Jeremiah Chapter 7 verse 18 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 18. - The children... the fathers... the women. All ages were represented in this idolatrous act, thus justifying the sweeping character of the judgment as described in Jeremiah 6:11. Cakes (comp. Jeremiah 44:19). The word is peculiar (kavvanim), and perhaps entered Palestine together with the foreign rite to which the cakes belonged. Various conjectures have been offered as to their nature, but without any demonstrable ground. Sacrificial cakes were not uncommon. Hosea refers to the luscious raisin-cakes used by idolaters (Hosea 3:1). To the queen of heaven. This title of a divinity only occurs in Jeremiah (here and in Jeremiah 44:17-19, 25). It reminds us, first, of titles (such as "queen of the gods") of the Babylonic-Assyrian goddesses, Bilat (Beltis) and Istar, who, though divided in later times, were "originally but two forms of the same goddess" (Sayce, Transactions of Society of Biblical Archaeology, 3:169). It is, however, perhaps an objection to the view that Bilat or Istar is intended, that neither here nor in Jeremiah 44. is there any allusion to that characteristic lascivious custom which was connected in Babylonia with the worship of Istar (Herod., 1:199). The phrase has, however, another association. It reminds us, in the second place, of the Egyptian goddess Neith, "the mother of the gods." The first mention of "the queen of heaven" in Jeremiah occurs in the reign of Jehoiakim, who was placed on the throne by Pharaoh-Necho, one of the Saite dynasty (Says was the seat of the worship of Neith). If the "queen of heaven" were a Babylonic-Assyrian goddess, we should have looked for the introduction of her cultus at an earlier period (e.g. under Ahaz). But it was in accordance with the principles of polytheism (and the mass of the Jews had an irresistible tendency to polytheism), to adopt the patron-deity of the suzerain. Subsequently Judah became the subject of Nebuchadnezzar; thus it was equally natural to give up the worship of an Egyptian deity. Jewish colonists in Migdol would as naturally revert to the cultus of the Egyptian "mother of the gods" (see Gratz, 'Monatsschrift,' Breslau, 1874, pp. 349-351). The form of the word rendered "queen" being very uncommon, another reading, pronounced in the same way, obtained currency. This should be rendered, not "frame," or "workmanship" (as Authorized Version, margin), but "service." The context, however, evidently requires a person.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(18) The queen of heaven.--The goddess thus described was a kind of Assyrian Artemis, identified with the moon, and connected with the symbolic worship of the reproductive powers of Nature. Its ritual probably resembled that of the Babylonian Aphrodite, Mylitta, the mother-goddess, in its impurities (Herod. i. 199; Bar 6:43), and thus provoked the burning indignation of the prophet here and in Jeremiah 44:19; Jeremiah 44:25. The word rendered "cakes," and found only in connection with this worship, was clearly a technical term, and probably of foreign origin. Cakes of a like kind, made of flour and honey, round like the full moon, and known, therefore, as selence or "moons," were offered, like the Minchah or meat-offerings in the Mosaic ritual, the Neideh in the Egyptian worship of the goddess Neith, at Athens to Artemis, and in Sicily to Hecate (Theocr., Idylls, ii. 33). The worship of Ashtoreth (Milton speaks of her as "Astarte, Queen of Heaven, with crescent horn "), though of kindred nature, was not identical with that of the Queen of Heaven, that name signifying a star, and being identified with the planet Venus. A various reading gives, as in the margin, "the frame of heaven."