Jezebel

Following a festive viewing of reference 2, I have been taking a peek at reference 1, comparing and contrasting the two versions while warm, as is my custom, and have come across a reference to Jezebel in chapter XIII, about how the dogs would not eat her hands.

So curious, I thought I would turn her up.

Larousse told me that she was the creation of Elie, whom I thought might be Elijah. However, neither appears in the table of contents of my Bible, so I guessed Kings, which turned out to be correct, with Jezebel turning up in I Kings 21:23. But this was only Elijah making threats and I was unable to track down the place where he made them good.

So I was reduced to following the Wikipedia chain, and one of the references there took me to II Kings 9:30-35. Where I read that she was indeed thrown out of the window to be eaten by the dogs of the street, who left nothing but the skull, the feet and the palms of her hands. I associate to the jaws of foxes which can, it seems, crunch up the bones of animals much bigger than themselves, at least while they are fresh. Too hard once they dry out. But it is not explained why the dogs baulked at the palms, the question which had sparked the interest.

Back with Wikipedia, it seems that her crime was that, as a Phoenician princess, she had worship rights in the palace of her husband, rather as Catholic consorts had worship rights in the palaces of English kings, but she rather abused them by wholesale promotion of her faith and its priests. After losing a trial by miracles to our Lord on the top of Mount Carmel, things went badly wrong for her and there was much slaughter, including her own defenestration.

The things that people do in the name of their lords.

Reference 1: Crooked House - Agatha Christie - 1950. Chapter XIII in particular.

Reference 2: Crooked House - Gilles Paquet-Brenner, Julian Fellowes, Agatha Christie - 2017.