_JEHOIAKIM_
B.C. 608-597
2 KINGS xxiii. 36-xxiv. 7
"But those things that are recorded of him, and of his uncleanness
and impiety, are written in the Chronicles of the Kings."--1
ESDRAS i. 42.
"When Jehoiakim succeeded to the throne, he said, 'My predecessors
knew not how to provoke God.'"--_Sanhedrin_, f. 103, 2.
"There is no strange handwriting on the wall,
Through all the midnight hum no threatening call,
Nor on the marble floor the stealthy fall
Of fatal footsteps. All is safe.--Thou fool,
The avenging deities are shod with wool!"
W. ALLEN BUTLER.
Eliakim succeeded to the throne at the age of twenty-five under very
unenviable circumstances--as a nominal king, a helpless nominee and
tributary of the Pharaoh. He seems to have been thoroughly distasteful
to the people; and if we may judge from the fact that Ezekiel frankly
ignores him and passes from Jehoahaz to Jehoachin, he was regarded as
a tax-gathering usurper nominated by an alien tyrant. For after
speaking of Jehoahaz, Ezekiel says,--
"Now when she [Judah] saw that she had waited [for the restoration of
Jehoahaz], and her hope was lost,
Then she took another of her whelps;[766]
A young lion she made him.
He went up and down among the lions;
He became a young lion."[767]
The historian says that Necho turned the name of Eliakim ("God will
establish") to Jehoiakim ("Jehovah will establish"); but by this can
hardly be meant more than that he sanctioned the change of El into
Jehovah on Eliakim's installation upon the throne.
Jehoiakim is condemned in the same terms as all the other sons of
Josiah. His misdoings are far more definitely recorded in the
Prophets, who furnish us with details which are passed over by the
historians. Some of his sins may have been due to the influence of his
wife Nehushta, who was a daughter of Elnathan of Achbor, one of the
princes of the heathen party. It was this Elnathan whom the king chose
as a fitting ambassador to demand the extradition of the prophet
Urijah from Egypt. One of the crimes with which Jehoiakim is charged
is the building for himself of a sumptuous palace, and thus vainly
trying to emulate the splendours of Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian
kings. In itself the act would not have been more wicked than it was
in Solomon, whose architectural parade is dwelt upon with enthusiasm.
But the circumstances were now wholly different. Solomon was at that
time in all his glory, the possessor of boundless wealth, the ruler of
an immense and united territory, the head of a powerful and prosperous
people, the successor of an unconquered hero who had gone to his grave
in peace; Jehoiakim, on the other hand, had succeeded a father who had
died in defeat on the field of battle, and a brother who was
hopelessly pining in an Egyptian prison. The Tribes had been carried
into captivity by Assyria; the nation was beaten, oppressed, and poor;
the king himself possessed but a shadow of royalty. In such a
condition of things it would have been his glory to maintain a
watchful and strenuous activity, and to devote himself in simplicity
and self-denial to the good of his people. It showed a perverted and
sensuous mind to insult the misery of his subjects at such a time by
feeble attempts to rival heathen potentates in costly æstheticism. But
this was not all; he carried out his ignoble selfishness at the cost
of oppression and wrong.[768]
It is possible that the prophet Habakkuk alludes to him in the words:--
"Woe to him that getteth an evil gain for his house, that he may set
his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the hand of evil![769]
Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many peoples,
and hast sinned against thy soul. For the stone shall cry out of the
wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it."[770]
The thought of the Jewish king's selfish expensiveness may have crossed
the mind of Habakkuk, though the taunt is addressed directly to the
Chaldæans, and especially to Nebuchadrezzar, who was at that time
revelling in the beautifying of Babylon, and especially of his own royal
palace. On the other hand, the rebuke, or rather the denunciation,
uttered by Jeremiah against the king for this line of conduct, and for
the forced labour which it required, is terribly direct.
