Jezebel appears to have been a stronger-minded person than Ahab, and to
have excelled him in subtlety and wickedness. She was as active as he in
pushing the persecution against the people of God; indeed, more active
and determined than her weak and wicked husband. At the time the life of
Elijah was threatened, she would seem not only to have been the more
determined of the two, but to have exercised greater authority over the
realm. Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel, was no whit behind her mother
in atrocious wickedness. Indeed, where women are brought up in
wickedness, they differ nothing in the depth of their depravity from men
educated in like manner.
The more frequently the Hebrews relapsed into idolatry, the less
inclined were they to allow women their legitimate privileges. The
administrators of the laws constantly curtailed female liberty,
tenaciously exacting from them the service and obedience of slaves. A
woman, even among the Jews, must have had no small amount of both
courage and wisdom, to have surmounted the difficulties which hedged up
the path to fame and honor, and risen to the distinction which some of
them reached. "The rabbins"--not Moses--"taught that a woman should know
nothing but the use of her distaff." Their idea of the education
fitting for a woman was, that she should understand merely how to manage
the work of a house; in other words, know nothing but how to minister to
the appetites or whims of her husband, regarding him as her lord, her
irresponsible master.
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