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Maacah Person

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Maacah, or Maachah, is also the name of several persons in the Old Testament, male and female, who may be mentioned to distinguish them from one another, namely—

Maacah, 1

Maacah, the father of Achish, king of Gath ().

Maacah, 2

Maacah, the father of Hanan, one of David's worthies ().

Maacah, 3

Maacah, the father of Shephatiah, the military chief of the Simeonites in the time of David ().

Maacah, 4

Maacah, a person whose sex does not appear, one of the offspring of Nahor's concubine Reumah ().

Maacah, 5

Maacah, a concubine of Caleb ().

Maacah, 6

Maacah, grand-daughter of Benjamin, who was married to Machir, son of Manasseh ().

Maacah, 7

Maacah, daughter of Talmai, king of Geshur, wife of David and mother of Absalom (). In , we read of David's invading the land of the Geshurites, and the Jewish commentators allege that he then took the daughter of the king captive, and, in consequence of her great beauty, married her, after she had been made a proselyte according to the law in Deuteronomy 21. But this is a gross mistake, for the Geshur invaded by David was to the south of Judah, whereas the Geshur over which Talmai ruled was to the north, and was regarded as part of Syria (). The fact appears to be that David, having married the daughter of this king, contracted an alliance with him, in order to strengthen his interest against Ishbosheth in those parts.

Maacah, 8

Maacah, daughter of Abishalom, wife of Rehoboam, and mother of Abijam (). In we read that Asa's 'mother's name was Maacah, the daughter of Abishalom.' It is evident that here 'mother' is used in a loose sense, and means 'grandmother,' which the Maacah named in must have been to the Asa of . The Abishalom who was the father of this Maacah is called Absalom in , and is generally supposed by the Jews to have been Absalom the son of David; which seems not improbable, seeing that Rehoboam's other two wives were of his father's family (). But Josephus says that she was the daughter of Tamar, the daughter of Absalom, and consequently his granddaughter. This seems not unlikely [ABIJAH]. It would appear that Asa's own mother was dead before he began to reign; for Maacah bore the rank and state of queen-mother (resembling that of the Sultaness Valide among the Turks), the powers of which she so much abused to the encouragement of idolatry, that Asa commenced his reforms by 'removing her from being queen, because she had made an idol in a grove' (; ).