Who was Athaliah in the Bible?

Daughter of Jezebel and Ahab, and granddaughter of Omri (cf. 2 Kings 8:26 with ver. 18), wife of Jehoram king of Judah. She may be said to have introduced the worship of Baal into Judah, and she brought up her son to follow in her evil ways. 2 Chr. 22:3. He having been slain by Jehu when he was executing judgement on the house of Ahab, Athaliah usurped the throne and endeavoured to destroy all the seed royal. One child, Joash, was concealed in the temple, and after Athaliah had reigned six years, he was anointed king and crowned; Athaliah was taken outside the enclosures of the temple and slain, B.C. 878. The temple and idol of Baal were at once destroyed, and the priest slain. The history is a solemn instance of the danger of an unholy alliance. 2 Kings 11:1-20; 2 Chr. 23:12-21.

Athaliah was a granddaughter of Omri, daughter of Ahab, sister of Jehoram of Israel, wife of Jehoram of Judah, and mother of Ahaziah. She had other sons of whom the greater part, no doubt, were from other mothers, for there were forty-two of them (2 Kings 10:14). We are told concerning them and their mother: "For the wicked Athaliah and her sons had devastated the house of God; and also all the hallowed things of the house of Jehovah had they employed for the Baals" (2 Chr. 24:7). Is it astonishing that God should have permitted their extermination by Jehu? When Athaliah learned of the death of her son Ahaziah (the king's brothers had, as we have seen, suffered the same fate before he did), this ambitious woman, without scruples and without natural affection, put to death all the king's sons — her own grandsons — in order to secure the kingdom for herself. God's judgment passed like a tempestuous wind sweeping away everything in Israel and Judah. The instruments of this judgment were the fleshly zeal of Jehu and the iniquity of Athaliah's idolatrous heart. Both produced the same result, massacre and murder. These instruments, especially Athaliah, imagined that they were thereby accomplishing their plans, but in the final analysis, they were only the sword of the Lord to vindicate the holiness of his character by this extermination. Moreover, God will break the sword when it will have finished its work and will show in breaking it that He is a righteous God who does not leave crime unpunished.

The royal house of Israel is destroyed without leaving a single man, and God begins the trial of His patience again with a new dynasty, that of Jehu. But it is not so with the house of Judah. The faithful God keeps His word, for He had said that He would give David "always a lamp for his sons" (2 Kings 8:19). In the person of Joash He sustains for Himself a feeble candle stub which He does not extinguish, and through whom an era of blessing and of the fear of the Lord would be inaugurated for the kingdom of Judah. The longsuffering of God still delayed the moment of rejecting His guilty people.

Jehosheba, the daughter of Jehoram of Judah and sister of Ahaziah, the wife of Jehoiada the high priest, steals Joash away from the massacre of the king's sons and hides her nephew with her in the house of the Lord for six years, that is, in the part of the house of the Lord where her husband and the priests dwelt.

Athaliah, the wicked daughter of a wicked pair (Ahab and Jezebel), the widow of Joram, King of Judah, Jehoshaphat's son and the mother of Ahaziah, who had been slain by Jehu, destroyed the seed royal. She did so because she wanted the authority herself. It was an awful deed, inspired by him who is the murderer from the beginning. And Satan aimed through her at something of which his instrument was ignorant. It was one of the many attempts Satan made to exterminate the male offspring to make the coming One, the promised saviour, the seed of the woman, impossible. Had he succeeded through Athaliah in the destruction of the royal seed of David, the promise made to David would have become impossible. Notice the first little word in the second verse, "But." Satan's attempt failed. The watchful eye of Jehovah and His power frustrated it all. A wicked woman killed her own children and a godly woman was used to keep one of the royal seed alive.

