There might have been heavy forebodings and low, suppressed murmurs among those who remembered the statutes of the Lord, and who recalled his dealings with his people; but the multitude could rejoice in the splendour and the festivities of the occasion; the court could exult in the pomp and display; and wise politicians could talk of the benefits to the two countries of speaking one language, springing from a common origin, and preserving their own national integrity, and yet presenting one united front to the common enemy.  And Jehoshaphat may have hailed this marriage as the master-stroke of his policy, while religiously-disposed courtiers whispered that a scion of Israel, transplanted to Judah and nurtured by Jehoshaphat, under the influences of Zion, must indeed prove a plant of righteousness in this garden of the Lord.

Did Jezebel fear this?  Did this strong-minded, politic, crafty woman feel that her daughter was placed under influences which might draw her from the idols of her mother, and make her recreant to the policy of her father’s house?

Jezebel was too strong in the consciousness of her own power, to fear that her children would oppose her wishes or her plans.  All experience proves that the wife exerts a powerful influence upon the character of her husband.  Even where she has apparently little mental strength, she may possess great moral power, for evil or for good.  This influence pervades her family, and is felt even while it is despised and disavowed.  When holy and pure, it is as reviving, strengthening, invigorating as the pure breath of the morning.  When it has its source in a selfish, polluted heart, it comes like the midnight miasma or the blast of the desert, prostrating and destroying all over which it passes.

The character of the mother often determines the course and the destiny of her children.  She imprints her own moral lineaments upon her offspring.  She moulds their habits and she transfuses into them the feelings, motives, and principles which actuate herself.  The influence of the mother is often so perpetuated in her daughters that the individual seems multiplied as she is faithfully reflected by them.  Where the mental and moral characteristics are marked, they are almost sure to descend; and the character of Jezebel was one to leave its impress.

Thus we find Athaliah worthy of the stock from which she sprang.  She was the true, as she seems to be the only daughter of Jezebel.  Though early allied to Jehoshaphat and removed into the kingdom of Judah, she retained all the idolatrous prepossessions of her father’s house, and she exhibited all the traits which marked her race.  She possessed the qualities which had been so prominently displayed by the course and life of Jezebel.  The same desperate will, the same determined energy, the same daring courage and dauntless resolution, and the same proud ambition; and she was even more devoid than her mother of all the kinder feelings, affections, and sympathies.