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Old Testament references to the gebirah, the Queen Mother, a foretelling of Mary’s role in the Church (written by Scott Hahn):

“Let’s turn now to 1st Kings, chapter 1. This, I believe, is the missing link. I really am convinced that this is the most important exegetical Biblical piece of evidence that we have to go on. It was one of the best-known institutions in ancient Israel’s monarchy or after the Civil War ancient Juda’s monarchy and in fact, the idea of the Queen Mother was ubiquitous. You don’t find ancient monarchies in the Near East or the Middle East that don’t have Queen Mothers. I’ll refer you to a key article written by N.A. Andrieson in Catholic Biblical Quarterly in 1983, pages 179 through 194. It’s entitled, “The Role of the Queen Mother in Israelite Society.”

When I read this article, it was like a thunderclap striking me. I knew I had to really pay close attention to the evidence. What evidence? Well, this is known as the gebirah. The gebirah is the Hebrew term for the Queen Mother. I found in another book, The Graphic History of the Jewish Heritage, that the gebirah, the Queen Mother “occupied a unique and powerful position” throughout the history of ancient Israel’s monarchy. He gives as an example Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, who was enthroned.

Also, another example, Maacah, in 1st Kings 15:13; Jezebel, who is the only Queen Mother in the rebellious northern kingdom of Israel. In fact, the northern kingdom of Israel is conspicuous because it lacked the Queen Mother. Father DeVoe, one of the greatest Old Testament scholars of the century said, “This was due to a lack of dynastic stability.” They kept getting overthrown up north. They didn’t have the Davidic covenant to anchor the claims of these potential kings. That’s in 2nd Kings 10:13. And then Athaliah, the very cruel and wicked queen who ruled for six years, trying to suppress the cult of Yahweh in the Temple. Mehushta over Johoachin in Jeremiah 13:18. Another scholar in Scandinavia, Ostrum says, “The Queen Mother’s position was essentially cultic in nature,” that is she actually had a position or a role to play in worship. It wasn’t priestly but it was important and it was cultic. It’s still left undefined.

In the ancient Near East it goes on talking about how, “The Queen Mother throughout all these ancient Near Eastern monarchies sat beside the king on a throne, survived the death without being deposed. If the king died, the Queen Mother continued to reign without being deposed. There was a cultic role for her in leading the songs and so on in worship but also she had an essential role in political, military and economic affairs of court. In fact there are records of where the Queen Mother could oppose the king on issues of state. This is found in the Eplah tablets and Uhr Hittite records, Egypt Marri tablets, Assyria and other Arabian documents, as well. And the Queen Mother usually began her reign, just as an interesting incidental detail, after menopause.

What’s really interesting from Andreason’s perspective is that even after the prophets are sent by God to purify the Jerusalem cult and the kingdom of all of these pagan encrustations, the institution of the gebirah continues with reforms by Hezekiah and Josiah. The fertility cults are suppressed and these ashora poles and so on are torn down, including sacred snakes, you know the nahushta and so on, but never the Queen Mother, that’s allowed to remain. The central role for Andreason’s research is that she was to be the king’s wisdom counselor. Lady Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs is sort of like a personification of the Queen Mother, or visa versa.

It goes on listing several other examples. I won’t bother you with all these examples but of the sixteen Queen Mothers named, seven explicitly seem to be Jerusalemites. It just runs throughout the whole gamut, the whole historical span of the monarchy and actually, the only chapter of the Bible that we know was written by a woman, Proverbs 31, was written by a Queen Mother as instruction for her son before he accedes to the throne and finds himself a wife, she says, “This is the kind you’ve got to find.” Andreason concludes that “This is the theological paradigm for Mary’s Queenship. Jesus is the Son of David and the genealogy in Matthew links Mary to the Davidic line. Being the Son of David makes her the Queen Mother.” There are some other works too, The Nature of the Queenship of Mary, published in 1973, The Royal Son of God, published in 1979 and so on.”