"'Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness,
And his chambers by wrong;
That useth his neighbour's service without wages,
And giveth him not his hire;
That saith, "I will build me a wide house and spacious chambers,"
And cutteth out windows;
And it is ceiled with cedar, and painted with vermilion.
Shalt thou reign because thou viest with the cedar?[771]
Did not thy father eat and drink, and do judgment and justice?
Then it was well with him!
Was not this to know Me?' saith the Lord.
'But thine heart is not but for thy dishonest gain,
And for to shed innocent blood,
And for oppression and for violence to do it.'"[772]
Then follows the stern message of doom which we shall quote hereafter.
The king's bad example stimulated or perhaps emulated similar folly
and want of patriotism on the part of his nobles. They were shepherds
who destroyed and scattered the sheep of Jehovah's pastures. But vain
was their imagined security, and their ostentation. The judgment was
imminent.[773]
"O inhabitress of Lebanon, that makest thy nest in the cedars,"
exclaims the prophet in bitter mockery, "how greatly wilt thou groan
when pangs come upon thee, the pain as of a woman in travail!"[774]
But Jehoiakim's offences were deadlier than this. The Chronicler
speaks of "the abominations which he did"; and some have therefore
supposed that the evil state of things described by Jeremiah (xix.)
refers to this reign. If so, he plunged into the idolatry which caused
Judah to be shivered like a potter's vessel. Certainly he sinned
grievously against God in the person of His prophets.
Jeremiah was not the only prophet who disdained the easy and
traitorous popularity which was to be won by prophesying "peace,
peace," when there was no peace. He had for his contemporary another
messenger of God, no less boldly explicit than himself--Urijah, the
son of Shemaiah of Kirjath-Jearim. Jeremiah had as yet only prophesied
in his humble native village of Anathoth; he had not been called upon
to face "the swellings" or "the pride of Jordan."[775] Urijah had been
in the fuller glare of publicity in the capital, and his bold
declaration that Jerusalem should fall before Nebuchadrezzar and the
Chaldæans had excited such a fury of indignation that he escaped into
Egypt for his life. Surely this should have appeased the rulers, even
if they chose to pay no attention to the Divine menace. For the
prophets were recognised deliverers of the messages of Jehovah; and
with scarcely an exception, even in the most wicked reigns, their
persons had been regarded as sacrosanct. But Jehoiakim would not let
Urijah escape. He sent an embassy to Necho, headed by his
father-in-law Elnathan, son of Achbor, requesting his extradition.
Urijah had been dragged back from Egypt, and, to the horror of the
people, the king had slain him with the sword, and flung his body into
the graves of the common people.[776] What made this conduct more
monstrous was the precedent of Micah the Morasthite. He, in the days
of Hezekiah, had prophesied,--
"Zion shall be ploughed as a field,
And Jerusalem shall become heaps,
And the Mountain of the House as the wooded heights."[777]
Yet so far from putting him to death, or even stirring a finger
against him, the pious king had only been moved to repentance by the
Divine threatenings. Thus the blood of the first martyr-prophet, if we
except the case of Zechariah, had been shed by the son of Judah's most
pious king. Jeremiah himself only narrowly escaped martyrdom. The
precedent of Micah helped to save him, though it had not saved Urijah.
He was far more powerfully protected by the patronage of the princes
and the people. Standing in the Temple court, he had declared that,
unless the nation repented, that house should be like Shiloh, and the
city a curse to all the nations of the earth. Maddened by such words
of bold rebuke, the priests and the prophets and the people had
threatened him with death. But the princes took his part, and some of
the people came over to them. His most powerful protector was Ahikam,
the son of Shaphan, a member of a family of the utmost distinction.
Meanwhile, we must follow for a time the outward fortunes of the king
and of the world.
