History YMMV / BooksOfKings

** Josiah, king of Judah. His destruction of idols and sanctuaries of other gods in Judah is epic, he even destroys altars and statues that previous reformers had left in place, and which had been standing since the time of Solomon. He also recovers the Mosaic law and celebrates the first Passover in centuries. The chapters discussing his reign are like the muster of Patroclus in Literature/TheIliad, where he succeeds so well that he verges on changing fate; but God has already made up his mind. God informs him that he's very impressed with what he accomplished, but [[DownerEnding Israel will still be destroyed;]] [[YouWillBeSpared but God will wait until after Josiah is dead for it to happen]].

* NeverLiveItDown: Be honest; how many of you heard of Elisha ''before'' you heard about the whole "sending-bears-to-eat-youths" thing? If you have, you must be a devout Jew or Christian who doesn't spend a lot of time online. It only takes up three verses in the whole passage, yet it's the main thing he's remembered for nowadays.

* CommonKnowledge: These days, the word "Jezebel" is often used to describe [[ReallyGetsAround promiscuous]] women, [[TheOldestProfession prostitutes]], or just generally 'immoral' women. However, the biblical Jezebel never engaged in prostitution nor was she ever described as promiscuous. She was faithful to her husband Ahab. What made her the villain is that she served as LadyMacbeth to Ahab and encouraged him to be a tyrant. The misconception that she was a prostitute probably comes from the word "Jezebel" being applied to any woman deemed immoral.

* CommonKnowledge: These days, the word "Jezebel" is often used to describe [[ReallyGetsAround promiscuous]] women, [[TheOldestProfession prostitutes]], or just generally 'immoral' women. However the biblical Jezebel never engaged in prostitution or was she ever described as promiscuous. She was faithful to her husband Ahab. What made her the villain is that she served as LadyMacbeth to Ahab and encouraged him to be a tyrant. The misconception that she was a prostitute probably comes from the word "Jezebel" being applied to any woman deemed immoral.

* CommonKnowledge: These days, the word "Jezebel" is often used to describe [[ReallyGetsAround promiscuous]] women. [[TheOldestProfession prostitutes]], or just generally 'immoral' women. However the biblical Jezebel never engaged in prostitution or was she ever described as promiscuous. She was faithful to her husband Ahab. What made her the villain is that she served as LadyMacbeth to Ahab and encouraged him to be a tyrant. The misconception that she was a prostitute probably comes from the word "Jezebel" being applied to any woman deemed immoral.

* ConfirmationBias: In-universe. When Jehosophat suggests to Ahab that they consult prophets before going into battle against Ramoth-gilead, Ahab only consults prophets who agree with him. When Jehosophat asks if there are any prophets of the LORD, Ahab admits there is but doesn’t want to consult him, because “he never prophesies good concerning me, only evil.” And when they do go to consult the prophet Micaiah, he not only foretells defeat but declares that the LORD sent a lying spirit to put lies in the other prophets’ mouths. Ahab ignores Micaiah, [[ShootTheMessenger instead locking him up]], and [[YouCantFightFate is then killed in battle]].

* ValuesDissonance: Elisha summoning [[BearsAreBadNews two bears to eat up 42 boys for mocking him]] is easily seen as DisproportionateRetribution to modern readers. Granted this was a DubInducedPlotHole, but still.

* ValuesDissonance: Elisha summoning [[BearsAreBadNews two bears to eat up 42 boys for mocking him]] is easily seen as DisproportionateRetribution to modern readers.