Jehosheba ("the LORD's oath" is the meaning of her name), through whom the covenant-oath was sustained, was the wife of Jehoiada (meaning "the LORD knows"), the high-priest (2 Chron. 22:11); he was brother-in-law to Ahaziah (2 Chron. 22:11) and Jehosheba was probably a half sister of Ahaziah. She took the young child from among the King's sons and hid him first in the bed-chamber and then in the house of the LORD till the seventh year. Well may we see here a most beautiful type of our Lord Jesus Christ. Like Joash He was doomed to death, yea, He died. But He was raised from the dead and is now hidden in the house of God above, the heavens having received Him. Joash, the heir of the throne of David, was hidden till the seventh year even as the true heir to the throne of David is now hidden in the presence of God till the six years (six the number of man's day, the present age) are passed. And when the seventh year comes--the beginning of the coming age, He will be brought forth as Joash was brought from his hiding place and be crowned king.

A remnant selected by Jehoiada saw the king first. It is a great scene this chapter describes. The company brought together, armed with King David's shields and spears, the king's son brought into the midst, Jehoiada putting the crown upon his head, anointing him with oil, they clapped with their hands and shouted "God save the King." Greater will be the scene when He will be crowned King of Kings, whose right it is to reign. Athaliah, the usurper, appears on the scene, attracted by the noise. She is face to face with the crowned king and receives now her well-deserved punishment outside of the house of the LORD. A great revival followed. A covenant was made by Jehoiada between the LORD and the king and people "that they should be the LORD's people." Baal's altars and images are broken. The king sits upon his throne. All the people of the land rejoiced and there was peace. All these blessed results are faint foreshadowings of what is yet to be when the usurper is cast out, when the true King is crowned. Then Israel will be in truth the LORD's people, idolatry will cease, the land and the people will rejoice and the city be quiet.

The short history of King Jehoram and King Ahaziah of Judah, woven in here in order to link together the order of events, nevertheless presents serious and instructive features. The daughter of Ahab (the husband of Jezebel) was the wife of Jehoram of Judah. Ahaziah, Jehoram's son, was also "the son-in-law of the house of Ahab." These profane alliances led the one and the other into the ways of the kings of Israel. The same holds true at all times. A Christian yoked together with a child of the world necessarily loses his testimony and even the appearance of his Christianity, for the world is never improved by the Christian's alliance with it. Rather, to the contrary, it is bad company that corrupts good manners. True, the Lord, faithful to the promises made to David, does not destroy Jehoram of Judah, but this latter does not find in the world that rest which his corrupted religion cannot give him and which the discipline and chastening of God do not leave him. Edom, which until now had a governor dependent upon the throne of Judah, revolts and chooses a king for itself. The consequence is war. Jehoram has the advantage, but the revolt is not crushed, and this unsubdued enemy continues on "unto this day." At the same time, Libnah revolted. Libnah was a city of Judah, a priestly city belonging to the sons of Aaron (Joshua 21:13; 1 Chr. 6:57). What a shame for Jehoram! In his own kingdom one of the morally most important cities detached itself from him. The reason is given in 2 Chronicles 21:10-11. The sons of Aaron could not associate themselves with one who "had forsaken Jehovah the God of his fathers," and who urged Judah into this path by his high places and fornications. Some testimony was then still left in Judah, and this testimony was to Jehoram's shame. The Lord separated from him a part of the priesthood, that which alone could yet maintain Jehoram's relationship with Himself. When we come to our study in Chronicles, we will consider the judgment of this impious king in greater detail.

Ahaziah the son of Jehoram of Judah, began to reign in the twelfth year of Jehoram of Israel (2 Kings 8:25). His mother was Athaliah, daughter of Omri, a common way of speaking among the Jews; for she was in fact the granddaughter of the head of this dynasty, Omri, the daughter of Ahab, and the wife of Jehoram of Judah (v. 18). She was thus the sister of Jehoram of Israel. Ahaziah himself was the son-in-law of the house of Ahab. As Jehoshaphat his grandfather had made an alliance with Ahab in order to retake Ramoth-Gilead, which had fallen under the power of the king of Syria, so Ahaziah the son of Jehoram of Judah made an alliance with Jehoram of Israel, son of Ahab, to make war against Hazael, the king of Syria, at Ramoth-Gilead, which was a city of refuge (Deut. 4:43). This was done according to the advice of his counsellors of the house of Ahab and of Athaliah his mother (2 Chr. 22:4-5). This alliance with the kings of Israel was an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. Jehoram of Israel suffered the same fate at Ramoth as Ahab, who had earlier been wounded by the Syrians at the same place (1 Kings 22:34). He retired to Jizreel to be healed of his wounds. It was there that his ally Ahaziah, king of Judah, came to him to express his sympathy. By the world's standards this was an act of simple courtesy, but after having opposed Hazael, God's rod against Israel, Ahaziah subjects himself to the blows of Jehu, the second of God's rods against his ally. These judgments upon Israel neither move him nor restrain him in his pathway, and lo, these judgments will reach his very own person!

