Josephus, Flavius · c. 93–94 CE
primary
passage 489 of 1072 · BOOK I. Containing The Interval Of Three Thousand Eight Hundred And > CHAPTER 13. How Ahab When He Had Taken Jezebel To Wife Became More (1/7)
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Wicked Than All The Kings That Had Been Before Him; Of The Actions Of
The Prophet Elijah, And What Befell Naboth.
- Now Ahab the king of Israel dwelt in Samaria, and held the government for twenty-two years; and made no alteration in the conduct of the kings that were his predecessors, but only in such things as were of his own invention for the worse, and in his most gross wickedness. He imitated them in their wicked courses, and in their injurious behavior towards
God, and more especially he imitated the transgression of Jeroboam; for he worshipped the heifers that he had made; and he contrived other absurd objects of worship besides those heifers: he also took to wife the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Tyrians and Sidonians, whose name was Jezebel, of whom he learned to worship her own gods. This woman was active and bold, and fell into so great a degree of impurity and madness, that she built a temple to the god of the Tyrians, Which they call Belus, and planted a grove of all sorts of trees; she also appointed priests and false prophets to this god. The king also himself had many such about him, and so exceeded in madness and wickedness all
[the kings] that went before him.