* DesignatedHero: Literature/TheBible has plenty of supposedly heroic figures do questionable things, which sound terrible today due to ValuesDissonance. But even so, King Jehu is among the most egregious cases. He starts out with killing the kings Joram of Israel (whose throne he then takes) and Ahaziah of Judah. Then he orders the courtiers to kill the elderly Queen Jezebel (Joram's mother), only to remain notably nonchalant about her [[BloodyHorror gruesome death]]. Then he orders the death of all of Joram's younger brothers (out of whom some must have only been children), everybody with any connection to the former royal house, some relatives of Ahaziah, who had not done anything except for saying that they came to see the now extinct former royal family, and all the remaining Baal prophets, who had even been tricked by Jehu into coming to a party where they were killed off. Jehu is never seen doing anything but having people (out of whom most are never seen doing anything obviously wrong) killed, and his body count seems to end up being much larger than that of DesignatedVillain Queen Jezebel. But he was able to defeat the ''supposed'' bad guys and was ''supposedly'' chosen by God, and God is said to approve of his actions. So he must be a hero, right? And to really make us see that worshipping an idol is worse than killing hundreds of supposedly "evil" people (most of whom clearly were defenseless aginst his attacks), the narrator seems to only have one criticism about King Jehu: He stayed on as king of Israel for twenty-eight years. But he still never got around to removing the golden calves, which were a part of a local idol cult. Because a few statues were obviously more abominable than all that needless bloodshed, that Jehu did during his violent coup d'etat...
* DesignatedVillain: For millennia, Queen Jezebel has been considered one of the most evil women in Literature/TheBible... It is not until recently, that more and more people have started to question this and ask if she really ''was'' that bad. She grew up as a princess of Tyre, one of the cities of Ancient Phoenicia (present-day Lebanon), and is devoted to the pagan religion of her home country, even after she's made queen of Israel. And she also supposedly made her husband, King Ahab, join her in the worship of her gods, mainly Baal. And that is clearly reason enough for the narrator to hate her from the start and portray her as evil. It is true that Jezebel ''is'' accused of doing a thing or two, which will sound bad even to a modern secular audience. But the narrator's wrath over her persecution of Jahve's prophets is very hypocritical, when he [[DoubleStandard later applauds]] acts of gory violence from Jezebel's two main opponents, Elijah and Jehu, because those guys so happened to belong to ''his'' religion. Even when Jezebel decides to frame an innocent man and has him executed, because he didn't sell his vineyard to King Ahab... Well, that is probably her way of making sure that her subjects would see that her husband was in charge. And even though that still sounds harsh to modern ears, it would have been totally understandable in her culture back in Ancient Phoenicia. Also, King Ahab (who is portrayed as her HenpeckedHusband, but still) seems to never inform his wife that her actions are against the law of Moses. So she would have no reason to feel that she has done anything wrong, because Ahab would never stop her or even reprimand her afterwards. And lastly, Jezebel's death is enough to make her UnintentionallySympathetic: she is thrown out of a window by her own courtiers, her body is crushed and eaten by dogs until she can't even get a proper funeral. But appearantly, she deserved this as she belonged to the pagan religion of a foreign culture...

* RonTheDeathEater: Omri and his son Ahab are mostly dismissed as evil failures in the books of Kings and Chronicles, though what secular historical records we have from them indicate Israel's neighbors had rather a different opinion of them. (Assyria in particular referred to Israel as "Omriland" during his reign.) In terms of foreign policy and diplomacy, they were highly esteemed and successful, and (by most accounts) popular with their subjects as well. Whether you accept that they were the bad guys depends on whether you believe in God's religious mandates as laid out elsewhere in Literature/TheBible or not: allying with other nations at the time required at least nominally accepting their gods as your own, and the believing priests and prophets writing these accounts certainly were justified to condemn kings who did so for their idolatry. One who ''doesn't'' believe God was guiding Israel might see what Ahab and Omri (and other Israelite Kings before and after them) did as necessary, good, or even laudable for diplomatically assuring their nation's survival in the presence of its more powerful neighbors. One thing acknowledged in these books and in some of the contemporary prophets is that Jehu's slaughter of Ahab's entire family did throw foreign relations into chaos, and the archeological discovery of Assyria's Black Obelisk that shows Jehu paying tribute to Assyria for protection indicates his purging of idolatry from Israel came at a high price.

* OneSceneWonder: Josiah, king of Judah. His destruction of idols and sanctuaries of other gods in Judah is epic, he even destroys altars and statues that previous reformers had left in place, and which had been standing since the time of Solomon. He also recovers the Mosaic law and celebrates the first Passover in centuries. The chapters discussing his reign are like the muster of Patroclus in Literature/TheIliad, where he succeeds so well that he verges on changing fate; but God has already made up his mind. God informs him that he's very impressed with what he accomplished, but [[DownerEnding Israel will still be destroyed;]] [[YouWillBeSpared but God will wait until after Josiah is dead for it to happen]].

