In Second Kings, chapter eleven, verse one, Athaliah, the only non-Davidic ruler in Judah’s history, was queen during a six-year reign of terror. This daughter of wicked Ahab and Jezebel had married Jehoram, the son of Judah’s King Jehoshaphat. When King Ahaziah, the only son of Jehoram and Athaliah, was killed in Jehu’s purge of Ahab’s house during a visit to the north, the treacherous Athaliah mounted Judah’s throne and attempted to purge it of David’s descendants, including all her grandsons. However, Jehosheba, the wife of the high priest Jehoiada, hid the infant son of Ahaziah named Joash and preserved the Davidic line from which the Messiah would be born.
Athaliah inherited much of her mother Jezebel’s character, obtained an unlimited ascendancy over her husband, Jehoram, and kept her son Ahaziah in leading strings. Unquestionably, through her influence, Jehoram was prevailed upon to introduce the Baal worship into Judah, as in Second Kings eight, verse eighteen, and Second Chronicles two, verse five, and eleven, and Ahaziah prevailed upon to maintain it, as in Second Kings eight, verse twenty-seven, and Second Chronicles twenty-two, verse three, where the verse states, “He also talked in the ways of the house of Ahab: for his mother was his counselor to do wickedly.” On the death of Ahaziah, Athaliah found her position seriously imperiled. The crown would have passed naturally to one of her grandchildren, the eldest of the sons of Ahaziah. She would have lost her physical place of birth, or queen mother, which would have passed to the widow of Ahaziah, the mother of the new sovereign.
Athaliah did not at once lose all influence. At any rate, a counter-influence to hers would have establishment. And this might well have been that of the high priest connected by marriage with the royal family. She arose and destroyed the seed royal. She issued her orders and had all the members of David on whom she could lay her hands put to death.
The royal house had already depleted by Jehoram’s murder of his brothers, as in Second Chronicles twenty-one, verse four, by Arab marauders in Second Chronicles twenty-one, verse seventeen, and by Jehu’s murder of the “brethren of Ahaziah” in Second Kings ten, verse fourteen. However, it is clear that Ahaziah had left several sons behind him, and some of his “brethren” had also, in all probability, left issue. There may also have been many other descendants of David in Judah, belonging to other branches of the house than that of Rehoboam. Athaliah, no doubt, endeavored to make a clean sweep of them all.