Villains - Jezebel

(74) ...On the morrow said [R. Ashi] to the Rabbis : "Let us begin with the great men. Achab — [his name means] ach, a brother to heaven, and ab, a father of idolatry. A brother to heaven, as it is written: A brother is born for adversity (Mishlei 17:17) and father to idolatry, as it is written: Like a father who has mercy upon his sons (Tehilim 103;13).

And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam. (I Kin. 16, 31) R. Yokhanan said: "Minor sins done by Achab were like the grave sins that Jeroboam committed, but why then does the text depend on Jeroboam? Because [Jeroboam] was the first to corrupt. Their altars also are as stone-piles in My fields' heaps. (Hos. 12, 12) R. Yokhanan said : "There was not one single heap in the land of Israel upon which Achab had not set up an idol and bowed himself down to it."

...And Akhav made the Asheirah...

And it seems that Eliyahu, even though he gathered the prophets of the Ba'al and the Asheirah, argued only with the prophets of the Ba'al and killed only them, not the prophets of the Asheirah. And similarly in the house of Yeihu, while he put aside the Ba'al, they left the Asheirah as it is written (infra, II Kings 13:6). And what is written there - that he served the Ba'al - was from the aspect that he took as wife Izevel daughter of Et-Ba'al, whose father was among the servants of the Ba'al, and she enticed him to Ba'al. But the Asheirah he made on his own, and about this it says: And Akhav made the Asheirah, meaning to say from his own will. And similarly for his continuing to provoke [God], this was also from his own will; and because of this the name of Akhav is repeated twice.

...Has it not been told to my lord about that which I have done? And this was made known afterwards to Akhav (for the killing of God's prophets was done by Izevel, not by Akhav), and through this I have become suspect in his eyes, for my hand was with the prophets of God, to help them live and to rescue them, and he would despise [this].

...So shall the gods do. She said this in the plural form for the multiplicity of gods that they would worship.

...And Izevel sent...She saw that Akhav's heart was turning to Eliyahu and justifying him. And her heart wasn't happy with killing [Eliyahu]immediately, and she thought that during the night, Akhav's heart would reverse, returning to his wickedness.

...My mother's sons became furious at me. (Shir HaShirim 1:5) R. Meir said, "my mother's sons" bnei imi [can be read as] "my nation's sons" bnei umati...

Another idea: This is Izevel. They became furious at me, they attacked me, they filled the judge with furious anger against me. "They set me as the keeper of the vineyards", feeding and fattening up the prophets of the Ba'al and the Asheirah. And as for Eliyahu the prophet (may he be well remembered) who was a prophet of truth, she sent and said to him: By this time tomorrow, I will set your soul like the soul of one of them. Which is what is meant by: My own vineyard I have not kept.

...And he said. Here, even though he certainly told Izevel all the matters that befell between them, despite all this he didn't want to reveal to her that his spirit was turned by this private matter in which there was for him a moral reproof, in his saying I will not give the inheritance of my ancestors, for he did not want to show before Izevel that there was still a spark in his heart to be concerned in matters such as these and that he still remembered the God of his fathers. And therefore he said to her that the main source for his anger was that [Nabot] said, I will not give you my vineyard.

...We learn good deeds from Izevel. For her house was adjacent to the market and, for every dead body that would pass through the market, she would go out from within her house and clap her palms and bewail with her mouth and walk along for ten paces. And for every bridegroom who would pass through the market, she would go out from the entrance of her house and twirl the palms of her hands and walk along for ten paces. And Eliyahu (may he be well remembered) prophesied about her: The dogs will eat Izevel in the portion of Yezra'el (II Kings 9:10), but as for the limbs that did good deeds, the dogs had no power over them and they were given over for burial as it is said: And they went to bury her, etc. (II Kings 9:35)....

...Only there was never, etc. Which means to say: The reason that Akhav became more wicked than them all was only on account of his wife Izevel enticing him.