1st Kings Chapter 15 verse 13 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 13. - And also Maachah his mother, oven her he removed from being queen [Rather, queen-mother. Gebiruh, as already pointed out on ch. 2:19, answers to the Sultana Valide. The Vulgate reads, Ne esset princeps in sacris Priapi. Wordsworth reminds us of the position which the queen-mother Atossa holds in the Persae (vers. 159-850). A queen consort is hardly possible in a polygamous household; see Kitto, 4:177] because [Heb. which, as in ver. 5] she had made all idol [מִפְלֶצֶת from פָלַץ terruit, signifies an object of fear, formido - not pudendum, a thing of shame, as the Rabbis and others have held, i.e., a phallic image (simulacrum obscoenum, Jerome), but horrendum. The devout Jew could not but regard such objects with horror] in a grove [Heb. for (i.e., to serve as) an Asherah. See note on 1 Kings 14:15, 23. Asherah is not the name of the goddess ( = Astarte), as Wordsworth thinks, but of the image], and Asa destroyed [Marg. cut off, Heb. simply cut, which here must mean cut down. The image was, no doubt, planted erect in the ground] her idol [horror, as above], and burnt it [this shows that it was made of wood] by the brook Kidron. [Cf. Exodus 32:20. Here, as in 1 Kings 17:3 (where see note), our translators have been unable to adhere strictly to the original "in the brook," etc., from not knowing that נַחַל, which primarily means "brook," also means" watercourse," wady. It is probable that the brook was at this time flowing, and that the ashes of the wooden Asherah were cast into it; but the burning also took place in the Wady, or valley. We read of another similar burning in 2 Kings 23:4, 6; but in this case the ashes were either carried to Bethel or cast upon the graves, to defile them. It is a fair inference that on this latter occasion the Kedron was dry. The valley, "the fields of the Kedron" (ver. 4 l.c.), is conveniently placed for such a purpose.]

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(13) An idol in a grove.--The original word for "idol"--peculiar to this passage and its parallel (2Chronicles 15:16)--appears to signify a "horrible abomination" of some monstrous kind; and instead of "in a grove," we should read "for an asherah," the wooden emblem of the Canaanitish deity (on which see 1Kings 14:22). There seems little doubt that some obscene emblem is meant, of the kind so often connected with worship of the productive powers of nature in ancient religions, substituted as a still greater abomination for the ordinary asherah. Clearly the act of Maachah was one of so flagrant a kind, that Asa took the unusual step, on which the historian here lays great stress, of degrading her in her old age from her high dignity, besides hewing down her idol, and burning it publicly under the walls of Jerusalem.