2 Chronicles 36:5-8 Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem… I. A NEW KING UPON THE THRONE OF JUDAH. (Ver. 5.) 1. His designation. Eliakim, "Whom God establishes," changed into Jehoiakim, "Jehovah has set up;" not by himself (Cheyne, 'Jeremiah: his Life and Times,' p. 142), though it would almost seem as if Uzziah had adopted that name instead of Azariah on acceding to the crown (2 Chronicles 26:1), and Pal had assumed the title Tiglath-Pileser, "Adar is my confidence," on succeeding Shalmaneser of Assyria (Saye, 'Fresh Light,' etc., p. 126); but by Necho II. (ver. 4; 2 Kings 23:34), as Mattaniah's name was changed into Zedekiah by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 24:17); which statements may be harmonized by supposing that "Necho and Nebuchadnezzar treated the vassal kings appointed by them not altogether as slaves, but permitted them to choose themselves the new names, which they only confirmed in token of their supremacy" (Keil). 2. His lineage. The son of Josiah and of Zebudah, the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah, supposed to be identical with Arumah, near Shechem (2 Kings 32:36). Jehoahaz., whom he succeeded, was his younger brother by a different mother, Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah (2 Kings 23:31). 3. His accession. (1) As to time, when he was twenty-five years of age, which shows he must have been born in his father's fourteenth year. (2) As to means, by the help of Necho II., who deposed his usurping brother (ver. 3), partly perhaps because he was a usurper, but partly also, it may be assumed, because the people had elected that brother without having first obtained Necho's consent. (3) As to title, he was Josiah's eldest son, and therefore the crown prince and legal heir to the throne. 4. His character. Bad; modelled upon that of Ahab rather than of Josiah (Jeremiah 22:15, reading of two Septuagint manuscripts, adopted by Cheyne). (1) Idolatrous: "He did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord" (ver. 5), as his half-brother had done (2 Kings 23:32). "He devoted himself with his whole soul to the heathen party, reintroduced all the foreign rites formerly extirpated by Josiah, and added the Egyptian to their number" (Ewald), of which the amplest proof appears in the prophets (Jeremiah 7:9, etc.; Jeremiah 17:2; 19:4, 5; Ezekiel 8:9-17). (2) Violent; in this respect like his brother, compared to a young lion who learnt to catch the prey and devoured men (Ezekiel 19:5, 6; of. Jeremiah 22:17); the worst examples of his violence being his murder of Urijah the prophet, whom he fetched out of Egypt and slew (Jeremiah 26:22), and his burning of Jeremiah's roll, accompanied with an order to arrest the prophet (Jeremiah 36:23, 26). (3) Luxurious; he strove to excel in cedar, by building for himself a costly palace of ample proportions, with spacious chambers and large windows, celled with cedar, and painted with vermilion (Jeremiah 22:14, 15). "At another time certainly no one could have blamed Jehoiakim and his nobles for being discontented with the narrow, ill-lighted chambers of Syrian houses; but was this the moment for beautifying Jerusalem when the land was still groaning under Necho's war-fine?" (Cheyne, 'Jeremiah: his Life and Times,' p. 141). (4) Exacting; grinding the faces of his people with severe taxation to pay the tribute to Pharaoh (2 Kings 23:33), and cheating of their hard-earned wages the very labourers who built his palace (Jeremiah 22:13). (5) Licentious; abandoning himself to lewdness (Ezekiel 19:7, margin; 1 Esdr. 1:42). In short, "he remained fixed in the recollections of his countrymen as the last example of those cruel, selfish, luxurious princes, the natural product of Oriental monarchies, the disgrace of the monarchy of David "(Stanley). 5. His reign. Eleven years. Too long for any good it wrought. Judah could hardly have fared worse, had he been uncrowned after three months, as his brother had been. 6. His death. Accounts vary. (1) The Chronicler does not make it clear whether he was carried to Babylon or not. If he was (Daniel 1:2; 1 Esdras 1:40, LXX.), he was probably, like Manasseh (2 Chronicles 33:13), permitted after a time to return to his own land (Keil, Bertheau, Jamieson), since (2) according to 2 Kings (2 Kings 24:6), Jehoiakim" slept with his fathers," and, according to the LXX., "was buried in the garden of Uzzah." The addendum of the LXX. is obviously non-authentic, and the statement of Scripture seems contradicted by (3) passages in Jeremiah, which say that Jehoiakim should be "buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem" (Jeremiah 22:19), and that his dead body should be "cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost" (Jeremiah 36:30). The reconciliation, however, of the seeming discrepancy is easy. He may have been slain by the hand of an assassin, and his dead body thereupon cast out unburied (Cheyne); or "he may have perished in a battle with some one of the irregular marauding bands who, according to 2 Kings 24:2, came against him" (Keil, Bahr), and his corpse been left to rot upon the battle-field; or, after being first executed by Nebuchadnezzar and buried with the burial of an ass, his bones may have been collected and interred in the sepulchre of Manasseh (Rawlinson). If. A NEW ENEMY AT THE GATE OF JERUSALEM. (Ver. 6.) 