Necho, after his successful advance, had retired to Egypt, and
Jehoiakim continued to be for three years his obsequious servant. An
event of tremendous importance for the world changed the entire
fortunes of Egypt and of Judah. Nineveh fell with a crash which
terrified the nations. We might apply to her the language which Isaiah
applies to her successor, Babylon:--
"Sheol from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it
stirreth up the shades for thee, even the Rephaim of the earth; it
hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All
they shall answer and say unto thee, 'Art thou also become weak as we?
art thou become like unto us?' ... All the kings of the nations, all
of them, sleep in glory, every one in his own house. But thou art cast
forth away from thy sepulchre like an abominable branch, as the
raiment of those that are slain, that are thrust through with the
sword, that go down to the stones of the pit.... They that see thee
shall narrowly look upon thee ... and say, 'Is this the man that made
the earth to tremble? that did shake kingdoms? that made the world as
a wilderness, and overthrew the cities thereof? that let not loose his
prisoners to their home?'"[778]
Yes, Assyria had fallen like some mighty cedar in Libanus, and the
nations gazed without pity and with exultation on his torn and
scattered branches.
And coincident with the fate of Nineveh had been the rise of the
Chaldæan power.
Nabupalussur[779] had been a general of one of the last Assyrian kings,
and had been sent by him with an army to quell a Babylonian revolt.
Instead of this, he seized the city and made himself king. When the
final overthrow and obliteration of Nineveh had secured his power, he
sent his brave and brilliant son Nebuchadrezzar[780] (B.C. 605) to
secure the provinces which he had wrested from Assyria, and especially
to regain possession of Carchemish, which commanded the river.
Necho marched to protect his conquests, and at Carchemish the hostile
forces encountered each other in a tremendous battle,--immemorial
Egypt under the representative of its age-long Pharaohs; Babylon, with
her independence of yesterday, under a prince hitherto unknown, whose
name was to become one of the most famous in the world. The result is
described by Jeremiah (xlvi. 1-12). Egypt was hopelessly defeated. Her
splendidly arrayed warriors were panic-stricken and routed; her chief
heroes were dashed to pieces by the heavy maces of the Babylonians, or
fled without so much as looking back. The scene was one of
"Magor-missabib"--terror on every side.[781] Pharaoh's host came up
like the Nile in flood with its Ethiopian hoplites and Asiatic
archers; but they were driven back. The daughter of Egypt received a
wound which no balm of Gilead could cure. The nations heard of her
shame, and the prophet pronounced her further chastisement by the
hands of Nebuchadrezzar.
Then, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the young Babylonian conqueror
swept down upon Syria and Palestine like a bounding leopard, like an
avenging eagle (Hab. i. 7, 8). Jehoiakim had no choice but to change
his vassalhood to Necho for a vassalage to Nebuchadrezzar.[782] He
might have suffered severe consequences, but tidings came to the young
Chaldæan that his father had ended his reign of twenty-one years and
was dead. For fear lest disturbances might arise in his capital, he at
once dashed home across the desert with some light troops by way of
Tadmor, while he told his general to follow him home through Syria by
the longer route. He seems, however, to have carried away with him
some captives, among whom were Daniel, Ananias, Azarias, and
Misael,[783] destined hereafter for such memorable fortunes. Jehoiakim
himself was thrown into fetters to be carried into Babylon; but the
conqueror changed his mind, and probably thought that it would be
safer for the present to accept his pledges and assurances, and leave
him as his viceroy. "He took an oath of him," says Ezekiel (xvii. 13);
"he took also the mighty of the land."[784]
For three years this frivolous egotist who occupied the throne of
Judah remained faithful to his covenant with the King of Babylon, but
at the end of that time he rebelled. In this rebellion he was again
deluded by the glamour of Egypt, and reliance on the empty promise of
"horses and much people." Ezekiel openly disapproved of this
policy,[785] and reproached the king for his faithlessness to his
oath. Jeremiah went further, and declared in the plainest language
that "Nebuchadrezzar would certainly come up and destroy this land,
and cause to cease from thence both man and beast."[786]
Nearer and nearer the danger came. At first the King of Babylon was too
busy to do more than send against the Jewish rebel marauding bands of
Chaldæans, who acted in concert with the hereditary depredators of
Judah--Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites. But the prophet knew that the
danger would not end there, believing that God would yet "remove Judah
out of His sight" for the unforgiven sins of Manasseh and the innocent
blood with which he had filled Jerusalem.[787] At last Nebuchadrezzar
had time to turn closer attention to the affairs of Judah, and this
became necessary because of the revolt of Tyre under its King Ithobalus.
