The Torah Atlas

person · P0500

Izevel איזבל

Daughter of Etbaal king of the Tzidonim and wife of Achav, the foreign queen who brought the Baal cult into Israel: she cut off the prophets of Hashem, hunted Eliyahu (Eliyahu) out of the land with a death threat, and engineered Navot's judicial murder with forged letters under the king's seal. Eliyahu decreed that the dogs would eat her in the rampart of Yizre'el, and at Yehu's coup she was thrown from her window and trampled — the burial party found only skull, feet, and palms, exactly as the word had been spoken.

I. Who

Hebrew
איזבל
Also known as
Jezebel
Era
bible
Spouses
Achav

II. When

Traditional
c. 3008–3062 AM (married to Achav by his accession 3026; died in Yehu's coup, 3062)
Academic
died c. 841 BCE
Lifespan (traditional)
≈54 years
Precision
approximate

V. How do we know

ClaimEvidenceConfidenceSources
Achav took as wife Izevel bat Etbaal king of the Tzidonim, and went and served the Baal and bowed to him — the marriage through which the Baal cult, its altar, and its temple entered Shomron.
Directly stated in the cited source.
biblical ★★★★★
"When Izevel cut off the prophets of Hashem," Ovadiah (Ovadiah) took a hundred prophets and hid them fifty to a cave, sustaining them with bread and water.
Directly stated in the cited source.
biblical ★★★★★
After the slaughter of the Baal prophets at Carmel, Izevel sent a messenger to Eliyahu (Eliyahu): "So may the gods do and so may they add, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like the life of one of them" — the threat that drove Eliyahu to flee for his life to the wilderness and Chorev.
Directly stated in the cited source.
biblical ★★★★★
When Navot refused to sell his vineyard, Izevel wrote letters in Achav's name, sealed them with his seal, and had the elders of Yizre'el stage a fast with two false witnesses; Navot was stoned on a fabricated blasphemy charge and Achav sent to take possession. Eliyahu met him there with the decree: "The dogs shall eat Izevel in the rampart of Yizre'el."
Directly stated in the cited sources.
biblical ★★★★★
When Yehu came to Yizre'el she painted her eyes, dressed her head, and taunted him from the window ("Is it peace, Zimri, slayer of his master?"); at his word the eunuchs threw her down, her blood spattered the wall and the horses, and she was trampled. The burial party found only the skull, the feet, and the palms of the hands — and Yehu declared it the word of Hashem spoken by His servant Eliyahu the Tishbi.
Directly stated in the cited source.
biblical ★★★★★
She carries no roles entry deliberately: she never reigned. Kings itself marks her as the power behind the throne, never on it — "there was none like Achav, who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of Hashem, whom Izevel his wife incited."
The verse states the incitement; the no-roles reading of it is an editorial modeling decision.
biblical ★★★★★
The placement (c. 3008–3062 AM) is a schematic Mesorah Atlas reconstruction anchored to the reigns around her: married to Achav by his accession (3026 AM on the atlas's chain from the division of the kingdom in 2964), and killed at Yehu's coup, whose reign the atlas opens in 3062. The birth year is a rough estimate; the cited sources state the events, not absolute dates.
The cited sources establish relative chronology; they do not state the absolute AM range.
tradition reconstruction ★★☆☆☆