Good riddance to her, I say. She had no heart – and no morals either.
Here in Judah we worship Yahweh first. Naturally: after all, his temple is here in Jerusalem.
But in Israel… well, they worship anything that they can make an idol to! And then they sent us one of their idolatrous princesses to drag us down to their level. Now, nations have been doing such things for… well, I don’t really know how long, but probably since whenever there first were nations. I’m sure you know the idea: you send a spare princess to marry into the royal family of a neighbouring country. It can help to keep the peace between nations, and maybe assist a
slow cultural invasion. Of course, it can also have dangers if the princess is the wrong type.
But still, a time-honoured tradition.
Well, we got a bad deal with this princess. A very bad deal.
Princess Athaliah came from Israel, and she brought with her all of the worst parts of that degenerate nation. Her grandfather, King Omri, was a brave but brutal man. Her father was King Ahab, a weak man who might have been good if he had kept better company. But he always wanted evil things and surrounded himself with bad-’uns. Most of the time he didn’t actually do terrible things – no, he left all of his dirty work to others. His chief helper and
encourager in that direction was his queen, Jezebel. She was never afraid to do any dirty work: in fact she revelled in it.
Anyway, we were lumbered with a princess brought up in that sort of environment. Our king, Jehoshaphat, was a good and righteous king, but if he had a major flaw, it was that he was too quick to cuddle up to the kings of Israel. When our history is all collected together, I’m sure you’ll be able to see the results; what others who are better with words might call “serious negative consequences”. In other words, look where it all led. I used to work for him in the palace, so I
knew a lot of what was going on.
Jehoshaphat arranged for his son Joram to marry this princess, Athaliah. Bad move, you might say – and you would be completely right.
She was a beautiful young woman, but only on the outside. No woman has ever caused more trouble to Judah than she did, so I’m glad she’s gone.
Now at last we can begin a new chapter in Judah, with Jehoiada the priest running the kingdom while Joash grows up. He’s only a child, you see: just seven years old.
Once I tried to sit down and work out how many people this utterly rotten woman killed – directly or indirectly – but I ended up giving up. It’s too hard to know where to stop when looking at the long-term effects of idolatry. Who knows? eventually it may even lead to the destruction of the kingdom!
I’ll take you through my thoughts.
Prince Jehoram married Princess Athaliah when they were both very young, as is normal in the royal houses of Israel and Judah. I can’t remember exactly how old they were – it was a long time ago – but Jehoram must have been about 12 or 13 years old and Athaliah a little younger. Innocent children, you might think, but no, there was nothing innocent about either of them. They were both headaches to Jehoshaphat, and if he hadn’t been so kind and forgiving, they would both have
been executed several times over the 20 years that followed before Jehoshaphat died. I know that it sounds ridiculous to talk about executing the heir to the throne and his wife, but they were both terrible people. It’s just that she was worse.
Their ideas about worship were all taken from Israel, or maybe even further north: from Sidon, where Queen Jezebel came from. Disgusting. It shouldn’t even need saying, but I don’t believe that sex has any place in worship.
Obviously, King Jehoshaphat would never have been involved himself, nor would he ever have let his people set up “worship” like that, but unfortunately he didn’t stop his son and daughter-in-law doing so. I have to repeat myself: Disgusting.
So Athaliah had some sons by her husband, Jehoram, and some by… well, who knows whom? They were always separated from the king’s sons and spoken of as “Athaliah’s sons”,[1] and a wicked group they grew up to be. Thankfully they’re all dead now, and the kingdom is better for it. Strangely enough, though, they were the only people that Athaliah ever seemed to genuinely care for. She’s almost a proverb: most people don’t use her name, they just call her “That Wicked Woman”
and everyone knows who is meant.
I should probably mention that my count of the people That Wicked Woman had killed didn’t include the young children that were killed through the worship of the various idols that she loved. It was all kept very quiet, because not even the prince and his wife could have got away with such things if Jehoshaphat had found out about them. Nevertheless, I know that there were many “worship” sessions where people who wanted to ingratiate themselves with Jehoram (and Athaliah) offered
their children in the fire to Baal and Molech. Once again, I’m sure that she was responsible for them, but less directly, so I didn’t include them. And I don’t know how many there were anyway, but it probably added up to hundreds – all slaughtered secretly, mostly on the terrible high places well away from Jerusalem.
