And when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal.
Athaliah - (see the notes at 2 Chronicles 22:2.) She had possessed great influence over her son, who, her counsels, had ruled in the spirit of the house of Ahab.
Destroyed all the seed royal - all connected with the royal family who might have urged a claim on the throne, and who had escaped the murderous hands of Jehu (2 Chronicles 21:2-4; 2 Chronicles 22:1; 2 Kings 10:13-14). This massacre she was incited to perpetrate, partly from a determination not to let David's family outline her's-partly as a measure of self-defense, to secure herself against the violence of Jehu, who was bent on destroying the whole of Ahab's posterity, to which she belonged (2 Kings 8:18-26); but chiefly from personal ambition to rule, and a desire to establish the worship of Baal. Such was the sad fruit of the unequal alliance between the son of the pious Jehoshaphat and a daughter of the idolatrous and wicked house of Ahab. Athaliah's horrid policy of 'destroying all the seed royal' was carried on until lately at Constantinople, and is stiff practiced, at Bokhara (Joseph Wolff's 'Missionary Labours,' p. 493).