A Good Spouse

Who is a good spouse?

Follow me as we take a walk in the way of The Holy Spirit, to help enlighten our understanding of the Bible as it has been told to us, or perhaps as we have read over the years.

Who is a good spouse? Well, to understand who that is, we must first understand a few things about who a spouse is:

• There is no spouse without a spouse-partner.
• Spousal relationship is a role and not a person.
• The person and the spouse can be different people even though they are the same.
• Being a spouse does not require you to follow Jesus, in fact, it doesn't require you to believe in God.

Since this study is about Jezebel, we will focus on the female side of a spousal relationship, with highlights into the male side. This is by no means a judgement on either side.

Let's start with what the Bible says about a wise woman and a foolish one:

In Proverbs 14:1, it says that "The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down."

The Bible also said the fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10), which means the wise woman is one who makes decisions in the fear of God.

The Bible also said the fool says in his heart that, "There is no God." (Psalms 14:1), so they make decisions that are devoid of the fear of God, which connects to the proverb about the foolish woman.

Let us look at Jezebel a bit closer

These were the highlights of her time in the house of Ahab (her husband, who was the king of Biblical Israel at the time):

• On the account of Ahab, she conspired to get Naboth's vineyard for Ahab, by lying to the elders of the city to make them sanction the stoning of Naboth, causing the death of Naboth.
• On the account of Ahab, she sent word to Elijah declaring his death within 24 hrs. A word that was so strong that Elijah ran and told God that he couldn't carry on doing His work.

With these in mind, who then was Jezebel?

• A foolish and ungodly woman.
• A king's daughter.
• She was THE ungodly who acted in the service of Ahab, her husband, the king, using HER ungodly means.
• She was a good spouse.

We can't study Jezebel without understanding the type of man she was married to, so let us look at her husband, Ahab, a bit closer

Because Ahab was a King, the Bible had more accounts of his actions, let us look at some of those actions:

• He was a man who believed God was another one of the gods.
• He proclaimed Ben-Hadad as a brother and gave him back his land when God had proclaimed Ben-Hadad to die, ultimately going against the will of God. This was after God sent His prophet to him to tell him that Ben-Hadad had declared the Lord is the god of the hills and not of the valleys, and that He was going to give Ben-Hadad into his hands.
• After he went against God's will, to not only set Ben-Hadad free but also returned all the land Israel had collected from Ben-Hadad's father to Ben-Hadad, God sent his prophet to him to tell him that it was now his life for that of Ben-Hadad since he freed someone He had commissioned for death. The Bible said he was sullen and angry.
• When he wanted Naboth's vineyard and told Naboth he wanted his vineyard, Naboth told him that God forbade him from selling his ancestral vineyard to him, and the Bible said he was sullen and angry.
• The only time he honored God was when Elijah told him what God would do to him and his home for causing the death of Naboth. The Bible said he humbled himself. But even this lasted only for a short while, because after this, he refused seeking the true God through Micaiah because according to him, Micaiah always prophesied against him. He also jailed Micaiah simply for speaking the Word of God.

The point about him honoring God when Elijah came to him can be regarded as more of a fear of Elijah than the fear of God Himself, because he had seen Elijah call down fire from heaven (1 Kings 18:36–38). In fact, when Elijah brought him the news and he saw Elijah again, he said, "So you have found me, my enemy".

Another context about his life: everyone around Ahab seemed to have done whatever it took to make him happy, including lying and deceiving him, probably because he'd jail or kill them if they said anything negative about him. An example of this, we can see, when the messenger he sent to fetch Micaiah told Micaiah to corroborate the false prophecy that the other false prophets had given (1 Kings 22:13). The false prophets he knowingly surrounded himself with is another evidence.

What do these tell us about Ahab?

• He was an ungodly man.
• He was selfish.
• He didn't care about God, or that there was God.
• He was a man that loved the counsel of the ungodly and hated that of the Godly.
• He was not a good spouse.