* DesignatedHero: Literature/TheBible has plenty of supposedly heroic figures do questionable things, which sound terrible today due to ValuesDissonance. But even so, King Jehu is among the most egregious cases. He starts out with killing the kings Joram of Israel (whose throne he then takes) and Achasia of Judah. Then he orders the courtiers to kill the elderly Queen Jezebel (Joram's mother), only to remain notably nonchalant about her gruesome death. Then he orders the death of all of Joram's younger brothers (out of whom some must have only been children), everybody with any connection to the former royal house, some relatives of Achasia, who had not done anything except for saying that they came to see the now extinct former royal family, and all the remaining Baal prophets, who had even been tricked by Jehu into coming to a party where they were killed off. Jehu is never seen doing anything but having people (out of whom most are never seen doing anything wrong) killed, and his body count seems to end up being much larger than that of DesignatedVillain Queen Jezebel. But he was able to defeat the ''supposed'' bad guys and was ''supposedly'' chosen by God, and God appears to approve of his actions. So he must be a hero, right? And to really make us see that worshipping an idol is worse than killing hundreds of supposedly "evil" people (most of whom clearly were defenseless aginst his attacks), the narrator seems to only have one criticism about King Jehu: He stayed on as king of Israel for twentyeight years. But he still never got around to removing the golden calves, which were a part of a local idol cult. Because a few statues were obviously more abominable than all that needless bloodshed, that Jehu did during his violent coup d'etat...
* DesignatedVillain: For millennia, Queen Jezebel has been considered one of the most evil women in Literature/TheBible... It is not until recently, that more and more people have started to question this and ask if she really ''was'' that bad. She grew up as a princess of Tyre, one of the cities of Ancient Phoenicia (present-day Lebanon), and is devoted to the pagan religion of her home country, even after she's made queen of Israel. And she also supposedly made her husband, King Ahab, join her in the worship of her gods, mainly Baal. And that is clearly reason enough for the narrator to hate her from the start and portray her as evil. It is true that Jezebel ''is'' accused of doing a thing or two, which will sound bad even to a modern secular audience. But the narrator's wrath over her persecution of Jahve's prophets is very hypocritical, when he later applauds acts of gory violence from Jezebel's two main opponents, Elijah and Jehu, because those guys so happened to belong to ''his'' religion. Even when Jezebel decides to frame an innocent man and has him executed, because he didn't sell his vineyard to King Ahab... Well, that is probably her way of making sure that her subjects would see that her husband was in charge. And even though that still sounds harsh to modern ears, it would have been totally understandable in her culture back in Ancient Phoenicia. Also, King Ahab (who is portrayed as her HenpeckedHusband, but still) seems to never inform his wife that her actions are against the law of Moses. So she would have no reason to feel that she has done anything wrong, because Ahab would never stop her or even reprimand her afterwards. And lastly, Jezebel's death is enough to make her UnintentionallySympathetic: she is thrown out of a window by her own courtiers, her body is crushed and eaten by dogs until she can't even get a proper funeral. But appearantly, she deserved this as she belonged to the pagan religion of a foreign culture...

* DesignatedVillain: For millennia, Queen Jezebel has been considered one of the most evil women in Literature/TheBible... It is not until recently, that more and more people have started to question this and ask if she really ''was'' that bad. She grew up as a princess of Tyre, one of the cities of Ancient Phoenicia (present-day Lebanon), and is devoted to the pagan religion of her home country, even after she's made queen of Israel. And she also supposedly made her husband, King Ahab, join her in the worship of her gods, mainly Baal. And that is clearly reason enough for the narrator to hate her from the start and portray her as evil. It is true that Jezebel ''is'' accused of doing a thing or two, which will sound bad even to a modern secular audience. But the narrator's wrath over her persecution of Jahve's prophets is very hypocritical, when he later applauds acts of gory violence from Jezebel's two main opponents, Elijah and Jehu, because those guys so happened to belong to ''his'' religion. Even when Jezebel decides to frame an innocent man and has him executed, because he didn't sell his vineyard to King Ahab... Well, that is probably her way of making sure that her subjects would see that her husband was in charge. And even though that still sounds harsh to modern ears, it would have been totally understandable in her culture back in Ancient Phoenicia. Also, King Ahab (who is portrayed as her HenpeckedHusband, but still) seems to never inform his wife that her actions are against the law of Moses. So she would have no reason to feel that she has done anything wrong, because Ahab would never stop her or even reprimand her afterwards. And lastly, Jezebel's death is enough to make her UnintentionallySympathetic: she is thrown out of a window by her own courtiers, her body is crushed and eaten by dogs until she can't even get a proper funeral. But appearantly, she deserved this as she belonged to the pagan religion from a foreign culture...

