Helena Zlotnick, «From Jezebel to Esther: Fashioning Images of Queenship in the Hebrew Bible», Vol. 82 (2001) 477-495

Only three royal couples in the HB are seen in direct communication. Of these, two, namely Ahab and Jezebel, Ahasuerus and Esther, contribute unique insights into the interpretative and redactional processes that cast later narratives around themes of earlier stories, and both around the figure of a queen. In this article I explore the hypothesis that the scroll of Esther was shaped as a reversible version of the Jezebel cycle. With the aid of narratives of the early Roman monarchy, a sensitive and sensible reading of the biblical texts relating to Jezebel and Esther demonstrates the constructive process of an ideology of queenship. Underlying both constructs is a condemnation of monarchy in general.

reminder of the legitimacy of her royal position and of his usurpation. Her words reinforce the image that her presence conveys: ‘Is it peace, Zimri, murderer of his master?’ (2 Kgs 9,30). Her words, like Tanaquil’s to Tullius, are filtered through space and the conventions of official language as she faces the successor of her dynasty and her ultimate executioner¹⁷.

        Esther is never seen or heard addressing directly any man besides her husband and cousin/father. In fact, no biblical narrator or redactor ventured to place either queen, Jezebel or Esther, outside the confines of the palace itself. Both women use messengers to gather information and agents to convey their commands and their threats. Yet, like Tanaquil and Tullia, the two biblical queens were destined for vastly disparate ‘after-life’. In collective memory Jezebel became a stereotype of shrewish and detestable queens¹⁸. Esther’s adventures are still celebrated.

III. Naboth’s Trial: Jezebel the Persecutor 

        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 her¹⁹. In the scroll of Esther not a single person, wife or otherwise,