1. His person. Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadrezzar (Jeremiah 21:2), Nabuchodonosor (LXX.), in the inscriptions Nabu-kudurri-usur, meaning "Nebo protect the crown." 2. His descent. A son of Nabopolassar, a general of Sarak, the last King of Nineveh (Ewald), perhaps the viceroy of Babylon (Cheyne). On the fall of Nineveh he founded the new Babylonian empire (B.C. 625-610). 3. His title. King of Babylon. Hitherto the enemies of Jerusalem and Judah had been kings of Egypt (2 Chronicles 12:2; 2 Chronicles 36:3) or of Assyria (2 Chronicles 28:20; 2 Chronicles 32:1, 2); now it is a King of Babylon. According to the canon of Ptolemy, Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne in B.C. 604; according to Berosus, while crown prince he was, in B.C. 605, despatched by his father "to crush a revolt of the western provinces," in which he was entirely successful, having conquered Syria and Phoenicia as well as Egypt. 4. His invasion. According to Daniel, this occurred in Jehoiakim's third year (Daniel 1:1), the year before Nebuchadnezzar defeated Necho at Carchemish (Jeremiah 25:1; Jeremiah 46:2), i.e. B.C. 606. The probability is that, either before or immediately after defeating Necho, he proceeded to Jerusalem and received the submission of Jehoiakim, who had up till that time been Necho's vassal. In order to secure this transference of Jehoialdm's allegiance, he appears to have both taken the city and put its sovereign in chains, as if, should he prove refractory, to deport him to Babylon, but to have departed from this design on obtaining promise of Jehoiakim's fealty. This, however, Jehoiakim only kept for three years (2 Kings 24:1), at the end of which he rebelled, Nebuchadnezzar, being occupied with affairs in Babylon, having acceded to the throne only two years prior to Jehoiakim's revolt, despatched against the rebel several detachments of troops, "bands of Chaldeans," at the same time stirring up the Ammonites, Syrians, and Moabites to harass Judah (2 Kings 24:2), but not himself returning to Jerusalem till five years later, in the reign of Jehoiachin. III. A NEW SPOLIATION OF JEHOVAH'S TEMPLE. (Ver. 7.) 1. The first plundering of the sacred edifice. (1) By whom? Shishak (Sheshonk) King of Egypt. (2) When? In the fifth year of Rehoboam, B.C. 971. (3) To what extent? Total: "He took away the treasures of the house of the Lord: he took all" (2 Chronicles 12:9; 1 Kings 14:26). 2. The second plundering of the sacred edifice. (1) The despoiler. Ahaz King of Judah. (2) The time. B.C. 734, during the Syro-Ephraimitish invasion. (3) The reason. To purchase therewith the help of Tiglath-Pileser II. against Rezin of Damascus and Pekah of Samaria (2 Chronicles 28:21). 3. The third plundering of the sacred edifice. (1) The agent, Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz. (2) The act. He took "all the silver found in the house of the Lord... and the gold from the doors and pillars of the temple" (2 Kings 18:15, 16). (3) The object. To give to Sennacherib King of Assyria as tribute-money. (4) The date. When Sennacherib was encamped at Lachish, B.C. 701. 4. The fourth plundering of the sacred edifice. (1) The person. Nebuchadnezzar, called King of Babylon, though at the time only crown-prince. (2) The extent. Partial: "He carried off the vessels of the house of the Lord." Jeremiah (Jeremiah 27:18, 20) predicted that the vessels which had been left would one day be carried to Babylon, and would remain there until the return from captivity, when they should again be restored to their place in the temple (cf. ver. 18; Daniel 5:2; Ezra 1:7). (3) The cause. To punish Judah as well as Jehoiakim, and to ensure their fealty. (4) The aggravation. The pillaged vessels were transported to Babylon and deposited in "his temple," or "treasure house of his god" (Daniel 1:2; 1 Esdras 1:41), rather than "his palace" (Bertheau). The inscriptions show that Marduk, or Merodach, was Nebuchadnezzar's patron divinity, that Nebuchadnezzar's temple was the temple of Merodach at Babylon, which he completely built and restored, and that Nebuchadnezzar himself was, according to his ideas, intensely religions, even calling himself "the heaven-adoring king" ('Records,' etc., 5:113, etc.; 7:75, etc.). LESSONS. 1. The native corruption of the human heart, attested by the wicked characters of Josiah's sons. 2. The impossibility of going on in sin with impunity. - W. Parallel Verses KJV: Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD his God. |
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