The Queen Of Heaven
This is another good teaching lesson. It shows how when you reject Christ, you always fall back to something else. This is why the bible says there's nothing new under the sun. Is your church teaching Christ, or Isis? There is a difference and close enough doesn't count. ~Matt~
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12 August 2004 / Av - Elul 5764
By Rabbi Jack (Yaacob) Farber
HaShem (G-d) pronounced severe judgment on the people of Judah and Jerusalem because they worshiped "the queen of heaven"…
Jeremiah 7: 17-20
"Don't you see what they are doing in the cities of Y'hudah and in the streets of Yerushalyim?
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The children gather the wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven: and, just to provoke me, they pour out drink offerings
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Are they really provoking me," askd HaShem, "or are they provoking themselves, to their own ruin?" 20
Therefore, here is what HaShem Elohim says: "My anger and fury will be poured out on this place, on men, animals, trees in the fields and produce growing from the ground; and it will burn without being quenched."
Jeremiah 44: 15-19
Then all the men who knew their wives were offering incense to other gods, along with all the women standing by, a huge crowd, all the people living in Patros in the land of Egypt answered Yirmeyahu:
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"As for the word you have just spoken to us in the name of HaShem, we will not listen to you.
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Instead, we will certainly continue to fulfill every word our mouths have spoken: we will offer incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our ancestors, our kings and leaders, in the cities of Y'hudah and the streets of Yerushalyim. For then we had plenty of food; everything was fine, we didn't experience anything unpleasant.
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But since we stopped offering to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything, and we have been destroyed by sword and famine."
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[Then the wives added,] "Are we the ones who offer incense to the queen of heaven? Do we pour out drink offerings to her? And did we make cakes marked with her image for her and pour out drink offerings to her without our husband's consent?"
Who or what was the queen of heaven, and how did the people of Israel get involved in worship of her?
As early as the twenty-fifth century B.C., people of Ur of the Chaldees in Sumeria worshiped a mother-goddess named Ishtar. Around the same time the Minoans of Crete had a mother-goddess portrayed with "her divine child Velchanos" in her arms. Later, the people of Cyprus revered a goddess who appeared to have been patterned after the Sumerian Ishtar and later adopted by the Greeks as Aphrodite, or Astarte.
The Babylonians, who conquered Sumeria around the twenty-second century B.C., related their religious beliefs to the heavenly bodies. They regarded the planets as gods and goddesses and equated the planet Venus with the Sumerian mother-goddess Ishtar.
The Babylonians worshiped Ishtar as "The Virgin," "The Holy Virgin," "The Virgin Mother," "Goddess of Goddesses," and "Queen of Heaven and Earth." They exclaimed, "Ishtar is great! Ishtar is Queen! My Lady is exalted, my Lady is Queen…There is none like unto her."
They called her "Shining light of heaven, light of the world, enlightener of all places where men dwell, who gatherest together the hosts of the nations"; and they claimed, "Where thou glancest, the dead come to life, and the sick rise and walk; the mind of the diseased is healed when it looks upon thy face."
In Babylonian mythology Ishtar wore a crown and was related to Tammuz, who sometimes was portrayed as her son and other times as her lover.
It appears that the Sumerian-Babylonian Ishtar was the counterpart of the Egyptian Isis and the model for the Grecian Aphrodite, Roman Venus, Assyrian Nina, Phrygian and Roman Cybele, Phoenician Astarte, and Astarte of Syria. In essence they were the same mother-goddess.
The Egyptians called Isis "the Great Mother" and "the Mother of God." Isis worship spread to Italy by the second century and then throughout the entire Roman Empire. There the goddess was portrayed with her "divine child Horus" in her arms and widely acclaimed as "Queen of Heaven" and "Mother of God."
The people of Phoenicia worshiped Baal. Baalism included the worship of Molech with fiery sacrifices of children and the worship of Astarte, the Phoenician Ishtar Queen of Heaven.
When the Phoenician princess Jezebel became the wife of King Ahab of the northern Kingdom of Israel, she influenced him to fully establish Baal worship in his realm (Melakhim Alef / 1 Kings 16:29-33; 21:25-26). This move entangled the people of Israel in Queen-of-Heaven worship. As a result, HaShem (G-d) judged them with the Assyrian Captivity, (Melachim Bet / 2 Kings 17:5-7, 16-18).
Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, became the wife of King Jehoram of the Kingdom of Judah. She influenced him to do what her father had done-fully establish Baal worship in his kingdom (Melachim Bet / 2 Kings 8:16-18). Her son, Ahaziah, the next king of Judah, did the same (Melachim Bet/ 2 Kings 8:25-27), as did King Manasseh (Melachim Bet / 2 Kings 21:1-6). These actions would have entangled the people of Judah in Queen-of-Heaven worship. Thus HaShem (G-d) judged them with the Babylonian Captivity (Melachim Bet / 2 Kings 21:12-14).
By Renald E. Showers (Used with permission by the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministries)
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Baruch HaShem
Rabbi Jack (Yaacov) Farber
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