In the stress of the peril Jehoiakim proclaimed a fast and a day of
humiliation in the Temple. Jeremiah was at this time "shut up"--either
in hiding, or in some sort of custody. As he could not go and preach in
person, he dictated his prophecy to Baruch, who wrote it on a scroll,
and went in the prophet's place to read it in the Lord's House to the
people there assembled from Jerusalem and all Judah in the chamber of
Gemariah, the son of Shaphan, in the inner court, by the new gate.[788]
Gemariah was the brother of Ahikam, the protector of the prophet.
No one was more painfully alarmed by Jeremiah's prophecy than Micaiah,
the son of Gemariah, and he thought it his duty to go and tell his
father and the other princes what he had heard. They were assembled in
the scribe's chamber, and sent a courtier of Ethiopian race--Jehudi,
the son of Cushi--bidding him to bring the scroll with him, and to
come to them.[789]
Baruch was a person of distinction. He was the brother of Seraiah, who
is called in our A.V. "a quiet prince," and in the margin "prince of
Menucha" or "chief chamberlain," literally "master of the
resting-place"; and he was the grandson of Maaseiah, "the governor" of
the city.[790] The office imposed on him by Jeremiah was so perilous
and painful that it nearly broke his heart. He exclaimed to Jeremiah,
"Woe is me now! the Lord hath added grief to my sorrow. I am weary
with my sighing, and I find no rest." The answer which the prophet was
commissioned to give him was very remarkable. It confirmed the
terrible doom on his native land, but added, "'And seekest thou great
things for thyself? Seek them not. For, behold, I will bring evil upon
all flesh,' saith the Lord: 'but thy life will I give unto thee for a
prey in all places whither thou goest.'"[791]
Baruch obeyed the summons of the princes, and at their request sat
down with them and read the scroll in their ears. When they had heard
the portentous prophecy, they turned shuddering to one another, and
said, "We must tell the king of all these words." They asked Baruch
how he had written them, and he said he had taken them down at the
prophet's dictation. Then, knowing the storm which would burst over
the bold offenders, they said, "Go, hide thee, thou and Jeremiah, and
let no man know where ye be."
Not daring to imperil the awful document, they laid it up in the
chamber of Elishama, the scribe, but went to the king and told him its
contents. He sent Jehudi to fetch it, and to read it in their hearing.
Jehoiakim and the illustrious company were seated in the
winter-chamber; for it was October, and a fire was burning in the
brazier, where Jehoiakim sat warming himself in the chilly weather.
As he listened, he was filled not only with fury, but with contempt.
Such a message might well have caused him and his worst counsellors to
rend their clothes; but instead of this they adopted a tone of defiance.
By the time that Jehudi had read three or four columns, Jehoiakim
snatched the scribe's knife which hung at his girdle, and began to cut
up the scroll, with the intention of burning it. Seeing his purpose,
Gemariah, Elnathan, and Seraiah entreated him not to destroy it. But he
would not listen. He flung the fragments into the brazier, and they were
consumed. He ordered his son Jerahmeel,[792] with Seraiah and Shelemiah,
to seize both Baruch and Jeremiah, and bring them before him for
punishment. Doubtless they would have suffered the fate of Urijah, but
"the Lord hid them." There were enough persons of power on their side to
render their hiding-place secure.
