Welcome back to James Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire.

Today I want to talk about the Old Testament role of the Queen Mother, what's called the Gebara or Gevara in Hebrew, which literally means something like Great Lady. And I want to begin by explaining why I think it matters. And let's start with a couple facts. Number one, Jesus is king. Christ is king. But number two, he's not just any kind of king. He's a Davidic king. In Second

Chronicles 13, verse 5, God promises kingship over Israel forever to David and his sons. In fact,

he promises this multiple times. Now, this idea that David and his descendants will remain in

kingship forever is obviously not

fulfilled in a worldly sense. If you go look at the nation of Israel, it doesn't have a Davidic

king ruling over it. Instead, it's fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The angel Gabriel announces to the Virgin

Mary that Jesus will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God

will give to him the throne of his father, David.

This is also why Scripture is insistent in both Matthew and Luke's Gospel that Joseph also is of

the line of David. This matters for the kingship of Christ. So, what does this mean about the

Gabara? Here's what you should know. Number one, as we've already seen, Jesus is a Davidic king.

Number two, as we're going to see, the mothers of Davidic kings had this important role to play in their son's royal authority.

And number three, this, therefore, helps us to better understand both Jesus' kingship and the role of King Jesus' mother Mary.

So, let's start with why the Geberra, the Queen Mother, had a special role.

And I'm going to turn here to Ted Shree. He has an important kind of explanation for this, although I do think, and you'll see why

I'm going to say this, I actually think he doesn't go quite far enough.

So one of the explanations he gives is that the importance of the monarch's mother may seem

strange to some modern readers, but you've got to recall that most ancient Near Eastern,

sometimes people will call Middle Eastern, ancient Near Eastern kings

practice polygamy and had large herpes. Although the king may have had many wives, he had only one

mother, and the queenship was given to her. Now, I think that's a good explanation, but I think, as I say,

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