* DesignatedHero: Literature/TheBible has plenty of supposedly heroic figures do questionable things, which sound terrible today due to ValuesDissonance. But even so, King Jehu is among the most egregious cases. He starts out with killing the kings Joram of Israel (whose throne he then takes) and Achasia of Judah. Then he orders the courtiers to kill the elderly Queen Jezebel (Joram's mother), only to remain notably nonchalant about her gruesome death. Then he orders the death of all of Joram's younger brothers (out of whom some must have only been children), everybody with any connection to the former royal house, some relatives of Achasia, who had not done anything except for saying that they came to see the now extinct former royal family, and all the remaining Baal prophets, who had even been tricked by Jehu into coming to a party where they were killed off. Jehu is never seen doing anything but having people (out of whom most are never seen doing anything wrong) killed, and his body count seems to end up being much larger than that of DesignatedVillain Queen Jezebel. But he was able to defeat the ''supposed'' bad guys and was ''supposedly'' chosen by God, and God appears to approve of his actions. So he must be a hero, right? And to really make us see that worshipping an idol is worse than killing hundreds of supposedly "evil" people (most of whom clearly were defenseless aginst his attacks), the narrative seems to only have one criticism about King Jehu: He stayed on as the king of Israel for twentyeight years. But he (gasp!) still never got around to removing some golden calves, which had been used in a pagan cult for years. Because those calves were supposedly more abominable in God's eyes than anything, that Jehu did during his violent coup d'etat...
* DesignatedVillain: For millennia, Queen Jezebel has been considered one of the most evil women in Literature/TheBible... It is not until recently, that more and more people have started to question this and ask if she really ''was'' that bad. She grew up as a princess of Tyre, one of the city states of Ancient Phoenicia (present-day Lebanon), and is a follower of the pagan religion of her home country, even after she becomes the queen of Israel. And she is also said to have convinced her husband, King Ahab, to join her in the worship of her gods, mainly Baal. And that is clearly reason enough for the narrator to hate her from the start and portray her as evil. It is true that Jezebel ''is'' accused of doing a few things, which sound terrible even to a modern audience at first. But the narrator's wrath over her persecution of Jahve's prophets sounds very biased, when he later applauds acts of gory violence from her two main opponents, Elijah and Jehu, because those guys happened to belong to ''his'' religion. Even when Jezebel decides to frame the innocent Nabot and has him executed, because he didn't sell his vineyard to King Ahab... Well, that is probably her way of making sure that her subjects would remember that her husband was in charge. And even though that still might sound harsh to modern ears, it would have been totally understandable in her culture back in Ancient Phoenicia. Also, King Ahab (who is portrayed as a HenpeckedHusband, but still) seems to never tell his wife that her actions are against the law of Moses. So she would have no reason to feel that she did anything wrong, because Ahab never stops her or even reprimands her afterwards. And lastly, Jezebel's death is enough to make nearly anybody UnintentionallySympathetic: she is thrown out of a window by her own courtiers, and her body gets crushed and eaten by dogs until she can't even be granted a proper funeral. But appearantly, she deserved this because she belonged to a pagan religion from a foreign culture...

