2 Kings 9:30

Jezebel heard of it. For Jezebel the final hour of doom had come, and she knew it. Having had word of the death of the two kings, her son and grandson, she well knew that her turn was next. She must prepare for her last moment on earth. And what a preparation this evil woman made!

She painted her face. Literally, “she put [treated] her eyes with antimony.” From the earliest times Oriental women used cosmetics for painting their eyebrows and their eyelashes (see Jeremiah 4:30 and Ezekiel 23:40).

Tired her head. She adorned her head with a “tire,” or headdress (see Isaiah 3:18), literally, she “made good [beautiful] her head.” She was defiant and unrepentant to the last. She decked herself in all her ornaments and put on her most stately attire. But her outward adorning was to avail her nothing, either before Jehu or before the judgment bar of God. Before that tribunal all stand revealed as they really are. Powder and paint do not cover up the inner corruption of the heart, nor do silks and satins hide the ugly stains of sin upon the soul. Jezebel was corrupt within in spite of all her efforts at outward beautification. God looks at the heart and asks for inward adorning rather than outward (1 Peter 3:3, 4). In view of her dark record of sin, Jezebel might well have put on sackcloth and sat in ashes. But her proud spirit refused to be humbled and her heart of stone would not be moved.

Looked out. The window was probably one in her private quarters, overlooking an inner court. Her attitude appears to have been haughty and imperious as she took her position at her window to look down in bitter defiance at the rebel who was even then entering the palace gates.