SRR 39 | Roman Catholics and Their Queen

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Paul at the Areopagus and the Call to Repentance

So what does Paul do when he gets his big shot at the Areopagus. Watch him. Now not only has Paul not compromised in order to get here. But once he's here, he says your worldview is wrong. Your philosophy is wrong.

It's not just wrong. It's an affront to God. You ought to know better. You're in sin. But the good news is God has extended to you an opportunity to repent.

All right, welcome everybody to another episode of Semper Ephraim on the radio. My name is Tim and I'm gonna be your host today. We have with us a special guest. Timothy Kaufman is back and He's been I think he's just been very busy as of late.

Why the Doctrine of Mary Matters in the Reformation Era

We haven't had him on the show Recently, but we are going to be covering a topic that I think is pretty pretty important and It's something that I think the church needs to go over again and that is just the Doctrine of Mary and the reason why I say that it's it's important for the time that we're in and there's a reason why that the church needs to go over it again is is just simply because We see so many people being drawn into Roman Catholicism and with Tim Kaufman, he's our he's our Roman Catholic expert.

These are issues that we want to address. These are issues that we want to take up and especially right now because it's we're in the 500 year anniversary to the Protestant Reformation what sparked the Protestant Reformation in October 31st of 1517 when Martin Luther nailed the 95 thesis to the church door in Wittenberg and What it's just it's astonishing Brother Kaufman, let me let me I want to introduce you a little bit more but Let me just ask you.

Are you are you familiar with the Bible Answer Man?

Yes, I am.

So I recently found out that the Hank Hanegraaff the Bible Answer Man converted to Greek Orthodoxy and.

I.

Decided to tune in yesterday. It's a hot topic. So I figured that he was going to be Talking about that on the show I tuned in yesterday I actually called and I called it like about 420 as early as I could and I waited on the phone for about 40 minutes.

I didn't even get to talk to him. But during the show he affirmed Roman Catholics as as a true church he affirmed Roman Catholicism as a as a true faith and he said that we hold all of the same essentials as as We're in line with them when it comes to the essentials and a caller called in and Challenged him a little bit on it and said we don't hold the same essentials.

They have a different gospel and Hank Hanegraaff appealed to James chapter 2 and you know just Gave an off answer that just muddied the water and we see so many Protestant professing well, he's not he's Greek Orthodox now, but we see so many professing Bible believing evangelicals running to Roman Catholicism running to affirming Roman Catholicism we have People affirming the the Roman Catholic Pope like TD Jake's and Who's the guy that wrote wrote up the purpose-driven life?

Let me think what's his name? I forgot his name, but the guy who wrote the purpose-driven life and So it's our goal. Is that Rick Warren? Yeah, yes. Yes. Thank you. I had a brain lapse there Rick Warren but so many evangelical leaders are leading their flocks right back to What I would say is extremely dangerous territory and so it's our goal in this in this podcast to stand firm on the Word of God and to shed some light on these issues and Tim Kaufman is the he has a blog called whitehorse blog .com and You can't did I get that right?

I always butcher that but yeah, you got it, right.

The formal title is out of his mouth right on a verse from Revelation. But the URL is whitehorse blog .com.

Right. I I think last time I said org and so and I we were Just so everybody knows we've been having some major computer issues and I looked it up before before Before we started and then I had to restart my computer and I didn't look it up again, but it's a whitehorse blog.

It's a it's out of his mouth. Not to be confused with the white horse in just so everybody knows that's a different blog site. But he is a prolific writer. He's a contributor to the Trinity Foundation, which we would also want to recommend.

He's written a number of articles on there and you can just search for his name go to the the review archives Section in the Trinity Foundation. He also has a couple of as a lecture on the Trinity Foundation about Tim Keller.

And we've had him on the show before to talk about Tim Keller and then we've also had him on the show before to talk about the Roman Catholic Mass and So today what we're going to be talking about is the Doctrine of Mary and we're going to be confronting what Roman Catholicism teaches with regards to that and Let me just let me just tell everybody this Brother Kaufman is is really He is he does a lot of work and he He's very in-depth in in the material that he presents now I I can sort of give a defense against the Doctrine of Mary that's held by the Roman Catholics, but not at the same level as Tim Kaufman so so I have very little to offer to today's message other than to just maybe ask questions and If if they come up, but after going through Tim Kaufman's notes last night he sent them to me he's he's very thorough and I I Don't know if I have any questions because he just covers the material in such a way.