* DesignatedVillain: For millennia, Queen Jezebel has been considered one of the most evil women in Literature/TheBible... It is not until recently, that more and more people have started to question this and ask if she really ''was'' that bad. She grew up as a princess of Tyre, one of the city states of Ancient Phoenicia (present-day Lebanon), and is a follower of the pagan religion of her home country, even after she becomes the queen of Israel. And she (gasp!) also managed to convince her husband, King Ahab, to join her in the worship of her gods. And yes, that is clearly reason enough for the narrator to hate her from the start and portray her as evil. It is true that Jezebel ''is'' accused of doing a few things, which sound terrible even to a modern audience at first. But the narrator's wrath over her persecution of Jahve's prophets sounds very biased, when he later applauds acts of gory violence from her two main opponents, Elijah and Jehu, because those guys happened to belong to ''his'' religion. Even when Jezebel decides to frame the innocent Nabot and has him executed, because he didn't sell his vineyard to King Ahab... Well, that is probably her way of making sure that her subjects would remember that her husband was in charge. And even though that still might sound harsh to modern ears, it would have been totally understandable in her culture back in Ancient Phoenicia. Also, King Ahab (who is portrayed as a HenpeckedHusband, but still) seems to never tell his wife that her actions are against the law of Moses. So she would have no reason to feel that she did anything wrong, because Ahab never stops her or even reprimands her afterwards. And lastly, Jezebel's death is enough to make nearly anybody UnintentionallySympathetic: she is thrown out of a window by her own courtiers, and her body gets crushed and eaten by dogs until she can't even be granted a proper funeral. But appearantly, she deserved this because she belonged to a pagan religion from a foreign culture...

* DesignatedVillain: For millennia, Queen Jezebel has been considered one of the most evil women in Literature/TheBible... It is not until recently, that more and more people have started to question this and ask if she really ''was'' that bad. She grew up as a princess of Tyre, one of the city states of Ancient Phoenicia (present-day Lebanon), and was a follower of the pagan religion of her home country, even after she becomes the queen of Israel. And she (gasp!) also managed to convince her husband, King Ahab, to join her in the worship of her gods. And yes, that is clearly reason enough for the narrator to hate her from the start and portray her as evil. It is true that Jezebel ''is'' accused of doing a few things, which sound terrible even to a modern audience at first. But the narrator's wrath over her persecution of Jahve's prophets sounds very biased, when he later applauds acts of gory violence from her two main opponents, Elijah and Jehu, because those guys happened to belong to ''his'' religion. Even when Jezebel decides to frame the innocent Nabot and has him executed, because he didn't sell his vineyard to King Ahab... Well, she probably did that as a way of making sure that her subjects would see that her husband was in charge. And even though that still might sound terrible to modern ears, it would have been totally understandable in her culture back in Ancient Phoenicia. Also, King Ahab (who is portrayed as a HenpeckedHusband, but still) seems to never tell his wife that her actions are against the law of Moses. So she would have no reason to feel that she did anything wrong, because Ahab never stops her or even reprimands her afterwards. And lastly, Jezebel's death is enough to make nearly anybody UnintentionallySympathetic: she is thrown out of a window by her own courtiers, and her body gets crushed and eaten by dogs until she can't even be granted a proper funeral. But appearantly, she deserved this because she belonged to a pagan religion from a foreign culture...

* DesignatedVillain: For millennia, Queen Jezebel has been considered one of the most evil women in Literature/TheBible... It is not until recently, that more and more people have started to question this and ask if she really ''was'' that bad. She grew up as a princess of Tyre, one of the city states of Ancient Phoenicia (present-day Lebanon), and was a follower of the pagan religion of her home country, even after she becomes the queen of Israel. And she (gasp!) also managed to convince her husband, King Ahab, to join her in the worship of her gods. And yes, that is clearly reason enough for the narrator to hate her from the start and portray her as evil. It is true that Jezebel ''is'' accused of doing a few things, which sound terrible even to a modern audience at first. But the narrator's wrath over her persecution of Jahve's prophets sounds very biased, when he later applauds acts of gory violence from her two main oppponents, Elijah and Jehu, because those guys happened to belong to ''his'' religion. Even when Jezebel decides to frame the innocent Nabot and has him executed, because he didn't sell his vineyard to King Ahab... Well, she probably did that as a way of making sure that her subjects would see that her husband was in charge. And even though that still might sound terrible to modern ears, it would have been totally understandable in her culture back in Ancient Phoenicia. Also, King Ahab (who is portrayed as a HenpeckedHusband, but still) seems to never tell his wife that her actions are against the law of Moses. So she would have no reason to feel that she did anything wrong, because Ahab never stops her or even reprimands her afterwards. And lastly, Jezebel's death is enough to make nearly anybody UnintentionallySympathetic: she is thrown out of a window by her own courtiers, and her body gets crushed and eaten by dogs until she can't even be granted a proper funeral. But appearantly, she deserved this because she belonged to a pagan religion from a foreign culture...

