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Death of Jezebel

Gustave Doré, The Death of Jezebel,  1866. 

Gustave Doré was a French illustrator and engraver known primarily for the wildly popular prints taken from his 1866 La Grande Bible de Tours. Because his fully-illustrated Bibles were heavy and expensive, many of the illustrations were printed to be sold separately or in smaller collections. 

Ahab and Jezebel ruled the Northern Kingdom when there were friendly relations between Israel and Phoenicia and according to biblical accounts Jezebel required that her religion should be the national religion of Israel. This scene takes place when her husband and sons are dead and the usurper Jehu rides into Jezreel. She stands at the window and taunts Jehu at which point she is thrown out the window and trampled.

 

death-of-jezebel

The kingdom consisting of the northern Israelites tribes, which existed separately from the southern kingdom of Judah. According to the Hebrew Bible, all the tribes were part of a unified kingdom under David and Solomon, but the northern kingdom under Jeroboam I rebelled after Solomon's death (probably sometime in the late 10th century B.C.E.), establishing their independence. The northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 722 B.C.E.

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