{"id":63830,"date":"2019-10-02T18:34:32","date_gmt":"2019-10-02T15:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=63830"},"modified":"2023-04-27T16:42:35","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T13:42:35","slug":"queen-athalia-vs-the-seven-year-old-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/queen-athalia-vs-the-seven-year-old-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen Athaliah Vs. The Seven-Year Old Boy"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[483,908,600],"acf":{"old_id":"63830","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":40788,"related_cahpter":"320","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Her evil deeds weren\u2019t worse than some other kings: was she demonized because she was a woman?","content":"

In this chapter we meet the strong and powerful Athaliah. She rules over Judah for more than six years and is the only woman to ever do so in that official capacity. She claims this position as the mother of the last slain monarch, Ahaziah, but arrives at this place of power through her own cunning and murderous actions. Immediately upon the death of her son, King Ahaziah, she wipes out all remaining descendants who might lay claim to the throne. She acts much like her predecessors and clears her own path to power, with one major difference: She is a woman. In ancient Israel no woman has held the throne.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is, however, another twist in the story. One heir to the throne, a baby boy named Joash, survives her purge. Jehosheba, the sister of the preceding (now deceased) King Ahaziah, along with her husband, the priest Jehoiada, hatch a plan to hide Joash away and ultimately, on his seventh birthday, present him to the people and anoint him as King. As they do so, Athaliah cries out \u201ctreason\u201d, which it is, but to no avail. The people and the priests are behind the newly crowned King Joash and she is powerless to stop them. The story of Athaliah ends with her murder in her own palace.<\/span><\/p>\n

What are we to make of this episode? Picture the scene: a queen who has been ruling for 6 years being replaced with a seven year old boy. Certainly, this plan was not his. Joash is merely a pawn in the power schemes of others. What was driving the people to do this? Why so much urgency to dethrone Athaliah? Could they not have just waited a few more years until the natural death of Athaliah or at least until the boy had matured into a man and might fulfill this role with some competence?<\/span><\/p>\n

The rabbis try to answer these open questions. They try to fill in these blank spaces by imputing to her a desire to destroy the Davidic dynasty and they cast her as an adulteress \u2013 in other words, a bad woman who needed to be removed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet, all such indications are absent from the text of Kings itself. In fact, Athaliah\u2019s actions mimic those of a long line of monarchs, who wipe out challengers to their power and destroy the remaining lineage of Ahab, and other evil Kings. This leaves us wondering: Was she any worse than the many previous evil Kings? Could it be that her fatal flaw, which necessitated her replacement by a seven-year old boy, was not anything that she herself did, but simply her status as a woman, acting in a way and playing a role that until then only men had inhabited?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Is the story of the Athaliah a relic of the past or are there ways that we see her story still alive today?<\/span><\/p>\n

Image: Athaliah, as depicted in Antoine Dufour\u2019s Vie des femmes c\u00e9l\u00e8bres, c. 1505; in the Dobr\u00e9e Museum, Nantes, France. 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