Queen
The figure of the queen surfaces in scripture in several distinct registers: the wife of a reigning king, the crowned consort displayed before the court, the throne-seated counselor, the deposed or destroyed predecessor, the sovereign in her own right, the foreign monarch on a state visit, and the moon-titled "queen of heaven" of forbidden cult. The UPDV holds named queens — Vashti, Esther, Jezebel, Athaliah, the queen of Sheba, the queen-mother at Belshazzar's banquet, Tahpenes, the unnamed queen at Artaxerxes' side — in the same set of narratives as the kings whose households they share.
The wife of a king
The most basic register is the queen as royal wife. When Pharaoh receives the fugitive Hadad, he gives him in marriage "the sister of his own wife, the sister of Tahpenes the queen" (1 Ki 11:19). The queen here is named, and the name is used to fix the alliance into the royal household. Jezebel enters Israel's narrative on the same footing: "he took as wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshiped him" (1 Ki 16:31). The marriage-clause and the worship-clause sit side by side — the Sidonian king's daughter brings her gods with her into Ahab's household.
The crown and the feast
In the Persian court of Esther, the crown and the women's feast define the queen's public office. Vashti opens the book hosting "a feast for the women in the royal house which belonged to King Ahasuerus" (Es 1:9), the parallel banquet to Ahasuerus's own citadel-feast in the garden-court. The crown follows the woman: the king's chamberlains are commanded "to bring Vashti the queen before the king with the royal crown, to show the peoples and the princes her beauty; for she was fair to look at" (Es 1:11). When Esther in turn wins the king's favor, the crown shifts: "he set the royal crown on her head, and made her queen instead of Vashti" (Es 2:17).
The deposed queen
Vashti is also the scriptural example of a queen put away. Her refusal to come at the king's command turns Memucan's counsel against her, and the rumor-effect Memucan forecasts is itself attached to her name: "this deed of the queen will come abroad to all women, to make their husbands contemptible in their eyes, when it will be reported, The king Ahasuerus commanded Vashti the queen to be brought in before him, but she didn't come" (Es 1:17). The remedy is an irreversible Persian-Mede commandment: "let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes, that it not be altered, that Vashti come no more before King Ahasuerus; and let the king give her royal estate to her fellow woman who is better than she" (Es 1:19). The deposition runs through letters dispatched into every province in every language of the empire (Es 1:22).
The throne-seated queen
A queen may sit on the throne with the king. When Nehemiah makes his cupbearer's request to Artaxerxes for leave to rebuild Jerusalem, the verse notes the consort at the king's side: "the king said to me (the queen also sitting by him,) For how long will your journey be? And when will you return?" (Ne 2:6). The parenthetical positions the queen as a present, throne-side party to the audience that grants the leave.
Esther — the queen as intercessor
Esther's narrative develops a distinct queen-register: the consort who uses her queen-office to intercede for her people. Mordecai discerns her vocation in this exact frame — "who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Es 4:14) — and Esther's answering counter-commission converts her queen-office into an intercessor's risk: "Go, gather together all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast⁺ for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast in like manner; and so I will go in to the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish" (Es 4:16). Her petition is delivered in two banquets of wine: the first deferred — "let the king and Haman come to the banquet that I will prepare for them, and I will do tomorrow as the king has said" (Es 5:8) — and the second naming Haman to his face: "An adversary and an enemy, even this wicked Haman. Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen" (Es 7:6).
After Haman's hanging the queen returns for a second petition, this time against the still-standing decree. She "spoke yet again before the king, and fell down at his feet, and implored him with tears to put away the mischief of Haman the Agagite, and his plot that he had plotted against the Jews" (Es 8:3). The golden-scepter welcome of chapter 5 is re-enacted: "the king held out to Esther the golden scepter. So Esther arose, and stood before the king" (Es 8:4). Her speech stacks four conditional honorifics — "If it pleases the king, and if I have found favor in his sight, and the thing seems right before the king, and I am pleasing in his eyes, let it be written to reverse the letters, the plot of Haman" (Es 8:5) — and grounds the request on the unbearable spectacle of her people's destruction: "how can I endure to see the evil that will come to my people? Or how can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred?" (Es 8:6).
Jezebel — the queen of evil influence
The northern kingdom's account of queenly evil influence is gathered around Jezebel. Her marriage to Ahab is the entry-point for the imported Baal-cult (1 Ki 16:31). She becomes a prophet-purger: "when Jezebel cut off the prophets of Yahweh, that Obadiah took a hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water" (1 Ki 18:4). She is named as the queen-patron whose own table funds the rival shrine-establishment — "the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the Asherah four hundred, who eat at Jezebel's table" (1 Ki 18:19). When Ahab brings her the Carmel report, the prophet-killing detail triggers her death-oath against Elijah: "Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I don't make your soul as the soul of one of them by tomorrow about this time" (1 Ki 19:2).
The Naboth-vineyard sequence shows her as the inner-chamber wife who takes over a sulking king's grievance: "Jezebel his wife came to him, and said to him, Why is your spirit so sad, that you eat no bread?" (1 Ki 21:5). Her solution forges his royal seal into a judicial-murder script: "she wrote letters in Ahab's name, and sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters to the elders and to the nobles who were in his city, [and] who dwelt with Naboth" (1 Ki 21:8).
