Ithobalus or Ethbaal[353], the father of Ahab’s queen, had once been a priest of the Phœnician goddess Astarte, and had usurped the throne of his brother Phalles[354]. Jezebel inherited the spirit of her father, and quickly acquired the most unbounded influence over her weak-minded husband, so that he became a mere puppet in her hands. The first effect of her influence was the establishment of the worship of Baal on the most extensive scale. Near the palace at Samaria rose a temple in honour of this Phœnician deity, and an oracular grove, while 450 of the prophets of Baal, and 400 of Astarte, were supported at the queen’s table (1 K. xvi. 31, 32, xviii. 19). She also resolved that a worship, now formally legalized, should be forcibly imposed on her husband’s subjects, and so great was her severity towards the prophets of Jehovah, that they were constrained to conceal themselves in caves, and there eke out a precarious existence (1 K. xviii. 13). While she thus persecuted the servants of Jehovah, her yielding husband occupied himself chiefly with indulging a taste for splendid architecture. He erected several cities, and built an ivory palace; and while Samaria remained his capital, sought another Tirzah in the beautiful city of Jezreel, the very name of which, _the seed-plot of God_, indicates the fertility of the neighbourhood[355]. In this crisis of the Israelitish kingdom came forth, sudden as the lightning, alarming as the thunder, one of the most remarkable men that Israel ever produced. From the wooded uplands across the Jordan, “from the country of the rude soldier-judge Jephthah[356],” clad in the austere garb of the prophets, consisting of a girdle of skin round his loins, and a sheep-skin “mantle,” his “hair long and thick, and hanging down his back” (2 K. i. 8), appeared in the palace of Ahab, _Elijah the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of Gilead_. Without a word of comment or introduction, he announced in the name of that God, whom the monarch had insulted, a speedy and awful judgment. _As the Lord God of Israel liveth, said he, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years but according to my word[357]._ Having thus boldly delivered his message, he fled for his life to the brook or torrent-bed of the Cherith, either amongst his own native hills, or on the west of Jordan and nearer to Samaria. Here he was for some time miraculously supported by ravens, which _brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening_, while he drank of the water of the brook (1 K. xvii. 1–7).