The other day I was reading about the biblical couple of Ahab and Jezebel. I have read about them many times before but I only ever saw them in a negative light. They just never showed up on my list of “role models” for building a solid marriage. After all he was the wicked King of Israel and she - to this day, is the icon of a treacherous or scheming woman. Yet this dynamic duo, like everything in the Bible, is extremely valuable to us today. Just look at the characterization of how Jezebel “rubbed off” on her husband in I Kings 21: 25-26:
Surely there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the Lord, because Jezebel his wife incited him. He acted very abominably in following idols, according to all the Amorites had done, whom the Lord cast out before the sons of Israel (emphasis added).
Hmm...he “sold himself to do evil”, as a direct result of his wife. Specifically, he followed idols and lost sight of his relationship with God because of what Jezebel incited in him. By definition what Jezebel did was to stir up or to cause a riot inside of Ahab. Jezebel’s actions stirred up and encouraged her husband to take actions inconsistent
with his God and then take his eyes off of God.
While I am pretty sure, or at least hopeful that I don’t stir up any riots in my wife (LOL), it does serve as a reminder just how husbands and wives become connected to and influence each other. I remember when I was a kid my dad would take me to Joseph’s Men’s Clothiers in Reading, Pa. and inevitably there would be some helpless man in there asking his wife, “Honey does this tie go with this shirt”. My dad and I would then look at each other and snicker as they headed to the counter with a striped shirt and non-matching striped tie. And I vowed way back then that when I got married, my wife would not have any influence on how I dress. But the reality is that just like Jezebel rubbed off on Ahab, the longer my wife and I are married the more her personality (and every now & then, her sense of style) rubs off on me.
I guess to some degree it is inevitable that husbands and wives have such an influence on each other. But the more I think about it, if Jezbel’s wickedness could cause an evil riot in Ahab, then would not the opposite also be true? That my actions can encourage my wife to become closer to God. While we are all responsible for our own actions before God, it definitely is a thought that deserves our attention. Instead of inciting the negative, I want to incite a love riot through commitment and encouragement that stimulates intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual insight into the heart of God.
How about in your marriage? What do you incite in your spouse? Are you happy with the parts of you that rub off on your spouse?
Of course the opposite is probably more valuable to wrestle with. What do you allow your spouse to incite in you? Do you allow that “thing” he or she does that gets on your nerves, to move you to “sell yourself to evil”?