Her end answers the prophetic word. The Jehu-anointing oracle has already spoken her death: "the dogs will eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel, and there will be none to bury her" (2 Ki 9:10). When Jehu arrives at the gate, she meets him in queenly posture from the upper window: "she painted her eyes, and attired her head, and looked out at the window. And as Jehu entered in at the gate, she said, Is it peace, Zimri, your master's murderer?" (2 Ki 9:30-31). The defenestration follows on Jehu's word: "Throw her down. So they threw her down; and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and on the horses: and he trod her under foot" (2 Ki 9:33). The dog-work fulfillment is exact: "they went to bury her; but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands" (2 Ki 9:35). Jehu attributes the whole sequence to the prophet: "This is the word of Yahweh, which he spoke by his slave Elijah the Tishbite, saying, In the portion of Jezreel will the dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel" (2 Ki 9:36).
Athaliah — the reigning queen
Athaliah is the one woman in the UPDV who reigns as queen-sovereign over Judah. She enters the record as Omride queen-mother of Judah at her son's accession — "his mother's name was Athaliah the daughter of Omri king of Israel" (2 Ki 8:26) — the hinge by which the house of Ahab reaches into Jerusalem. At Ahaziah's death she clears the throne by force: "when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the royal seed" (2 Ki 11:1). Her six-year usurpation runs while the missed grandson Joash is hidden by Jehosheba in the house of Yahweh, and ends at the temple-pillar coronation when she comes "into the house of Yahweh," "rent her clothes, and cried, Treason! Treason!", and is led out for execution: "they made way for her; and she went by the way of the horses' entry to the king's house: and there she was slain" (2 Ki 11:13-16). The Chronicler closes the episode with the public verdict on her removal: "So all the people of the land rejoiced, and the city was quiet. And Athaliah they had slain with the sword" (2 Ch 23:21).
The queen who counsels the king
A different queen appears at Belshazzar's Babylonian banquet — neither wife nor sovereign in the immediate scene, but a queen entering the hall to counsel the troubled king. "[Now] the queen by reason of the words of the king and his lords came into the banquet house: the queen spoke and said, O king, live forever; don't let your thoughts trouble you, nor let your countenance be changed" (Da 5:10). Her counsel directs him to Daniel, the man of "an excellent spirit, and knowledge, and understanding, interpreting of dreams, and showing of dark sentences, and dissolving of doubts" (Da 5:12), whom the elder Nebuchadnezzar had made master of his sacred scholars. The queen-counsel is what brings Daniel into the room.
The queen of Sheba
The visiting foreign queen is the queen of Sheba. She comes from the south on a wisdom-testing mission: "when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of Yahweh, she came to prove him with hard questions" (1 Ki 10:1). The Chronicler's parallel adds the loaded retinue: "she came to prove Solomon with hard questions at Jerusalem, with a very great train, and camels that bore spices, and gold in abundance, and precious stones: and when she came to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart" (2 Ch 9:1).
The audience itself runs through wisdom, the ordered house, the king's table, the slave-attendance, the apparel, the cupbearers, and the temple-ascent: "when the queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, and the house that he had built, and the food of his table, and the sitting of his slaves, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent by which he went up to the house of Yahweh; there was no more spirit in her" (1 Ki 10:4-5). Her response moves through report, exceeded fame, blessing of household and slaves, and a Yahweh-doxology: "It was a true report that I heard in my own land of your acts, and of your wisdom ... look, the half was not told me; your wisdom and prosperity exceed the fame which I heard ... Blessed be Yahweh your God, who delighted in you, to set you on the throne of Israel" (1 Ki 10:6-9). The visit closes in mutual royal gifts — "she gave the king a hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices very great store, and precious stones" (1 Ki 10:10), and "King Solomon gave to the queen of Sheba all her desire, whatever she asked, besides that which Solomon gave her of his royal bounty. So she turned, and went to her own land, she and her slaves" (1 Ki 10:13).
The queen of heaven
The phrase "queen" attaches in Jeremiah to a forbidden cult-figure rather than to any human consort. The household practice is described in 7:18: "The sons gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings to other gods, that they may provoke me to anger" (Jer 7:18).
In the Pathros confrontation in Egypt the queen-of-heaven cult is openly defended by the surviving Judahite remnant. Yahweh's indictment lands on "the wickedness of his wives, and your⁺ own wickedness, and the wickedness of your⁺ wives which they committed in the land of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem" (Jer 44:9), and the people's reply refuses Jeremiah's word outright: "we will not listen to you. But we will certainly perform every word that has gone forth out of our mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil" (Jer 44:16-17). The women claim the practice as theirs and their husbands' jointly: "did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink-offerings to her, without our husbands?" (Jer 44:19). Yahweh's closing word lets the vow stand as their judgment: "You⁺ and your⁺ wives have both spoken with your⁺ mouths, and with your⁺ hands have fulfilled it, saying, We will surely perform our vows that we have vowed, to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings to her: establish then your⁺ vows, and perform your⁺ vows" (Jer 44:25).