But the king's impious indifference, so far from making any difference
in the things that were, only brought down upon his guilt a fearful
doom. Truth cannot be cut to pieces, or burnt, or mechanically
suppressed.
"Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers:
But error, vanquished, writhes in pain,
And dies amid her worshippers."
All the former denunciations, and new ones added to them, were
rewritten by Jeremiah and his faithful friend in their hiding-place,
and among them these words[793]:--
"Thus saith the Lord of Jehoiakim, King of Judah, 'He shall have none
to sit upon the throne of David; and his dead body shall be cast out
in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost.'"
A frightful drought added to the misery of this reign, but failed to
bring the wretched king to his senses. Jeremiah describes it[794]:--
"Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof languish; they bow down
mourning unto the ground; and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up. And the
nobles send their menials to the waters: they come to the pits, and
find no water; they return with their vessels empty; they are ashamed
and confounded, and cover their heads, because of the ground which is
chapped, for that no rain hath been in the land.... Yea, the hind also
in the field calveth, and forsaketh her young, because there is no
grass. And the wild asses stand on the bare heights, they pant for air
like jackals; their eyes fail, because there is no herbage."
Even this affliction, so vividly and pathetically described, failed to
waken any repentance. And then the doom fell. Nebuchadrezzar advanced
in person against Jerusalem.[795] Even the hardy nomad Rechabites had
to fly before the Chaldæans, and to take refuge in the cities which
they hated. The sacred historian tells us nothing as to the manner of
the death of Jehoiakim, only saying that he "slept with his fathers":
his narrative of this period is exceedingly meagre. Josephus says that
Nebuchadrezzar slew him and the flower of the citizens, and sent three
thousand captives to Babylon.[796] Some imagine that he was killed by
the Babylonians in a raid outside the walls of Jerusalem, or "murdered
by his own people, and his body thrown for a time outside the walls."
If so, the Babylonians did not war with the dead. His remains, after
this "burial of an ass,"[797] may have been finally suffered to rest
in a tomb. The Septuagint says (2 Chron. xxxvi. 8) that he was buried
"in Ganosan," by which may be meant the sepulchre of Manasseh in the
garden of Uzza.[798] Not for him was the wailing cry "_Hoî, adon! Hoî,
hodo!_" ("Ah, Lord! Ah, his glory!").
"The memory of the wicked shall rot." Certainly this was the case with
Jehoiakim. The Chronicler mysteriously alludes to "his abominations
which he did, _and that which was found in him_."[799] The Rabbis,
interpreting this after their manner, say that "the thing found" was
the name of the demon Codonazor, to whom he had sold himself, which
after his death was discovered legibly written in Hebrew letters on
his skin. "Rabbi Johanan and Rabbi Eleazar debated what was meant by
'that which was found on him.' One said that he tattooed the name of
an idol upon his body (אמתו), and the other said that he had tattooed
the name of the god Recreon."[800]
FOOTNOTES:
[766] Not Jehoiakim, but Jehoiachin, as the sequel shows.
[767] Ezek. xix. 5-9. The allusions to Jehoiakim by Jeremiah are
numerous, and all unfavourable (xxii. 13-19, xxvi. 20-23, xxxvi.
20-31, etc.)
[768] Josephus (_Antt._, X. v. 2) is very severe on this king. He says
that "he was unjust in disposition, an evil-doer, neither pious
towards God nor just towards men."
[769] Perhaps an allusion to a sort of fortified palace on Ophel.
[770] Hab. ii. 9-11.
[771] The text is perhaps corrupt. Two MSS. of the LXX. read "because
thou viest _with Ahab_," and the Vatican MSS. has "_with Ahaz_."
Cheyne adopts the former reading.
[772] Jer. xxii. 13-17.
[773] Jer. xxiii. 1.
[774] Jer. xxii. 23.
[775] Jer. xii. 5.