1892 164 Athaliah, daughter of Ahab, granddaughter of Omri a wicked king of Israel and of a heathen king — Ethbaal king of the Zidonians — the wife of Jehoram, the idolatrous mother and wicked counsellor of her son Ahaziah, when she saw that her son was dead, arose and destroyed all the seed-royal and seized the throne, all but one infant whom his aunt Jehoshabeath hid from the demoniacal policy of his grandmother. What a picture! Where is David's son? What now of the promise that David should never want a man to sit upon his throne? Has Satan in very deed almost caused that race of kings to be cut off? Has he rendered null the word of God? How the great arch-foe would have boasted, if he had thus proved himself able to bring an everlasting curse, where God was controlling all things for better blessing! "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh." Though the line from David to Messiah is at this time attenuated to a mere feeble thread, and the promised glory (the future blessing of Israel, of the whole earth, and the immutability of God's counsels, then seemed to hang upon the precarious life and safe hiding of an infant), yet the promise of God is as sure and His counsels as firm while the infant Joash is in hiding, all unconscious of the momentous results hinging upon his life, and that his unnaturally wicked grandmother, a mere tool in the hands of a greater enemy, would seek his life; the purpose of God was as sure, and His decree as immutable, as when Solomon in all his might and glory sat on the throne. Apparently all seems contingent on the life of a babe; in reality all rests upon the firm foundation of God's word.

"And when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal." Chronicles adds, "of the house of Judah" (we quote from Kings). "But Jehosheba, the daughter of king Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king's sons which were slain; and they hid him, even him and his nurse, in the bedchamber from Athaliah, so that he was not slain."

"That wicked woman," is the character given this Athaliah by the Holy Ghost in 2 Chron. 24:7. She was just such a daughter as her infamous mother, "that woman Jezebel," was likely to produce. Her father was himself a murderer, and the family character was fully marked in her. She heartlessly slaughtered her own grandchildren in her lust for power. She would be herself ruler of the kingdom, even at the cost of the lives of helpless and innocent children. No character in history, sacred or secular, stands out blacker or more hideous than this daughter-in-law of the godly Jehoshaphat. Joash was only an infant at the time, and his mother (Zibiah of Beersheba), in all likelihood, dead — murdered, probably, by her fiendish mother-in-law. Jehosheba (Jehovah's oath, i.e., devoted to Him), the child's aunt, and wife of the high priest Jehoiada (Jehovah known), hid him, with his nurse, first in one of the palace bedchambers, and later in the temple (where she lived), among her own children, and perhaps as one of them. "And he was with them hid in the house of God six years: and Athaliah reigned over the land." It was God's mercy to the house of David, even as it had been declared at the time of the reign of Athaliah's husband Jehoram: "Howbeit the Lord would not destroy the house of David, because of the covenant that He had made with David, and as He promised to give a light to him and to his sons for ever" (2 Chron. 21:7).

Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, who reigned in his father's stead, had Athaliah "the daughter of Ahab to wife." She was filled with the cruel and persecuting spirit of her father's house, and lent herself to Satan to do his work. She was an instrument of cruelty in his hands. For, although her immediate object, in killing all the seed royal, was to take possession of the throne herself, the object of Satan was very different. From the days of Abel, his aim had been to cut off, by means of death, the line of the promised seed, and thereby frustrate the purpose of God, destroy the faith of His people, and break them off from trusting in His word.

