In Jeremiah 7, who is the queen of heaven referring to?

A careful distinction helps here:

In Jeremiah 7, the “queen of heaven” is an actual false deity connected with idolatrous worship. Judah was baking cakes and pouring out drink offerings to her. So the passage is directly about heathen goddess worship.

In Roman Catholic teaching, Catholics do not say Mary is a goddess. Officially, they say they worship God alone and only honor or venerate Mary. They make a distinction between worship given to God and honor given to saints.

But from a Baptist/Protestant reading, the problem is that much of the practical devotion to Mary can appear to go beyond simple honor. When people:

• pray to Mary,
• call her by exalted titles,
• seek her aid as an intercessor in a way that seems to overshadow Christ,
• bow before images,
• or give her a place that belongs to Christ alone,

then many Baptists would say that this is not identical to Jeremiah 7 in origin, but it is similar in principle because it gives religious devotion to someone other than God.

So the best way to put it is:

• Jeremiah 7 is not directly about Mary.
• It is directly about pagan goddess worship.
• But many Baptists believe Catholic Marian devotion can drift into a similar kind of unscriptural religious exaltation, even if Catholics deny that they are worshiping her.

The key Baptist objections would usually be:

1. Mary is never presented in Scripture as the object of prayer.
Believers are taught to pray to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.

2. Christ is the one mediator.
1 Timothy 2:5 says,

“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

3. Excessive titles can become dangerous.
When titles and devotional language elevate Mary far beyond what Scripture says, Baptists see that as stepping outside biblical bounds.

4. Religious devotion belongs to God alone.
Even if someone says it is only “veneration,” Baptists would judge the practice by whether it gives Mary a role, reverence, or dependence that belongs to the Lord.

So, in plain words:

A Baptist would usually say Catholic worship of Mary is not the same historical thing as the “queen of heaven” in Jeremiah 7, but it can resemble the same kind of error whenever honor given to Mary becomes religious devotion that should belong to God alone.

There is also a reason many Protestants are especially troubled by the title “Queen of Heaven” when applied to Mary: Jeremiah uses that exact phrase for a false object of worship. So even if Catholics mean something different by it, Baptists generally see the title itself as deeply problematic.