phoenician princess who married King Ahab of Israel sometime around 874 BCE and immediately set about making everyone’s life considerably worse. She was, according to the historical record, designing, crafty, malicious, revengeful, and cruel. I know this because one of the kids in my homeschool pod did a report on her and shared it with our group.
She killed prophets. Not one or two prophets, but in bulk. Like a deer hunter in a stand with an Uzi. She had an innocent man named Naboth falsely accused and executed because her husband wanted his vineyard. The concept gives a whole new meaning to “sour grapes.” She personally threatened the life of Elijah, a man who had recently called fire down from heaven, and on hearing there was a bounty on his head, headed for the hills.
In her spare time, she talked the entire nation of Israel into worshipping Baal and a lifestyle that looks disturbingly familiar among the kids in our apartment complex. Her husband Ahab went along because he was, in the technical theological term, a complete weasel.
Her end — which the prophet Elijah had predicted in extensive and accurate detail years in advance — involved a window, a general named Jehu, a troop of eunuchs, several horses, and some wild dogs. I will not elaborate further, except to note it was not a great afternoon for the queen, though the dogs had several bones to pick with her.
Now, here is where the boy in my homeschool group made an interesting connection.
Jez’s name shows up again — centuries after she’s dead — in the Book of Revelation, where Jesus himself uses it to describe a false prophetess who is leading the church down a seriously bad road: a path that will leave the church with lights turned off and a sort of permanent darkness.
By that point, “Jezebel” had become the universal shorthand for a very specific type of person: a powerful woman in a position of authority — sometimes married to a guy who looks powerful on paper but folds like a lawn chair around her — who uses that authority to steal, corrupt, manipulate, and destroy everything wholesome and good within reach.
Hollywood and Disney did not invent this character. They recognized her. And then they put her in animated films and charged kids admission to watch. Consider the lineup:
The Evil Queen from Snow White — Disney’s very first villain, 1937 — is a stepmother who tries to have her stepdaughter murdered because she was talking to a mirror. I hear this is considered normal behavior for girls my age. She then disguises herself as a sweet old woman to hand off a poisoned apple, which is an extremely Jezebel move. Jezebel used forged letters, false witnesses, and a stolen vineyard. The Evil Queen used a mirror, a disguise, and a piece of fruit. The delivery system differs. The operating philosophy does not.
Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty curses a newborn at a birthday party because she didn’t get an invitation. Ursula from The Little Mermaid offers a teenager everything she ever wanted in exchange for her voice — a contract designed entirely to blow up at the worst possible moment. Lady Tremaine, the stepmother from Cinderella, never casts a single spell but quietly dismantles a kid’s entire sense of self-worth so completely and efficiently that she makes the other villains look like they’re running an operation out of a food truck.
None of these women are technically witches. They’re something considerably more dangerous: people in positions of power who use that power not for good, but to take out the innocent, shut down the righteous, and grab more control.
Like I mentioned, so far I haven’t run into a Jezebel. But the spirit of Jezebel is real.
So is the spirit of Ahab — the man who has the look of someone in charge, but can’t find the remote, his car keys, or his way home from work without stopping for an adult beverage with the other Ahabs in his “bro club.”
In the case of Jez and Ahab, their means just about fried their ends.
Not a bad lesson for a homeschool report.
— Nick Caden, reporter for the Cool Ghoul Gazette