That's very helpful. So brother Tim, uh, let me just say thank you for coming on. It's it's a joy to have you here with us today You you've been out I know that you you you got sick for a while and then you you've just been busy with work and everything else that's going on but Real quick.

Is there anything else that I that you would want to add to what I said anything else that you've got going on?

Well, I appreciate the introduction, of course, and I Will I'll do the best I can to convey the information that I have. We'll go over some of it pretty quick and what I like to do is provide references.

The Fraudulent Historical Reconstruction of Roman Catholicism

But I want to go back to the issue of Hank Hanegraaff. Um, I was so disappointed to hear that he converted and and what I typically find is that Eastern Orthodoxy is just as a waypoint on people's road to Rome and He's not the first one to take that path and won't be the last but what I find is.

Is that.

So many Protestants in their studies of church history start in the 16th century and So when Roman Catholicism comes with a lot of arguments from the preceding centuries the the Protestants will swallow those arguments whole and authoritative and Swallow them as authoritative arguments and don't have the resources necessary to counter the arguments and so.

What I find is they often are victims of their own ignorance and Victims of the fraudulent reconstruction of history that Roman Catholic apologists present as the truth and I'll just say it as it is. It's a fraudulent reconstruction of history and when people are not equipped to answer the historical argument They tend to fail in the scriptural argument as well.

And what I mean is that we can be equipped from the scriptures to make arguments and it's important that we do. But it's a very powerful argument that is made by Roman Catholics when they say Oh all the early church believed differently from you was the whole early church wrong.

And then people say wow. The early church couldn't be wrong otherwise Jesus is a liar and therefore I need to bow down to the cross and the relics into the Eucharist and to Mary. And What I want to do and what I hope we can do here is Just equipped equip our listeners with some information that will help them argue against the Roman Catholic apologist and Just to give you some illustrations and we'll get into this Later on when we cover Mary as Ark of the Covenant.

Well, let me uh, let me just I just want to point out that you hit the nail on the head I. I don't suppose that you heard Hank Hanegraaff's radio show yesterday. Did you?

No, no, I did not because.

He said exactly what you just went over that we need to get back to what the early church believed and he kept referencing the early church and what they what they viewed and that's what we need to go back to and so.

You're I think that you're identifying the problem accurately.

Well, I actually cover a survey of all these different topics in an article on my blog called longing for Nicaea and. The the title of the blog comes from the fact that so many Roman Catholic arguments have a continuous line of Traceability all the way back to the latter part of the 4th century.

But they can't quite get to Nicaea and so many times they try to get to Nicaea. Which is it's generally a church council that everybody would agree was a legitimate council. Although there's some folks that would say it was not legitimate but I read through the canons of Nicaea and the communications of the Synodical letters from the Council of Nicaea and I just don't see anything that's horrific or heretical.

And so because Protestants generally would accept Nicaea as a legitimate council Roman Catholicism tries quite earnestly to trace its doctrines at least back to Nicaea. Which is 325 AD and they figure if they can get back that far.

Then even the Protestants would have to get on board because the Protestants generally agree that Nicaea was a legitimate council. The problem is they always get stuck at the latter part of the 4th century and I I hear it time and time again the the early church believed that Mary was sinless so they say and so the Roman Catholic says yeah, the early church believed that Mary was sinless.

Why as. Recently as the latter part of the 4th century. We have this father and that father and the other father saying this that the other but they can't seem to get back earlier. That a part of the 4th century and one one in particular that I thought was very revealing was that Scott Hahn who also a former Presbyterian became Roman Catholic he wrote the Famous book Rome sweet home and talked about returning to Roman Catholicism, and he said Well, the early church believed that Mary was the Ark of the New Covenant.

And he says why? Why is as early as the the 3rd century we have Hippolytus Describing Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant. Well when you go back and read Hippolytus he actually says that Jesus body was the Ark of the New Covenant not Mary and And and Scott Hahn's reading was based on a misunderstanding of what Hippolytus had said in another paragraph and what we find Throughout the early church even past the the 4th century is the continuous reference to Jesus as the Ark of the New Covenant.

The church is the Ark of the New Covenant. The believer is the Ark of the New Covenant and You don't end up with Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant really till. Some obscure reference that was found among the works of Ambrose.

