Verse 13
13. Queen “There can be no queen-consort where there is more than one wife; and, in the East, where there is no more than one, she is not a queen, she is simply the zan-i-shah, ‘the king’s wife’ that is all. There is, however, in most cases, some one in the harem who, on one account or another, is recognised as the chief lady. There was one whose claim to be chief lady, or queen, was superior to all others, and that was the MOTHER of the king. The prevalent usage of the East assigns the first rank in every household not to the wife of the master, but to his mother, to whom the wife merely becomes another daughter. And so the rank of ‘the king’s mother’ was the nearest approach to the rank and dignity of a non-regnant queen.” Kitto. A close analogy is supposed to be in the Sultana Walide, in the Ottoman empire.
She had made an idol in a grove Rather, she made a horrible statue to Asherah. On Asherah, see note at 1 Kings 14:15. The word מפלצת , here rendered idol, means something horrible or terrible. Furst, after some of the Rabbins, regards it as the name of a Phallus-statue, erected to the goddess Asherah, and a symbol of the procreative power of nature. Whatever its form and its symbolism, it was an idol set up in honour of a licentious goddess and a foul system of worship, and, therefore, a horrible thing for a mother in Israel to make.
Burnt it As Moses did the golden calf. Exodus 32:20. So this idol of Maachah, like the calf at Sinai, was probably made of wood, and covered over with gold.
Kidron which runs through the deep valley beneath the walls of Jerusalem on the east. See note on 2 Samuel 15:23.
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