Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.
A few things. So oldest Vulgate; omitted in A B C: 'I have against thee that,' etc. 'Aleph (') has 'much' х polu (G4183)].
Sufferest, х eaoo (G1439); but 'Aleph (') A B C read, afeis (G863), 'lettest alone']. That woman. So 'Aleph (') C, Vulgate; but A B, 'THY wife.' The symbolical, Jezebel was to Thyatira what Jezebel, Ahab's 'wife,' was to him. Some self-called prophetess (or, as the feminine in Hebrew often collectively expresses a multitude, a set of false prophets), as closely attached to the church of Thyatira as a wife is to a husband, and as powerfully influencing for evil that church as Jezebel did Ahab. As Balaam, in Israel's early history, so Jezebel, daughter of Eth-baal, king of Sidon (1 Kings 16:31), formerly priest of Astarte, and murderer of his predecessor on the throne (Josephus, 'Contra Apron,' 1:, 18), was the great seducer in Israel's later history. Like her father, she was swift to shed blood. Wholly given to Baal-worship, like Eth-baal, whose name expresses his idolatry, she, with her strong will, seduced the weak Ahab and Israel beyond the calf-worship (a worship of the true God under the cherub-ox form; i:e., a violation of the second commandment) to that of Baal (a violation of the first also). She was herself a priestess and prophetess of Baal. Compare 2 Kings 9:22; 2 Kings 9:30, "whoredoms of ... Jezebel and her witchcrafts" (impurity was part of the worship of the Phoenician Astarte, or Venus). Her spiritual counterpart at Thyatira lured God's "servants" by pretended inspiration to the same libertinism, fornication, and idol meats, as the Balaamites and Nicolaitanes (Revelation 2:6; Revelation 2:14-15). By false spiritualism these led their victims into gross carnality, as though things done in the flesh were outside the man, and therefore indifferent. 'The deeper the Church penetrated into paganism, the more she became paganish. This prepares us for "harlot" and "Babylon," applied to her afterward' (Auberlen).
To teach and to seduce. So Vulgate; but 'Aleph (') A, B C, 'and she teaches and seduces' х plana (G4105), 'deceives']. 'Thyatira was just the reverse of Ephesus. There, zeal for orthodoxy, but little love; here, activity of faith and love, but insufficient zeal for discipline and doctrine: a patience of error even where there was not a participation in it' (Trench).