“The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands” (Prov 14:1).
Her name, Athaliah, means “constrained by, or afflicted by, Jah.” Knowing the family situation, with Jezebel delivering the child and Ahab as her father, the name sounds like a charge against God. We know nothing of her childhood, but her marriage to Jehoshaphat’s son, Jehoram, brought the vile ways of her family’s devilish Baal-worship into Judah. When her husband died smitten by heaven, she redoubled her efforts in the devil’s cause. Her son Ahaziah, aged 22, became her next victim, “for his mother advised him to do wickedly” (2 Chron 22:3). With his death at the hand of Jehu, the throne of Judah was empty. Some of the early princes had been stolen by the Arabians, others slain by Jehu. All that was left were some children in the royal household. Athaliah saw her chance, and “she arose and destroyed all the royal heirs of the house of Judah” (v 10)—with one blessed exception. She was of her father the devil, a murderer from the beginning. And through the ages, since Cain rose up and killed Abel, there has been a grisly lineage of those willing to do the Destroyer’s work in seeking to eradicate the hope of the Messiah. Athaliah puts herself in the company of Pharaoh, Herod, Hitler, and scores of others determined to make God a liar by destroying the Jewish people in general and the Messiah in particular. But God also has His agents. Jehoshabeath, the wife of Jehoiada the priest, “took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the king’s sons who were being murdered, and put him and his nurse in a bedroom” (v 11). The hope of a Savior-King through Judah’s tribe and David’s line hung by a thread! And for six bloody years of Athaliah’s reign, Judah lay in dark despair. But morning was coming!