by
Damien F. Mackey
“Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he began to reign,
and he reigned three months in Jerusalem.
His mother’s name was Hamutal
the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah”.
2 Kings 23:31
Queen Hamutal (Hammutal) and Jehoahaz
In the name (person) Hamutal, or its variant, Hammutal, we have a key to both the history of the Book of Esther and to, perhaps, the succession of the last two kings of Judah.
Hamutal is surely the same person as the previously unknown Hammedatha of Esther 3:1: “After these things King Ahasuerus promoted Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, and advanced him and set his throne above all the officials who were with him”.
There is a very good linguistic comparison here:
Hammeda- = Hammuta-
Unexpectedly, Haman’s ancestor, Hammedatha, turns out to be a female, not a male, she being a Jewish Queen.
Presuming that Hammedatha equates here to the mother, then Haman must be either one of Hamutal’s presumed sons, King Jehoahaz or King Zedekiah (cf. 2 Kings 23:31; 24:18; Jeremiah 52:1).
Though I will be considering the likelihood further on that Hammedatha was the mother only of King Jehoahaz.
Haman cannot be Zedekiah, because the latter went into Babylonian Captivity blinded (2 Kings 25:7).
Therefore, Haman must be King Jehoahaz, son of Hamutal.
But I have already doubly-identified Haman as King Amon, as King Jehoiachin.
King Jehoahaz triplicated
I, following a Jewish legend, had firstly identified Haman as a Jew, which had then led me to identify Haman as King Jehoiachin.
Indeed, this has resonance.
Jehoiachin, or “Jeconiah the Captive” (I Chronicles 3:17), I have shown to equate to “Haman the Captive”, not “Haman the Agagite”, as it is often translated. See my article:
Gouging the history out of Esther 3:1
(6) Gouging the history out of Esther 3.1 | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
The trouble is that Jehoiachin’s mother was apparently, not Hamutal, but Nehushta (2 Kings 24:8): “Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother's name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem”.
I solve this seeming discrepancy by identifying Queen Nehushta as young Jehoiachin’s wife, not his mother. This means that, if Jehoiachin is Haman, then Nehushta must be Haman’s Jezebel-like wife, Zeresh (Esther 5:14). The names are not entirely dissimilar:
Nehush- = Zer[u]sh-
Nehushta’s father, Elnathan, had been he who had led the party that had pursued the fleeing prophet Uriah (Urijah) to Egypt, bringing him back to Jerusalem to be executed (Jeremiah 26:22-23).
Now, traditionally, Zeresh’s father was the Tattenai (Tatnai), who had resisted attempts to build the second Temple (Ezra 5:3, 5:6, 6:6, 6:13), and the name Tattenai is apparently compatible with the name of Nehushta’s father, Elnathan:
https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Tattenai.html
Related names
• Via נתן (natan): Elnathan, Jonathan, Mattan, Mattanah, Mattaniah, Mattatha, Mattathias, Mattattah, Mattenai, Matthan, Matthat, Matthew, Matthias, Mattithiah, Nathan, Nathanael, Nathan-melech, Nethanel, Nethaniah, Nethinim
Elnathan = Tattenai
So I have confidently concluded that Zeresh, the daughter of Tattenai, was the same as Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan.
From Egypt to Susa
Above I wrote:
But I have already doubly-identified Haman as King Amon, as King Jehoiachin.
This now generates a patronymical (father) complication for my reconstruction.
While Amon is given as the son of Manasseh (2 Kings 21:18), and Jehoiachin is given as the son of Jehoiakim (24:6), and that is no problem for my double identification of:
Manasseh = Jehoiakim, and his son
Amon = Jehoiachin
Jehoahaz is given, instead, as the son of King Josiah (23:30), as is Jehoiakim (v. 34): “And Pharaoh Necho made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the room of Josiah his father, and turned his name to Jehoiakim, and took Jehoahaz away: and he came to Egypt, and died there”.
Moreover, having my Jehoahaz-as-Haman dying in exile in Egypt, instead of dying in exile in Susa (Esther 7:8-10), would appear to ruin my reconstruction completely.
However, the parallel account of Jehoahaz’s life in 2 Chronicles (36:1-4) does not mention his dying in Egypt at all, nor his death anywhere for that matter.
My tentative reconstruction of events in awkward triplicate now will be this:
1. The wicked King Amon of Judah, after a short reign (2 Kings 21:19): “Amon was twenty and two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned two years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Meshullemeth, the daughter of Haruz of Jotbah”, was taken into Egyptian captivity by Pharaoh Necho, and was replaced by Manasseh. It was there in Egypt that the young King of Judah acquired the Egyptian name of Amon (which becomes Aman or Haman in the Book of Esther).
2. Amon was King Jehoiachin. 2 Kings 24:8: “Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother's name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem”.
My proposed correction: Nehushta was Jehoiachin’s wife, not his actual mother.
His age and reign length discrepancy with Amon can be accounted for, I suggest, by, say, a co-regency, and or, by a brief resumption of rule after returning from Egypt before going into captivity in Babylon. As Haman, his life would be ended violently in Susa.