In the latter part of the 4th century identifying Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant. The same thing goes with the assumption of Mary. There's just no evidence for it in the early church until after the 4th century sinlessness traces to the latter part of the 4th century and.

And we find that over and over again. And so what I want to point out is that We need to know this history and it's extremely important for us to first state the scriptures of the sole rule of faith. The important thing for us to understand is that The historical argument that Roman Catholicism makes is fraudulent and is full of gaps and When Protestants are illiterate in the realm of church history, they tend to fall for those fraudulent arguments.

Just like Scott Hahn did just like Jason Stelman did just like Hank Hanegraaff did it just happens over and over and over again. And what I want to do is walk through Some various aspects and we're just limiting our discussion to Mary this time, although we've had conversations about The sacrifice of the mass and its origins in the latter part of the 4th century and What we'll do is we go through some of these topics on Mary find that either the the doctrines developed late like 300 years later than the apostolic era or The references that occurred earlier than that aren't consistent with the modern Roman Catholic interpretation of the terms and.

And again, I want to equip our listeners so that they don't have to go to the Bible answer man Who's going to then convert to Roman Catholicism? They should be able to look these things up on their own and I think that we can help them do that.

Yeah, you know and and just referencing him as the Bible answer man. That is just Ironic and sad that the the the Bible the man who professes to be the Bible answer man. He's not getting the gospel, right?

He's not getting the doctrine of justification by faith alone, right and just just for our listeners, I firmly believe That we should do what Romans 16 17 says to to mark them and avoid them and to warn other people Away from them and we're gonna get into to Mary and and and that's gonna be our topic for today, but I just want to Warn our listeners away from Hank Hanegraaff he is not fit to be the Bible answer man, and I say that with I'm not saying that with the callousness or with with malice or hatred.

Folks if he if he's not getting the gospel, right? Then You shouldn't be listening to him if he's leading people to Rome if he's affirming Roman Catholicism if he's if he's referencing James chapter 2 as a defense for Rome's view of the the doctrine of justification by faith and works then he I pray that his Platform that his ministry which is not a ministry of Christ would be destroyed.

And and that might sound harsh that might sound mean-spirited. But folks he's leading people Astray and it is it's extremely dangerous. Just just how reckless He's being in in the things that he's saying and so he is not the Bible answer man.

Don't be fooled pray for the man. We're we're praying that that he be converted to Christ that he that he Not be deceived, but that's why we're doing what we're doing here at Semper Ephraim on the radio.

Mary in Scripture and the Limits of Marian Doctrine

So Tim, let's go ahead and get into the the stuff on Mary.

Okay, let's let's run into run in where angels fear to tread.

The.

Typically the question of Mary is something that is. It's an entry point for Roman Catholic apologists when they're trying to convert Protestants to Roman Catholicism and the reason is that we have a general regard and respect for Mary and I remember hearing a Girl say once well, we should Respect Mary.

The scripture said she was blessed above all women and I had to correct her and say that's not what the scriptures says is that she is blessed among women and and we have to remember that. There there is a Mary that is referenced in.

Jesus.

Testimonies in the scriptures where he says that This woman's name will be proclaimed wherever the gospel is preached. And the funny thing is that it's not Mary his mother. It's a different Mary. It was Mary the one who who bowed in worship before him and remember when he When she was anointing his feet and people questioned whether she should be doing that.

He said I assure you what this woman has done will be told wherever the gospel is preached. And so if there's a scriptural mandate to preach Mary wherever the gospel is preached there is it's just not his mother.

That we're supposed to be talking about and we'll get into a little bit more of that later. But what I want to do is first Go to the scriptures to find out what the scriptures say about Mary and we're going to cover this in summary format because they're they're just a few places in scriptures where she's mentioned and.

And.

It's important to know what those what the context is. And so we'll I'm just going to go through a list of places and everybody's so familiar with them that we're not going to read the text.

But.

The first is the Annunciation. And that's Luke 1 26 to 33 where the angel Gabriel comes and speaks to Mary and announces that she will be conceiving the Christ Child. There's the presentation of Jesus in the temple and it's a Luke 2 35 and that's a very important one because that's where.

It was prophesied that a sword of sorrow. Simeon prophesied that a sword of sorrow would pierce her heart. And it's interesting what the early church thought that meant we'll get to that when we get to Mary's sinlessness.

