Hamutal

Hamutal (meaning the shadow of his heat or kinsman of the dew) was the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah and one of the wives of King Josiah. She was the mother of two kings of Judah: Jehoahaz (also called Shallum), who reigned for three months after Josiah's death before being deposed by Pharaoh Necho (2 Kings 23:31), and Zedekiah (also called Mattaniah), the last king of Judah, who reigned eleven years before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem (2 Kings 24:18).

Hamutal's two sons thus bookended the tragic final decades of the Judahite monarchy. She is mentioned only to identify the mothers of the kings, following the Deuteronomistic historian's standard pattern of recording the queen mother's name and hometown. The fact that both of her sons reigned during the period of national crisis—Assyrian domination followed by Babylonian conquest—gives her maternal role a poignant dimension in the narrative of Judah's fall.