3. Amon-Jehoiachin was also King Jehoahaz.
2 Kings 23:31: “Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign; and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah”.
In age, Jehoahaz is almost identical to Amon - the name that he must have acquired while exiled in Egypt - and in reign length he is identical to Jehoiachin.
Whilst I conclude here triply that Amon-was-Jehoiachin-was-Jehoahaz, three names for just the one king of Judah, an acute problem appears to arise with two seemingly quite different mothers, Meshullemeth and Hamutal – Nehushta, for her part, now considered to have been the king’s wife, not his mother.
How to reconcile Amon’s mother, “Meshullemeth, the daughter of Haruz of Jotbah”, with Jehoahaz’s mother, “Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah”?
All three name elements here appear to be different, (i) the mother’s; (ii) her father’s; and (iii) their home location.
One solution might be to present one woman as mother and the other as grandmother, or mother-in-law, or, say, aunt.
But my preference is to identify Meshullemeth and Hamutal as being just the one and same queen, with the name Hamutal being an - admittedly awkward - hypocoristicon of the formidable looking name, Meshullemeth. Say, perhaps:
Hamutal = [S]hemeth-ull
And, with neither Jotbah nor Libnah having been unequivocally identified:
Jotbah is wrestled with at: https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/J/jotbah.html and, as for
Libnah: https://bibleatlas.org/libnah.htm
“The site of this important stronghold remains unknown”,
Jotbah may plausibly turn out to be Libnah, or, at least, of the same region.
Finally, can the names Haruz and Jeremiah be squared up together?
There does not appear to me to be any possible name connection here.
All I need to say, though, is that the famous prophet named “Jeremiah son of Hilkiah” (Jeremiah 1:1), is variously known in the Bible as (according to my reconstructions) “Eliakim the son of Hilkiah” (2 Kings 18:37); “the high priest Jehoiakim son of Hilkiah son of Shallum” (Baruch 1:7); and “The high priest Joakim” (Judith 4:6).
Based on this sort of information, our King of Judah’s maternal grandfather could easily have been known as, now Jeremiah, now Haruz.
With Amon (Haman), Jehoiachin, Jehoahaz, recognised as being just the one king, I need finally to sort out the father/predecessor? successor/or was it the uncle?
The King’s patronymic
King Amon’s father is said to have been Manasseh son of Hezekiah (e.g. Matthew 1:10).
In my revised scheme, that should equate to King Jehoiachin [Amon] son of Jehoiakim [Manasseh] son of Josiah [Hezekiah].
But there is now a seeming genealogical discrepancy, with Jehoiakim qua Jehoiakim not listed, and with Jehoiachin given as the son of Josiah (Matthew 1:11).
This last accords with the biblical account of Jehoahaz, who is the son of Josiah and brother of Jehoiakim, another son of Josiah, who replaces him (2 Chronicles 36:1-4).
Factoring all of this into my revision, it now appears that Amon was not the son of Manasseh, but his brother, both being sons of King Hezekiah. And, paralleling this, Jehoiachin was not the son of Jehoiakim, but his brother.
Whereas, Amon-Jehoahaz-Jehoiachin’s mother was Hamutal (who may have been Meshullemeth) - the wife being Nehushta-Zeresh - Manasseh-Jehoiakim, we find, has a different mother.
2 Kings 21:1: “[Manasseh’s] mother’s name was Hephzibah”.
2 Kings 23:36: “[Jehoiakim’s] mother’s name was Zebidah …”.
These names, Hephzibah and Zebidah, appear to me to be quite compatible. Thus:
-Zibah = Zeb[id]ah
King Jehoahaz of Judah seems to get left out completely in genealogical discussions.
And so does the last king of Judah, Zedekiah.
It is now time to identify this last one, Zedekiah, the presumed uncle of Jehoiachin, as the Manasseh-Jehoiakim whom we now have as succeeding his brother.
2 Kings 24:17
“[King Nebuchednezzar] made Mattaniah, Jehoiachin’s uncle [sic], king in his place and changed his name to Zedekiah”.
In the name Mattaniah, we have a better likeness (though the names are admittedly different) to the name Manasseh, rather than to his other name of Jehoiakim.
2 Kings 24:18-20
Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years. His mother’s name was Hamutal [sic] daughter of Jeremiah; she was from Libnah. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, just as Jehoiakim had done. It was because of the Lord’s anger that all this happened to Jerusalem and Judah, and in the end he thrust them from his presence.
Here Zedekiah is rightly likened to Jehoiakim, who he was.
But the mother was not Hamutal, as is given here, but Hephzibah-Zebidah.
Conclusions
Queen Hamutal (Hammutal) is the Hammedatha of the Book of Esther (3:1) and may well be the Meshullemeth who is said to have been the mother of King Amon of Judah.
Queen Nehushta is Haman’s conniving wife, Zeresh.
Hamutal’s son is Amon (Haman), is Jehoahaz, is Jehoiachin.
Amon’s brother, by another mother, Hephzibah-Zebidah, is Manasseh (Mattaniah), is Jehoiakim (Eliakim), is Zedekiah.