There's the wedding at Cana where where Mary Points out that Jesus points out to Jesus that the hosts have run out of wine. That one's particularly interesting to me just because The the typical interpretation of that is Mary told Jesus what to do and Jesus obeyed.

But you read the text. There's no command issued from Mary simply. They have no wine at least no command.

From.

Mary to Jesus nothing for him to obey. It's very interesting. How that a command to Mary from Mary to Jesus gets read into the text? There's the finding in the temple where Jesus and Mary and Joseph had gotten separated and they find out that they left him behind and said to go back and get him.

That's Luke 2 46 to 52. There's several Places in Scripture where this is mentioned, but the mother and brothers of Jesus are identified in Matthew 12 46 to 50 and that's when they came searching for him and.

And interestingly Mary is identified among them and together as a group. They're identified as unbelieving Mary at the foot of the cross and that's where G Jesus says to John You know, I want you to see a woman behold your son and then to John behold your mother and.

Then.

Those are the direct references to Mary the ones that will be Addressing in this series that we're doing on Mary. There's some more general references that I want to mention and one is Romans 3 23 where it says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and what's interesting is the early church included Mary and the all there all have sinned and Then there's the woman of Revelation chapter 12 and that's where there's a woman standing on the moon robed in the Sun and with the crown of stars on her head and Roman Catholics would say that that's Mary.

I Would say that that's the that's the apostolic Church as it transitions from the the Jewish believers before Christ Transitioning to the Gentile and Jewish Church after Christ, but that's a portrait of the woman who is God's special people and it's transitory only in that.

The woman of Revelation 12, I believe spans the period is the Jews as Christ comes and then He forms his church and then moves on and the Roman Catholics would say that this is a reference to Mary. Now what's interesting is that this is pretty much the text that we all have to go by the early church used these texts.

Protestants use these texts. Catholics use these texts and Protestants look at this and we say Mary was sinful. She was occasionally an obstructionist and distracted Jesus from his ministry of teaching Jesus on occasion.

When asked when it was announced that his mother and brothers and sisters are waiting for him He said who are who's my mother and he points to the people who are with him he says any anyone who does the will of God as a mother brother or sister to me and You know Protestants look at that and say, you know, it's interesting Jesus had the chance to do what Catholics want us to do and completely defer to his mother and say pardon me everybody my mother is here and and a woman of her stature can't be left waiting.

So let me show honor to my mother by Cutting short my ministry of preaching and going and attending to her every need and of course Jesus didn't do anything like that. He completely He ignored the request and went on preaching and what's interesting about that is how the early church interpreted that.

We'll cover a little bit of that when we go through this series. But what we want to do today and we're not going to cover everything or every text. But what we're going to do is in this series. We're going to cover Mary as Queen Mother in particularly the Old Testament role in the Davidic line of the mother of the Kings in the Old Testament Are taken as a figure for an office that Mary would eventually occupy as mother of the king of Israel.

Then there's Mary as Theotokos. It's a Greek word that literally means bearer of God and We're going to talk about the Origins of the term the original use of the term and then finally the Roman Catholic interpretation and translation of that to turn to turn it into mother of God or.

Or.

Generatrix of God. We're going to talk about the Mary as Ark of the Covenant. We covered a little bit of that earlier. We're going to talk about the sinlessness of Mary. We're going to talk about the perpetual virginity of Mary and finally the assumption of Mary and then we'll wrap up with some thoughts on a scriptural view of Mary and.

And basically we will have summarized a defense that Protestants can use to answer Roman Catholics. And what I think is so funny about this is that on my blog one time I was having a discussion with a Roman Catholic and we summarized.

Various Protestants on the board had been summarizing their view of Mary based on these scriptures and this Catholic respondent says I already know how you Mary hating Protestants interpret all those scripture verses.

What's funny is the accusation of Mary hating is just simply a complete distraction. I don't know any Protestant that doesn't love Mary as a sister in Christ the way we love Abraham, you know the way we love The way we love Moses the way we love David that you know, we love all our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We we love the universal Church and all the Saints from times past and all the Saints yet to come none of us hate Mary, but because There's not a lot of substance to the Roman Catholic position on Mary and I'll just say it and I know that they're not Gonna like me saying it.

There's so little substance on their actual position on Mary that their only real option is to respond with an ad ad hominem attack and say well you must hate Mary and.

And.

