Queen Of Heaven

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QUEEN OF HEAVEN (Heb. melekheth hash-shâmayîm).—An object of worship to the people of Jerusalem (Jer_7:16-20) and the Jewish exiles in Egypt (Jer_44:15-30). The Massoretes evidently took the first word as mele’kheth (‘work,’ ‘creation’)—supposing that the silent aleph (’) had been omitted—and considered the expression a synonym for ‘Host of Heaven’ (tsebh⒠hash-shâmayîm, Jer_8:2; Jer_19:13, Zep_1:5, Deu_4:19; Deu_17:3 etc.). In apparent confirmation of this view we have the fact that this term seems to be used in a collective sense as equivalent to ‘other gods.’ On the other hand, many modern scholars regard malkath (‘queen’) as the correct reading, and suppose the cultus to be a worship of the Semitic Mother-goddess, the Phœnician Ashtart = the Assyr. [Note: Assyrian.] Ishtar (see Ashtoreth). Indeed, Ishtar is called in Assyr. [Note: Assyrian.] inscriptions Bçlit Shamç (‘lady of heaven’) and Sharrat Shamç (‘queen of heaven’); but Malkat Shamç (which is the cognate of the term under discussion, and which in Assyr. [Note: Assyrian.] means ‘princess of heaven’) is not one of her titles. The fact that cakes were offered in this worship has little evidential value, as we find this rite a frequent feature in Semitic worship. In Arabia, cakes were offered to the goddess of the evening-star and to the sun-god; and the Israelites offered bread and cakes to Jahweh (see ‘Meal-offering’ and ‘Shewbread’ in art. Sacrifice). Cf. the modern Jewish mazzôth.
W. M. Nesbit.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909


Astarte (See ASHTORETH.) (Jer_7:18; Jer_44:17-25). Wife of Baal or Moloch, "king of heaven." The male and female pair symbolized nature's generative powers, from whence prostitution was practiced in her worship. The worshippers stoutly refused to give up her worship, attributing their recent deprival of plenty to discontinuing her service, and their former plenty to her service. God makes fools' present prosperity their doom (Pro_1:32) and does good to His people in their latter end (Deu_8:16). In Jer_44:19 Maurer translated "did we form her image." Crescent-shaped cakes were offered to the moon. Beltis, the female of Bel or Baal, was the Babylonian "queen of heaven." Ishtar the Babylonian Venus (in the Sardanapalus inscriptions) was also "the mistress of heaven and earth." Babylon, Israel's instrument of sin, was in righteous retribution made Israel's punishment (Jer_2:19).
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
By Andrew Robert Fausset, co-Author of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 1888.


Queen of Heaven. Jer_7:18; Jer_44:17-19; Jer_44:25. The Queen of Heaven is the moon goddess, Ashtaroth or Astarte, to whom Hebrew women worshiped by offering cakes in the streets of Jerusalem. See Ashtaroth.
Smith's Bible Dictionary
By Dr. William Smith.Published in 1863


(השּׁמים מלכת, melekheth ha-shāmayim, although there is another reading, מלאכת, mele'kheth, ?worship? or ?goddess?): Occurs only in two passages: Jer_7:18; Jer_44:17-19, Jer_44:25, 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 2Ki_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 (Deu_4:19; Deu_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; Eze_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.
.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.


[ASHTORETH]




The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.


Queen Of Heaven
In Jer_7:18; Jer_44:17-19; Jer_44:25, the Heb. מְלֶכֶת הִשָּׁמִיַם, meleketh hash-shamayim, is thus rendered in the A. V. In the margin is given “frame or workmanship of heaven,” for in twenty of Kennicott's MSS. the reading is מְלֶאכֶת, of which this is the translation, and the same is the case in fourteen MSS. of Jer_44:18, and in thirteen of Jer_44:19. The latter reading is followed by the Sept. and Peshito Syriac in Jer_7:18, but in all the other passages the received text is adopted, as by the Vulg. in every instance. Kimchi says א is wanting, and it is as if מלאכת— ‘workmanship of heaven,' i.e. the stars; and some interpret ‘the queen of heaven,' i.e. a great star which is in the heavens.” Rashi is in favor of the latter; and the Targum renders throughout “the star of heaven.” Kircher was in favor of some constellation, the Pleiades or Hyades. It is generally believed that the “queen of heaven” is the moon (comp. “siderum regina,” Horace, Carm. Sec. 35, and “regina coeli,” Apul. Met. 11:657), worshipped as Ashtaroth or Astarte, to whom the Hebrew women offered cakes in the streets of Jerusalem. Hitzig (Der Proph. Jeremia, p. 64) says the Hebrews gave this title to the Egyptian Neith, whose name in the form Ta-nith, with the Egyptian article, appears with that of Baai Hamman, on four Carthaginian inscriptions. It is little to the purpose to inquire by what other names this goddess was known among the Phoenician colonists; the Hebrews, in the time of Jeremiah, appear not to have given her any special title. The Babylonian Venus. according to Harpocration (quoted by Selden, De Dis Syris [ed. 1617], synt. 2, cap. 6, p. 220), was also styled “the queen of heaven.” Mr. Layard identifies Hera, “the second deity mentioned by Diodorus, with Astarte, Mylitta, or Venus,” and with the “queen of heaven,' frequently mentioned in the sacred volumes...
The planet which bore her name was sacred to her, and in the Assyrian sculptures a star is placed upon her head. She was called Beltis, because she was the female form of the great divinity, or Baal; the two, there is reason to conjecture, having been originally but one, and androgyne. Her worship penetrated from Assvria into Asia Minor, where its Assyrian origin was recognised. In the rock tablets of Pterium she is represented; as in those of Assyria, standing erect on a lion, and crowned with a tower or mural coronet, which, we learn from Lucian, was peculiar to the Shemitic figure of the goddess. This may have been a modification of the high cap of the Assyrian bas-reliefs. A figure of Astarte found in Etruria represents her as winged (Rawlinson, Herod. ii, 404). To the Shemites she was known under the names of Astarte, Ashtaroth, Mylitta, and Alitta, according to the various dialects of the nations among which her worship prevailed” (Nineveh, ii, 454, 456, 457). It is so difficult to separate the worship of the moon- goddess from that of the planet Venus in the Assyrian mythology when introduced among the Western nations that the two are frequently confused. Movers believes that Ashtoreth was originally the moon- goddess, while according to Rawlinson (Herod. i, 521) Ishtar is the Babylonian Venus, one of whose titles in the Sardanapalus inscriptions is “the mistress of heaven and earth” (see Onias, De מלכת השמים[Alt. 1666]). SEE ASHTORETH.
With the cakes (כִּוָּנַים, carvvanmi; Sept. χαυῶνες which were offered in her honor, with incense and libations, Selden compares the πίτυρα (A. V. bran”) of Ep. of Jeremiah 43, which were burned by the women who sat by the wayside near the idolatrous temples for the purposes of prostitution. These πίτυρα were offered in sacrifice to Hecate while invoking her aid for success in love (Theocr. ii, 33). The Targum gives כִּרְדּוּטַין, kanrdutin, which elsewhere appears to be the Greek χειριδωτὸς, a sleeved tunic. Rashi says the cakes had the image of the god stamped upon them, and Theodoret that they contained pine-cones and raisins. SEE CAKE.

CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.





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