Ahaziah’s descent was right on one side, but it was very mean on the other.  He had David’s blood in his veins, and Jehoshaphat’s, and mingled with that, the venom of heathenism.  His mother was Athaliah, and Athaliah was the daughter of Jezebel, and Jezebel was a licentious heathen princess whom Ahab on an evil day had made his wife.

There is nothing in the Bible more tragical and more infamous than the story of this woman Jezebel, and the part which she took in shaping the destiny of the Jewish nation.  She was a Syro-Phenician princess, whose father ruled over the powerful and wealthy cities of Tyre and Sidon.  Ahab was caught by her beauty, and by the attractive political alliance of which she was the pledge.  Some think that the forty-fifth Psalm had reference to her, which speaks of the daughter of Tyre coming with gold of Ophir, splendidly arrayed, and bringing a handsome dowry with her.  Ahab thought he was marrying wealth and dignity, and providing for the greatness of his house, and, as often happens in such marriages, he forgot to ask for a certificate of character, forgot to ask what sort of mother he was providing for his children.  She came with all her meretricious splendour covering one of the most fiendish natures that ever wore a woman’s form.  She developed, if she did not bring with her, all imaginable vices—­her vindictive passion revelled in blood; her religion was the filthiest licentiousness; her beauty became the painted face of a common harlot.  Her figure stands forth in the Bible as the very worst exemplification of the dark possibilities of human nature.  Tennyson says men do not mount as high as the best of women—­but they scarce can sink as low as the worst.  For men at most differ as heaven and earth; but women, worst and best, as heaven and hell.  And this woman became, alas, the mother of kings; and all who went forth from her inherited her nature, and forgot nothing of her training.  For several generations the taint of her evil influence was felt throughout the whole court life of Israel, and the licentious abominations which she had introduced infected the whole national life.  Ahab married for money and position, and this was what came of it.

Her influence extended also to the southern kingdom of Judah.  Jehoram, King of Judah, must needs marry Ahab’s daughter, Athaliah, who was the exact counterpart of her mother, Jezebel.  Another wedding in which morals and religion were sacrificed on the altar of gain—­for by means of it a small kingdom was to be cemented in alliance with a greater, and another rich dowry to be secured.  And the same dreary results followed—­a court corrupted with all manner of impurity, sons and daughters initiated into all the mysteries of wickedness, demoralisation spreading all around.