It's an insubstantial argument and what we'll find is what's so ironic about the accusation is that Saying something like that to criticize our view of these scriptures and Mary as we can see her through these scriptures.

Is that the Protestant position is very much in line with the position that the early church took on Mary? And and well as we go through We'll address that a little bit more.

But.

To the degree that we hate Mary as the as that Roman Catholic would say it's absolutely a false Accusation. We do not hate Mary, but the accusation itself identifies Us with the early church and distances Roman Catholicism from the early church.

That seems to be a pretty common tactic among People who just aren't able to debate or defend their position. We see this happen all the time with issues concerning homosexuality or the LGBTQ agenda. You can't rationally defend these positions and once you voice disagreement with it your disagreement is equated with hatred and in in all actuality.

Us defending the the biblical doctrine of Mary actually shows great concern for who Mary was. We we care enough about who she was as as an individual as a person who is saved by Christ to defend who she actually was and and.

And go to the scriptures for that. All right, so let's go ahead and continue then.

Mary as Queen Mother and the Davidic Line

Okay, well our very first topic then is Mary as Queen Mother and The the. When I first moved to Huntsville, Alabama back in 1989 I was still Roman Catholic and I wanted to find a church to go to and my my options were I.

Can't remember all the names of the churches, but one stuck out to me. It was called Our Lady Queen of the Universe and.

And.

That was the That was one of my options for a Roman Catholic Church to attend when I first moved here and that title of Mary as Queen Is something that's very special to Roman Catholics. They see her as the Not only the Queen of the universe but the Queen Mother of the King and the Queen Mother the King gets whatever she wants and can actually be Jesus Counselor and There are even even some who say that at the at the command of Mary all Obey, even God himself and there that's just blasphemy.

It's ridiculous. And I and you know, I want to say something important here. It's offensive to Mary.

Because.

They basically have turned her into a monstrosity that the scriptures do not testify to and any human being. To be so twisted and turned and morphed into something that's so offensive and objectionable is just utterly disrespectful.

I'll just go out and say that that the way that the Roman Catholicism has Contorted Mary into this monstrosity is just I find it deeply offensive. But of course, it's not. It's not about my personal interpretation that matters.

What matters is what the scriptures say, but they've turned her into something. That's just just obscene and I just want to point that out that it's it's a ridiculous thing. They've done and I consider it to be incredibly disrespectful of Mary.

But.

But let's let's cover this this issue of Queen Mother. Is it that the Roman Catholics believe and they would argue that in the Old Testament? there was an official and influential office called the Queen Mother and this Queen Mother manifests in the Davidic line of Kings and That Mary because she is the last in the long line of mothers of Davidic Kings Would be the one to occupy that office on a perpetual permanent basis.

Mary in the eyes of Roman Catholicism is eternally and Perpetually the Queen Mother of the last king of the Davidic line and now in heaven she gets to enjoy the same privileges that the Queen Mother did in the Old Testament and The evidence is presented not just from Scripture for as far as from Roman Catholicism but they would also say that this was common among the Near Eastern Kings and their mothers and in the surrounding nations around Israel, it was not unusual for there to be influential mothers of kings of those nations.

Now, it's an extremely complex argument from Roman Catholicism and It is full of holes, you know, I'll explain the holes the contradictions and the countervailing evidence. But let's just start with the first argument.

The first argument is that in the line of Davidic Kings of Judah Their mothers the each king's mother is listed when the new king takes the throne. Okay. So the first point I want to make is that when Jehoram and Ahaz Took the thrones their mothers were not mentioned.

They were in the Davidic line the southern kingdom the kingdom of Judah and Jehoram took the throne in the second Kings 816 and Ahaz took the throne in second Kings 16 -2 and. In neither case are their mothers identified for us or mentioned when they took the throne.

So let me just say for the beginning that obviously there's not a general rule about Queen mothers in the Davidic line because we have two cases of Davidic Kings whose mothers were not mentioned.

Now.

Another argument is made by Roman Catholicism and that's the argument that the term Gebera is a term used for the mother of the Davidic King of Judah and.

The.

Gebera is an office occupied by an influential woman who is the mother. And that would make Mary today the Perpetual Gebera of Israel because she's the mother of the king. Okay, so the term Gebera at least in this Rendering is only used six times in Scripture and I say at least in this rendering because there's other there's other Similar words like Gebera which refers to a mistress or a Powerful woman.