[776] Jer. xxvi. 20-23. So far as I am aware, Bunsen stands alone in
identifying Urijah with the "Zechariah" who wrote Zech. xii.-xiv.
Others refer Zech. xii. 10 to the murder of Urijah.
[777] Jer. xxvi. 18.
[778] Isa. xiv., _passim_.
[779] Nabu-pal-ussur, "Nebo protect the son."
[780] Nabu-kudur-ussur, "Nebo protect the crown" (Schrader, ii. 48), or
"the youth" (Oppert). The portrait of Nebuchadrezzar--this is the proper
spelling, as generally in Jeremiah--is preserved for us on a black cameo
which he presented to the god Merodach. It is now in the Berlin Museum,
and shows strong but not cruel or ignoble characteristics. It is copied
in Riehm's _Handwörterbuch_, ii. 1067. The Jews, as they were fond of
doing to their enemies, made insulting puns on his name. Thus in the
_Vayyikra Rabba_ (Wünsche, _Bibl. Rabb._) the Three Children are
represented as saying to him, "You are Neboo-cad-netser: bark [_nabach_]
like a dog; swell like a water-jar [_kad_], and chirp like a cricket
[_tsertser_],"--in allusion to his madness.
[781] Jer. xlvi. 5 (vi. 25).
[782] Jos., _Antt._, X. xi.; Berosus, p. 11. The Chronicler and
Josephus show some confusion, caused by the similarity of the names
Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin.
[783] Dan. i. 6.
[784] We might infer from Ezek. xvii. 12 that Nebuchadrezzar actually
took Jehoiakim with him to Babylon.
[785] Ezek. xvii. 15.
[786] Jer. xxxvi. 29, xxv. 9, xxvi. 6.
[787] 2 Kings xxiv. 2-4.
[788] Grätz thinks that Jeremiah's roll was substantially Jer. xxv.
[789] Jos., _Antt._, IX. ix. 1.
[790] Jer. li. 59. Ewald, Hitzig, and others take the title to mean
"quartermaster" (2 Chron. xxxiv. 8).
[791] Jer. xlv. 1-5.
[792] Zeph. i. 8; 1 Kings xxii. 26; Jer. xxxvi. 26, A.V., "The son of
Hammelech." Comp. xxxviii. 6. _Hammelech_ may be a proper name, or a
prince of the blood-royal may be intended.
[793] "The 'Book,' now as afterwards, was to be the death-blow of the
old regal, aristocratic, sacerdotal exclusiveness. The 'Scribe,' now
first rising into importance in the person of Baruch to supply the
defects of the living Prophet, was, as the printing-press in later
ages, handing on the words of truth, which else might have
irretrievably perished" (Stanley).
[794] Cheyne, _Jeremiah_, p. 149; Jer. xiv. 1-xv. 9.
[795] Nebuchadrezzar occupies a larger space in the Bible than any
heathen king, being spoken of in 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Ezra,
Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel.
[796] For further details of Jehoiakim see 1 Esdras i. 38: "He bound
Joakim and the nobles; _but Zaraces_ his brother he apprehended, and
brought him out of Egypt." The allusion is entirely obscure, and
probably arises from some corruption of the text. The literal
rendering is: "And _Joakim_ bound the nobles; but Zaraces his brother
he apprehended, and brought him out of Egypt." Zaraces might be a
corruption for Zedekiah, who was Jehoiakim's half-brother. Some think
that Zaraces is a corruption for Urijah, and "his brother" a clerical
error.
[797] Jer. xxxvi. 30, xxii. 19.
[798] LXX., καὶ ἐκοιμήθη Ἰωακεὶμ ἐν Γανοζὰν μετὰ τῶν πατέρων ἑαυτοῦ.
[799] 2 Chron. xxxvi. 8.
[800] _Sanhedrin_, f. 104, 2. For another allusion see _id._ 49, 1;
Hershon, _Treasures of the Talmud_, p. 232.