Now that we understand who Jezebel and Ahab were:

What did these mean for their marriage?

• First, Ahab, a man that didn't revere God, and loved the counsel of the ungodly, married THE ungodly woman.
• The woman showed her love and honor for him in THE ungodly ways that she knows, ungodly ways that Ahab was aware of but liked anyway (1 Kings 21:15). This is evidenced when she saw her husband sullen and angry after Naboth refused to sell him his vineyard, which must not have been the first time, considering he had gone back home sullen and angry when the prophet spoke about Ben-Hadad. She decided to fix it and make her husband happy (1 Kings 21:7). She had no use for the vineyard, her husband did, and so all she did was for him.
• When she told him she would fix the situation with Naboth and came back a few days later to inform him that Naboth was dead, the Bible said, "he got up and went down to take possession of Naboth's vineyard". He didn't bother to ask what his wife did to the man.

Let us look at some alternating scenarios

What if Ahab was Godly, with Jezebel still ungodly?

• He probably wouldn't have married her.
• If somehow, she concealed who she was and he married her, he would have rebuked her actions and taken steps to mitigate her involvement in his matters any longer, just like David did to Saul's daughter that he married (2 Samuel 6:20–22). This would have made his values clear to Jezebel.

What if Ahab, being ungodly, married a Godly Jezebel?

• She would have helped, as a good person, bring him closer to God.
• He might have divorced her or married another woman who was ungodly to help him walk in his ungodly ways.

This memo is not to provide a direct answer to anyone, but to help everyone reflect on what it means to be a good spouse, a good woman or man, and a good person.

All three are not the same, although they can intertwine, they reflect values differently.

Unless you are already walking in the path of God (Psalms 1:1, Proverbs 4:14–15), a good spouse isn't one that necessarily leads you to God, it is one that helps you. If that good spouse then happens to be a wise person (God-fearing person, as defined in the book of Proverbs) as well, then they can help you in the way of getting closer to God.

God made Eve as a helpmate for Adam, but even she led him away from God. An example of a bad spouse, I'd say, but can we say she was a bad person? I don't think so.

What do these mean in the context of Jezebel and Ahab?

Ahab was already away from God, in fact, he didn't know God. Jezebel, a helpmate, was being a good spouse to him in his already-established ways of hating Godly ways, and of enjoying ungodly counsel.

This is why the Bible said there was never anyone like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of God, as URGED on by his wife Jezebel. Then it further says that he behaved in the vilest manner by chasing after idols, like the Amorites the Lord drove out before Israel (1 Kings 21:25–26).

This means that he had first sold himself to do evil, perhaps by even marrying an ungodly person like Jezebel in the first place. She simply URGED him on the path he had already established for himself, and although in his case, it was the path of the ungodly, it also could easily have been the path of the Godly.

Don't we all pray for a spouse that would be a helpmate to us and help us realize our vision?

How does this relate to us in our current life?

We must understand our purpose in life before bringing a life partner into it. We must move with the understanding of the life we have been called to and find someone with a similar temperature, or even a higher temperature, if that temperature is in the direction we are headed.

Being a good spouse isn't directly about worshipping God or being Christians together, it is about moving in the same direction, with similar vision and intention. Sometimes, that could be in the fear of God and other times, not.

In fact, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7:12–14, that an unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband and vice versa. So, when deciding a spouse, it shouldn't be about who can believe the most, but about who aligns with us on this path, this journey that I'm on.

Ultimately, this is love that Jesus preached.

It is us who must do the work on ourselves to ensure that our feet are firmly planted on the path of the righteous, and that we lead a life that gives glory to our Father in heaven (Matthew 5:16).

And so I ask again, who is a good spouse? The answer lies therein first knowing who we are, as the goodness of a spouse is relative to the spouse-partner they serve.

May God help us to be the right person, and to choose the right person. Amen!