Cosmetics

Cosmetics in the UPDV is one tightly framed motif: painting the eyes. Each of the three passages it gathers is unfavorable. In every scene the painted face belongs to a woman seen as predatory or doomed, and the act is bundled with ornaments and self-display.

Jezebel at the window

The defining scene is Jezebel meeting Jehu's coup with full preparation: "And when Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her eyes, and attired her head, and looked out at the window" (2Ki 9:30). The eye paint and the headdress are her response to news of impending attack — a deliberate self-presentation in the face of death.

Jeremiah on Jerusalem

Jeremiah turns the same gesture into an indictment of Jerusalem. The city is figured as a woman trying to seduce her own enemies as they come to destroy her: "And you, when you are made desolate, what will you do? Though you dress yourself with scarlet, though you deck you with ornaments of gold, though you enlarge your eyes with paint, in vain you make yourself fair; [your] lovers despise you, they seek your soul" (Jer 4:30). Eye-paint here is layered with scarlet clothing and gold ornaments and produces no result — the lovers who see her made up are the ones who plan to kill her.

Ezekiel on Oholah and Oholibah

Ezekiel's allegory of the two sisters uses the same three-step grooming sequence — washing, painting the eyes, and putting on ornaments — to describe the welcome they prepared for foreign lovers: "And furthermore you⁺ have sent for men who come from afar, to whom a messenger was sent, and, see, they came; for whom you washed yourself, painted your eyes, and decked yourself with ornaments" (Eze 23:40). The painted face stands in line with the dispatched messenger and the displayed body — a calculated invitation that the prophecy goes on to indict.