Thus, my count doesn’t really start until king Jehoshaphat died. At that time, Jehoram became king, and immediately all of his brothers were murdered[2] to remove any threat to his rule. Whose idea do you think that was? Well, I can’t prove anything because I wasn’t involved in any of the planning: the first thing they did – on the very day that Jehoshaphat died – was to get rid of all of the workers in the palace who were faithful to Jehoshaphat. Actually, it was a
relief because it saved me from having to tell them that I wouldn’t work for them however much they paid me – which would have been very dangerous! But I’m straying from the subject, which is: If That Wicked Woman didn’t actually come up with the idea in the first place, it certainly had her enthusiastic support! Personally, I’m confident that it was her idea. So that was six people killed, plus a few other nobles who tried to protect the princes, though I’m not sure how
many. It was all hushed up, which is something that That Wicked Woman was always good at doing, though she didn’t always bother to try. However, this was at the start of her bloodthirsty career, and she cared more about appearances then.
Jehoram and That Wicked Woman made a terrible pair in leading the nation. For almost six years they led the nation downhill at a frightening pace, and for those of us who worship Yahweh, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before God’s judgement would come.
It came.
The prophet Elijah sent him a letter[3] announcing God’s judgement: a great plague would come on the people, his family and the people, and Jehoram himself would die of an incurable disease of the bowels. Sometimes I wonder what Yahweh would have done if Jehoram had repented as Ahab did, but we will never know because he didn’t repent.
Shortly afterwards, the plague came in the form of an attack on Jerusalem by a force of several nations, led by the Arabians and Philistines. They killed all of the king’s sons except Ahaziah, the youngest, and took away many of his wives. Sadly, they didn’t take Athaliah.
Various families have names that are used too often within the family. When the families of the kings of Israel and Judah were joined together through That Wicked Woman, she brought this problem with her. She had two brothers called Ahaziah and Jehoram[4] who ruled consecutively over Israel after Ahab; she then married a man called Jehoram,[5] and they called their son Ahaziah – and both of them became kings of Judah. What a mess that will be for historians to sort
out! Really, I think that the important thing to remember about these kings is that they were all evil and eagerly followed the terrible sins of Ahab and Jezebel. The idolatry of Israel was swallowing up Judah.
After that assault, Jehoram started suffering from the disease God had promised. It took two years, but eventually he died in horrifying agony. It’s sad to say this about a human being, but when Jehoram died, nobody was sorry. All of his subjects were glad to see him go, and, as far as anyone could tell, so was Athaliah.
As soon as the king died, the people of Jerusalem rushed to name the new king. I don’t think that Jehoram’s pain-wracked body was even cold on his deathbed before his replacement was anointed. You may wonder why, and my answer is: Athaliah. Rumours were swirling around the city that she planned to take over as queen, so the common folk got in first.[6]
When people heard the reports that Jehoram was dying, large groups of citizens gathered outside the palace with soldiers and even some priests, calling for Ahaziah to be made king. Don’t take that to mean that he was expected to be a popular king or a good one, but everyone hoped that he would at least be better than Athaliah. The idea was helped by the fact that Ahaziah had been doing some of the work of being king in the last year of Jehoram’s life.[7] Some people had
pointedly taken to calling him “king” to pre-empt the horrifying prospect of having Athaliah as queen.
For a year it worked. Ahaziah was king and Athaliah wasn’t. But then he went to visit his uncle Jehoram, the king of Israel, and got caught up in the middle of Jehu’s rebellion against Ahab’s family. Jehu killed Jehoram in the vegetable garden that had been the unfortunate Naboth’s vineyard[8] and Ahaziah was wounded as well, but managed to escape to Megiddo, where he hid until Jehu caught him and killed him.[9]
His dead body was taken back to Jerusalem, and as soon as That Wicked Woman heard that her son Ahaziah was dead, she grabbed at the opportunity she had missed out on a year earlier. And this time she knew just what she had to do: get rid of any opponents who were closer to the kingship than she was. She didn’t waste any time; she didn’t even wait for the funeral. Instead she told some servants to collect all of Ahaziah’s sons together while she arranged some “important
matters”.
I’ve spoken to some of the servants about it since, and apparently they all assumed that she must be planning for the children to attend their father’s funeral, and that she was making some arrangements for the ceremony – but no, her plans were nothing like that.
[To be continued…]