There is the one we're focusing on because it has to do with royalty and The Roman Catholic argument is that the Gebera is An office that describes the mother of a Davidic King. Well, the problem is that it's only used six times in Scripture and of those six times only two actually refer to a mother of a Davidic King.

The other four times refers either to the wife of the king of Egypt to the grandmother of the king of Judah or To Jezebel who is the mother of a king of the northern kingdom. So what's interesting is that the argument at the outset is well in the Davidic line There is the office of Queen Mother Because all these kings mothers are mentioned when they take the throne.

Like I said, there's two exceptions to that Jehoram and Ahaz That Gebera must refer to this office. And yet of the six times it's used One time refers to the wife of the king of Egypt not his mother. That's first Kings 11 19.

Two uses refer to the grandmother of King Asa. That's first Kings 15 13 and first Chronicles 15 16 and One use refers to Jezebel the mother of the king of Israel. She was not a I mean her son was not a Davidic King.

It's a second Kings 10 13 was was that the same Jezebel that was extremely wicked. Or is that a joke? Yes. Yes.

Yeah, yeah, it is and you'll find that a great many of these these women that are identified.

That's that's a that's kind of problematic.

Even.

Yeah, you know the argument the Roman Catholics don't say well the Kings were evil too and that doesn't mean that there's no. That Jesus can't be a righteous King. But the real question is is there an office of the Queen Mother and then like I said, the argument is full of holes.

Because yeah, and what I would encourage folks to look at is that the word mother is used several times in the Old Testament in reference to a man's grandmother and it's important to know that because In first Kings 15 13 and first Chronicles 15 16 It's the grandmother of King Asa.

But.

The term used there is mother, but when you look at the genealogy. She's actually his grandmother. So obviously the office doesn't belong to the mother of the king. If it's the grandmother the king that occupies that that office.

So so again, there's let me let me just say that what I find really interesting about this is that you are defending the the Defending the Word of God by appealing to or by going and checking the genealogies.

The very thing that most of us skip over when we read our Bibles. So I just find it incredible. I mean the genealogies are in there for a reason and. And we sometimes read the Bible and it's see all these names and this person begat this person and this person begat this person and.

It's just amazing that you're you're actually refuting the Roman Roman Catholicism and their error. By going and checking the genealogies. I find that incredible.

Well, it's it's a very interesting study and it's sometimes quite complex because different people sometimes people went by two different names and that needs to be sorted out and sometimes the.

The.

The mother. There were periods when the king went off and hung out with the with other nations and came back and next thing, you know, he's got a wife or wives and. You have to you have to figure out, you know.

When did he get these wives and who were they. Where do they fall in line? And that's gonna be really important in our next one because the next argument that's made for For the role of the Queen Mother is based on the political activities of powerful women in the royal court and.

And the scriptures portray powerful women in the royal court. There's no doubt about it. But but the six examples of powerful women in the royal court, and these aren't the same six that are identified as Kabira but there are different there there's some overlap, but they're different a different group and.

The.

Argument is made that these are very powerful women in the royal court. And even though they're not all called Kabira They obviously were mothers of the king. So there are two exceptions that we can dismiss at the beginning.

One is Jezebel. The reason I want to dismiss Jezebel from the beginning is because she was of the house of Israel. She was not of the house of Judah. So the idea of her as a figure for a Queen Mother in the Davidic line doesn't make sense at all.

She's in her reference. There's first King 1631 and second Kings 1013. And like I said, she can't serve as a figure for Mary's reign because she wasn't a queen in the Davidic line. The next one is Athaliah and That's second Kings 826 and we're gonna dismiss her from consideration because the political power that she manifested Only occurred after her son was dead not during his reign so her political power Enjoyed on behalf of because her son was the king of Israel.

She enjoyed her political power after he died the next four cases. Have one thing in common and what's very interesting about this is Bathsheba Hamut al and Nehushtah all were politically powerful women on the Davidic side.

But what's interesting about these three these four is they all have one thing in common. They were instrumental in getting their son on the throne when he was not the legitimate heir. Bathsheba's son Solomon was not next in line to the throne.

You can read about that situation in first Chronicles 3. Makkah's son Abijah was not next in line for the throne. You can read about him in second Chronicles 11 18 to 23. Hamut al's son Jehoaz was not the next in line for the throne.