* DesignatedHero: Literature/TheBible has plenty of supposedly heroic figures do questionable things, which sound terrible today due to ValuesDissonance. But even so, King Jehu is among the most egregious cases. He starts out with killing the kings Joram of Israel (whose throne he then takes) and Achasia of Judah. Then he orders the courtiers to kill the elderly Queen Jezebel, Joram's mother, only to remain notably nonchalant about her gruesome death. Then he orders the death of all of Joram's younger brothers (out of whom some must have only been children), everybody with any connection to the former royal house, some relatives of Achasia, who had not done anything except for saying that they came to see the now extinct former royal family, and all the remaining Baal prophets, who had even been tricked by Jehu into coming to a party where they were killed off. Jehu is never seen doing anything but having people killed, and his body count is most likely much larger than that of the DesignatedVillain Queen Jezebel. But he won a civil war and was supposedly chosen by God, and God appears to approve of his nefarious actions. So he must be a hero, right? And to really make us see that worshipping an idol is worse than killing off hundreds of defenseless people, the narrative seems to only have one negative thing to say about Jehu: he never got around to removing some golden calves, which the people used in some cult!

* RonTheDeathEater: Omri and his son Ahab are mostly dismissed as evil failures in the books of Kings and Chronicles, though what secular historical records we have from them indicate Israel's neighbors had rather a different opinion of them. (Assyria in particular referred to Israel as "Omriland" during his reign.) In terms of foreign policy and diplomacy, they were highly esteemed and successful, and (by most accounts) popular with their subjects as well. Whether you accept that they were the bad guys depends on whether you believe in God's religious mandates as laid out elsewhere in TheBible or not: allying with other nations at the time required at least nominally accepting their gods as your own, and the believing priests and prophets writing these accounts certainly were justified to condemn kings who did so for their idolatry. One who ''doesn't'' believe God was guiding Israel might see what Ahab and Omri (and other Israelite Kings before and after them) did as necessary, good, or even laudable for diplomatically assuring their nation's survival in the presence of its more powerful neighbors. One thing acknowledged in these books and in some of the contemporary prophets is that Jehu's slaughter of Ahab's entire family did throw foreign relations into chaos, and the archeological discovery of Assyria's Black Obelisk that shows Jehu paying tribute to Assyria for protection indicates his purging of idolatry from Israel came at a high price.

* OneSceneWonder: Josiah, king of Judah. His destruction of idols and sanctuaries of other gods in Judah is epic, he even destroys altars and statues that previous reformers had left in place, and which had been standing since the time of Solomon. He also recovers the Mosaic law and celebrates the first Passover in centuries. The chapters discussing his reign are like the muster of Patroclus in Literature/TheIliad, where he succeeds so well that he verges on changing fate; but God has already made up his mind. God informs him that he's very impressed with what he accomplished, but Israel will still be destroyed; [[DownerEnding but God will wait until after Josiah is dead for it to happen]].

* RonTheDeathEater: A [[InUniverse canon]] example. Many of the kings in the book were reportedly not nearly as bad in Real Life as they are described, the most egregious cases being King Ahab of Israel and King Manasseh of Juda. Both are described as evil heretics [[ZeroPercentApprovalRating hated by every single one of their subjects]]. The fact alone that Ahab could rule for 22 years and Manasseh for 55 years indicates that they must've had at least some support among the population. In fact, both of them are indicated by several non-biblical sources to have been very successful rulers whose only "fault" was not to piss off their much stronger neighbors who could effortlessly overrun them. Though this would mean tolerating the worship of other gods and routinely melting gold from the temple in Jerusalem to be able to pay tribute, it at least saved their land from complete obliteration. The priesthood in Jerusalem naturally would condemn them for not daring to start a hopeless war against the hegemonial empires that surrounded them on all sides, because [[SuicidalOverconfidence with God's help one was invincible, no matter how improbable the odds were]]. They eventually learned the hard way [[CurbStompBattle what]] [[MadeASlave happens]] when you insist on getting belligerent with a neighboring superpower. Though some of the descriptions of said kings could be justified by way of the Old Testament not being a historical, but a theological piece of work, some of the things written are just simply out of malice (such as [[CriticalResearchFailure attributing the construction of the Arc of Samaria to King Solomon instead of Ahab, who built it]]).