Ahab and Jezebel Revisited: The Netanyahu Parallel

In the Hebrew Bible, the story of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel is more than a cautionary tale. It is a piercing examination of how power, when unchecked by conscience, can rot the moral foundation of a nation. Today, some see eerie parallels in the modern Israeli leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara. The comparison is not meant as hyperbole, nor is it theological slander. Rather, it is an invitation to explore the deep structural and psychological patterns of rule, ambition, and decay, and how both ancient and modern power couples have subordinated national values and interests to personal gain, leaving behind fractured societies in their wake.

King Ahab’s reign is remembered not for wisdom or justice, but for his willingness to subordinate Israel’s religious and legal norms to political convenience. Marrying Jezebel, a Phoenician princess, may have been diplomatically advantageous, but it ushered in an era of idolatry and systemic violence. Jezebel’s promotion of Baal worship not only replaced Israelite tradition with foreign rites, but marginalized, and in some cases exterminated, the prophetic voices of dissent. Jezebel’s orchestration of Naboth’s murder to secure a vineyard for her sulking husband marked a gross perversion of the law, and led to a show trial, the use of false witnesses, and the weaponization of authority to satisfy royal whim.

This was not merely corruption. It was the collapse of public trust. The divine covenant, the rule of law, and the cultural identity of Israel were cast aside. Power became transactional, righteousness became inconvenient, and those who dared resist were declared enemies of the state.

Benjamin Netanyahu, like Ahab, is a talented tactician, a man with undeniable political skill and historical awareness. Yet, his tenure has seen an increasingly deliberate attempt to unravel the norms designed to protect Israel’s democracy. He has forged alliances not for ideological alignment but for political immunity, embraced extremist elements for short-term gain, and waged war on the judiciary and press when they interfered with personal or political ambitions. He has broken the sacred covenant between state and citizen and has gone through unprecedented depths to evade responsibility for October 7^th and the failed policies that enabled it.

His wife, Sara Netanyahu, has similarly been accused of treating the public purse as a private fund, of interfering in state matters, and of using fear and loyalty tests to maintain her grip on the household, and, by extension, on Bibi’s inner circle. Though not elected, she often behaves as an unaccountable co-regent, her influence documented in scandals, legal disputes, and testimonies from former aides.

Together, their actions have reshaped the Israeli political landscape, normalizing cronyism, vindictiveness, and moral relativism at the highest levels of government.

Under King Ahab, Naboth’s murder was not just a personal crime, it symbolized the state’s readiness to crush individual rights in service of elite desires. Elijah’s thunderous condemnation, “Have you killed and also taken possession?”, was less about property than about principle. When power is unchecked, no vineyard, no citizen, is safe.

Modern Israel’s “Naboth moment” is Netanyahu’s assault on the judicial system. When faced with corruption charges, he did not step aside or defend himself through legal means. Instead, he launched an unprecedented campaign to delegitimize the courts, polarize the public, and engineer legal reforms that would weaken oversight. This attempt to “repossess” the rule of law in service of his personal survival mirrors the moral inversion seen in Ahab’s time.

Ahab’s Israel suffered not only spiritually but also politically. His actions sowed division among the people, weakened the northern kingdom, and provoked civil unrest. By the time of his death, his dynasty teetered on collapse, and his house was eventually wiped out in a violent coup. Likewise, Netanyahu’s political maneuvering has split Israel into warring camps. His political survival strategy has required, indeed encouraged, civic division, mistrust of democratic institutions, and a sense of existential crisis. The state’s unity, once a pillar of resilience, is now deeply frayed.

In Ahab and Jezebel’s Israel, the prophets were hunted, exiled, or killed. Jezebel’s efforts to silence truth-tellers ensured that no moral resistance could gain momentum, until Elijah defied them. His confrontation was not just religious, but political. A rebuke of kings who claim divine sanction while violating divine ethics.

In modern Israel, prophets take the form of investigative journalists, whistleblowers, judges, and demonstrators. Their message is similar, “You cannot violate the covenant of democracy and still claim its legitimacy.” But like in Ahab’s time, these modern prophets are often smeared, threatened, or marginalized. The Netanyahu circle has repeatedly painted dissenters as “traitors,” “leftist elites,” or “enemies of the people.” The result is a society increasingly numb to moral compromise, where lies are tolerated if they protect Netanyahu, and truth becomes suspicious if it threatens his throne.

Ahab and Jezebel’s legacy was sealed not in victory, but in moral failure. Ahab has been memorialized as “more evil than all the kings of Israel who were before him”. Their names became shorthand for corrupted rule. Netanyahu risks the same fate, not only because of isolated scandals, his failed policies, and his evasion of responsibility, but because of what his leadership has done to the Israeli ethos.

In both cases, personal ambition came at the expense of national strength. The state was used to serve the rulers, not the other way around. And in both cases, the price was the erosion of public trust, national unity, and collective purpose.

The power of the Ahab and Jezebel comparison lies not in personal insult, but in civilizational warning. Biblical history is not just myth, it is memory, carried forward to caution future generations. Will the leaders of Israel heed the lesson? Or will a nation once bound by covenant continue down a path of division, corrosion, and collapse?

Ahab’s kingdom fell. Jezebel was thrown from a window by her own allies. Elijah’s voice, though mocked and hunted, endured. The question facing Israel today is not whether history repeats, but whether anyone is still listening to the prophets at the gate.