God had promised to David that He would establish his seed for ever, and build up his throne to all generations. (2 Samuel 7; Psalm 89) Hence, Satan's great object now was to prevent the accomplishment of this promise by destroying all the seed royal. "But when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal of the house of Judah." Having thus, as she thought, got — completely rid of the true heir, she took possession of the throne herself, and "reigned over the land."

In 2 Kings 11 we have recorded the conspiracy of Athaliah, called in 2 Chron. 24:7, "that wicked woman." For six years Israel was subjected to her frightful rule (v. 3). In verse 1 we see that the object of her enmity was `the royal seed', the line from which, in manhood, our Lord came. Thus, behind this wicked queen's actions we see the malice and hatred of Satan the arch-enemy of Christ. The position, outwardly, was desperate, and the continuance of the 'royal seed' hung upon the slender thread of one boy — Joash. The name Athaliah means 'whom Jehovah restrained', and we are truly thankful for the way in which the mighty hand of God is apparent in the restraint of evil designs. But again God is pleased to use an unnamed nurse. She, together with the wife of Jehoiada the priest, took Joash and hid him from Athaliah for six years, until the moment when he was presented to the people as the "king's son." Six years of obscurity (and doubtless of some danger) marked the service of that devoted unnamed nurse. She is not heard of again, but the results of her service were immense. The house of the Lord was repaired, wealth poured into it "day by day," and for sixty-nine years, (forty years during the reign of Joash and twenty-nine years during the reign of his son) a king who "did that which was right in the sight of the Lord" sat upon the throne. We may encourage ourselves in the knowledge that acts of loyalty and devotion in our day, however obscure they are, may, under the Lord's hand, result in the promotion of His rights beyond our thought or understanding — "All of the people of the land rejoiced, and the city was quiet (2 Chronicles 23:21).

The callous wickedness of Athaliah rose to a terrible height at this time. She killed her grandsons so that she could have free rein to take the kingdom of Judah. Ahaziah, being the son of Jehoram who was the son of Jehoshaphat, was of the royal line, but his mother, Athaliah, was not. She was a usurper with no royal rights whatever. But God was not defeated by her wickedness. He preserved one descendant of Ahaziah by means of Jehoshabeath, a daughter of King Jehoram who hid the youngest son when Athaliah murdered the rest (v. 11). It was Satan who moved Athaliah in her attempt to completely destroy the seed royal. Many such attempts were made through history, but God is above all the hateful plans of men and of Satan. Joash was only one year old when he was hidden, and since Jehoshabeath was the wife of the priest Jehoiada, they were able to hide Joash in the temple for six years. All this time Athaliah had her way in ruling over Judah.

Athaliah was not long without hearing the tumult. So she comes to the people and to the temple of Jehovah. A strange place for her, the hater of Jehovah and the patron of idolatry in its worst form! She comes, and looks, and behold, the king stood by a pillar. The king! And this was all that her murderous policy had led to and ended in. "The king stood by a pillar; as the manner was, and the princes and the trumpeters by the king; and all the people of the land rejoiced, and blew with trumpets. And Athaliah rent her clothes and cried, Treason, treason;" The old voice — the voice of her mother, before her, and the voice too of her son after her, and now her own. But the truth was, it was she who was the traitor. It was she that had tried to blot out the king from the throne; and, accordingly, she meets with the just reward of a traitor, for "Jehoiada commanded the captains of the hundreds, the officers of the host, and said to them, Have her forth without the ranges; and him that follows her kill with the sword. For the priest had said, Let her not be slain in the house of Jehovah." There was no one to follow. She was alone, not alone in her evil, but now her evil had not one sympathizer. "So they laid hands on her; and she went by the way by the which the horses came into the king's house; and there was she slain. "And Jehoiada made a covenant between Jehovah and the king and the people, that they should be Jehovah's people; between the king also and the people. And all the people of the land went into the house of Baal, and brake it down." And thus the worship of Baal was dealt with in Judah, as it had been before in Israel.