When Athaliah, Ahaziah’s mother,
saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the royal seed of the
house of Judah. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W.
W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:961-62)
she arose and destroyed all
the royal seed of the house of Judah. The Masoretic Text has “she spoke
with all the royal seed.” Some Hebrew manuscripts have instead of the Masoretic
watedaber the verb wateʾabed, “she destroyed.” It may be that the
Chronicler was so horrified by the spectacle of the queen mother murdering her
grandchildren that he substituted a more innocuous term. Verses 10–12 closely
follow 2 Kings 11:1–3, and readers may consult the commentary on those verses
in Kings. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 2019], 3:962)
