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Queen of Heaven
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kwen uhv hev-uh-n (mele'kheth) worship, goddess
RELATED: Ashtoreth, Assyria |
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Easton's Bible Dictionary
( Jeremiah
7:18 ;
44:17 ,
44:25 ), The moon, worshipped by the Assyrians as the receptive power in nature.
Hitchcock's Dictionary of Bible Names
(no entry)
Smith's Bible Dictionary
( Jeremiah
7:18 ;
44:17 , 44:18
, 44:19
, 44:25
) is the moon Ashtaroth or Astarte to whom worshiped as Hebrew women offered cakes
in the streets of Jerusalem.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
(melekheth ha-shamayim, although there is another reading,
mele'kheth, "worship" or "goddess"):
Occurs only in two passages: Jeremiah
7:18 ;
44:17 - 19
, 25
, where the prophet denounces the wrath of God upon the inhabitants of Judah and
Jerusalem who have given themselves up to the worship of the host of heaven. This
is no doubt a part of the astral worship which is found largely developed among
the Jews in the later period of their history in Canaan. It is first mentioned
in 2 Kings 17:16 as practiced by the men of the Northern Kingdom when Samaria
had fallen and the ten tribes were being carried away into captivity. Moses is
represented as warning the Israelites against the worship of the sun and moon
and stars and all the host of heaven, practiced by the people of Canaan (Deuteronomy
4:19 ; 17:3) and the existence of such worship among the Canaanites and neighboring
nations is attested from an early period (compare Job 31:26 - 28).
The worship of the heavenly bodies was widely spread in the East and in Arabia;
and the Babylonian pantheon was full of astral deities, where each divinity corresponded
either to an astral phenomenon or to some circumstance or occurrence in Nature
which is connected with the course of the stars (Jeremias, The Old Testament in
the Light of the Ancient East, I, 100). From the prophets we gather that before
the exile the worship of the host of heaven had become established among all classes
and in all the towns of Israel (Jer ubi supra; Ezekiel 8:16). In that worship
the queen of heaven had a conspicuous place; and if, as seems probable from the
cakes which were offered, she is to be identified with the Assyrian Ishtar and
the Canaanite Astarte, the worship itself was of a grossly immoral and debasing
character. That this Ishtar cult was of great antiquity and widely spread in ancient
Babylonia may be seen from the symbols of it found in recent excavations (see
Nippur, II, 236). How far the astral theorists like Winckler and Jeremias are
entitled to link up with this worship the mourning for Josiah, the lamentations
over Tammuz, the story of Jephthah's daughter, and even--the narrative of the
misfortunes and the exaltation of Joseph, is questionable. But that the people
of Judah in the days before the exile had given themselves over to the worst and
vilest forms of heathen worship and incurred the grievous displeasure of Yahweh
is made clear by the denunciation of the worship of the queen of heaven by Jeremiah.
T. Nicol
Tags:
assyrian, bible commentary, bible history, bible reference, bible study, mele'kheth, moon, queen of heaven
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