Who is the Queen of Heaven?

Verses 16-20. The Lord told the prophet that no prayer of intercession would be answered. "I will not hear thee." What a word this is, coming from Him, who had told Israel to cry unto Him and He would answer. They had provoked Him by making cakes to the queen of heaven. They had fallen in with the worship of a female idol, so prevalent among the idolatrous nations which surrounded them, like the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians and the Babylonians. The Babylonian Venus, Ishtar, was called by them the queen of heaven. The Assyrian called her Beltis, the female form of Baal; they placed in the sculpture a star over her head and called her "the mistress of the heavens." The Phoenicians worshipped this "queen of heaven" under the name of Ashtoreth or Astarte. This wicked worship, with which all kinds of immoral ceremonies were connected, had been adopted by the Jews. The women made cakes to present to this goddess. Jewish tradition tells us that the image of the idol was stamped on each cake. This worship of "the queen of heaven" is perpetuated in the mystical Babylon, Rome, the great whore and mother of harlots (Rev. 17). Mary is called by Romanists "the queen of heaven" and "mistress of the heavens." It can be proven that Mariolatry is but the continuation of the Babylonish worship of the goddess they called "queen of heaven." If the Lord was provoked to anger because the women of Israel brought cakes to this queen of heaven, how much more is He provoked to anger with the idolatries of papal Rome?

The Israelites were warned against worshipping the moon as well as the sun and stars. Deut. 4:19; Deut. 17:3: cf. Job 31:26-28. Of Israel, in the time of Hoshea and of Manasseh it is said they worshipped 'all the host of heaven.' 2 Kings 17:16; 2 Kings 21:3, 5. Jeremiah also states that in Judah and Jerusalem cakes were made to the QUEEN OF HEAVEN, which is commonly supposed to refer to the moon, worshipped as Astarte. Then when the residue of the people had gone into Egypt, they declared that in spite of the prophet's warning they would burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, and pour out drink offerings unto her. Jer. 7:18; Jer. 44:17-19, 25.

"Then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense to other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, As for the word that thou hast spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken to thee. But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goes forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings to her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine. And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings to her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings to her, without our men?" (Ver. 15-19.) Thus they gloried in their shame, regarding not the works of Jehovah nor the operation of His hands, to their own destruction. Their calamities they interpreted as the consequence of slighting the queen of heaven,* for their will was thoroughly committed to a so-called religion, which consecrated mere depravity and passion.

*This was the female form of Baal or Bel, named Beltic, Ashtaroth, Astarte, Alitta, Mylitta, Aphrodite, etc., whose worship was attended by the grossest immorality.

The "Groves" so frequently referred to in the history of Ahab and Elijah were really statues of Ashtoreth. Baal seems to have represented the sun, and Ashtoreth the moon. In the divine indictment of the Northern Kingdom, when the people were carried captive into Assyria, we read: "they left all the commandments of Jehovah their God, and made them molten images, two calves, and made an Asherah, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal" (2 Kings 17:16). Note how "all the host of heaven" is here linked with Baal. In Jer. 7:18 Ashtoreth is called "the queen of heaven." From Job 31:26-27 we gather that homage to the Sun and moon was the earliest form of idolatry.

(3) Having declared his benevolence, Job naturally passes on to speak of wealth, and disclaims the love of gold so common to man; that "covetousness which is idolatry" (Col. 3:5). When his riches had increased, he had not set his heart upon them; gold had not allured him. And when he lifted up his eyes to the resplendent heavens, he had not given the glory to the sun, a creature of God, nor to the moon, "queen of heaven," walking in splendor; nor even secretly wafted a kiss of worship to them, for God would have been denied thereby; he would have been a hypocrite, well deserving punishment.

Verses 15-19. What heart-hardness to say to the man of God, "We will not hearken." They intended to perform their vows to worship "the queen of Heaven." All they said was, it was well with us when we worshipped the queen of Heaven in the homeland. The women seem to have been concerned mostly in this, but they did so with the knowledge and the consent of their husbands. See about the queen of Heaven and the worship, chapter 7 and the annotations there. They claimed that all the disaster which had come on them was the result of abandoning their evil practices. What defiance and wickedness, the fruit of their unbelieving hearts! Still greater is the defiance and wickedness of today, when the cross and the gospel of Christ are deliberately rejected.

The people openly declare their will to continue sacrificing "to the queen of the heavens," and attribute to her the prosperity which they had formerly enjoyed at Jerusalem (Jer. 44:17-18). The predicted calamity overtakes them in Egypt, the Lord delivering Pharaoh-hophra into the hands of the king of Babylon (Jer. 44:30)

The people, however, had become so hardened in their evil ways that they tell the prophet without hesitation, “We will not hearken unto thee”! They boldly inform him they will continue their idolatry and burn incense to the queen of heaven, for say they, when we did these things in Judah and Jerusalem we had plenty of bread and were well, and saw no evil (vv. 15-19). Jeremiah points out to them it was the very thing which brought God’s judgment upon Judah and Jerusalem (vv. 20-23). Moreover the prophet made known to them, since they were determined to continue their abominable practices, the Lord had said, “Behold, I have sworn by My great Name, says the Lord, that My Name shall no more be named in the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying, The Lord God lives,” but they should be consumed, and as the king of Jerusalem had been given into the hand of the king of Babylon, so also should the king of Egypt be (vv. 24-30).

Though God still lingered in long-suffering, the dreadful state of Israel made the divine sentence of judgment irrevocable. Earlier in the chapter God had called upon them to amend their ways, with the promise that they would still dwell in the land if they obeyed His voice, but now He says, “Pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer, neither make intercession to me: for I will not hear thee.” Children, fathers and women were all united in a common effort “to pour out drink offerings to the queen of heaven;” engaged in gross idolatry, though still offering sacrifices in the temple. But God desired obedience, not sacrifice, even as He had told king Saul so long before.

Alas! Though men observe the marvels of the universe, they do not always discern in them the glory of God. They can take cognisance of "the glory of the celestial" and of "the glory of the terrestrial", observing that there is "one glory of the sun, and another of the moon" and that "star differs from star in glory"; but how often it has been to worship the host of heaven instead of the God that created all. Even among God's earthly people Israel, who had the oracles of God, there were found in the temple of Jehovah those who worshipped the sun (Ezek. 8:16) and those who worshipped the moon, the queen of heaven (Jer. 7:18).