The Expositor's Bible Part 43

FOOTNOTES:

[753] Chron. iii. 15.

[754] He is named "fourth," but he was older than his brothers Jehoiakim and Zedekiah (2 Kings xxiii. 31, xxiv. 18). The genealogy is as follows:--

Zebudah = JOSIAH = Hamutal.

----- ------------------- Nehushta = ELIAKIM ZEDEKIAH JEHOAHAZ or Jehoiakim. or Mattaniah. or Shallum.

JEHOIACHIN.

[755] An allusion to the Syrian mode of hunting the lion by driving it with cries into a concealed pit (Tristram, _Nat. Hist. of the Bible_, 118; Cheyne, 140).

[756] Ezek. xix. 1-4.

[757] The name Shallum means "recompense." It may have been regarded as ill-omened, since the King of Israel who bore this rare name had only reigned a month.

[758] The Talmud says that kings were only anointed in special cases (_Keritoth_, f. 5, 2; Gratz, ii. 328).

[759] Jos., _Antt._, X. v. 2: ?se?? ?a? ?a??? t?? t??p??.

[760] Herod., ii. 159.

[761] Mr. G. Smith identifies Carchemish with Jerabls.

[762] Cheyne, _Jeremiah_, p. 127.

[763] Comp. 2 Kings xxv. 20, 21. The old Hitt.i.te capital of Riblah was a convenient halting-place on the road between Babylon and Jerusalem.

It was on the northernmost boundary of Palestine towards Damascus (Amos vi. 14).

[764] Jer. xxii. 10-12.

[765] 2 Chron. x.x.xvi. 3; 1 Esdras i. 36. The smallness of the tribute proves the impoverishment of the land. Sennacherib demanded from Hezekiah three hundred talents of silver, and thirty of gold; and Menahem paid one thousand talents of silver to Tiglath-Pileser.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

_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 G.o.d.'"--_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 circ.u.mstances--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 pa.s.ses 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 ("G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 amba.s.sador 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 a.s.syrian, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.syria; 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 aestheticism. But this was not all; he carried out his ign.o.ble 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 Chaldaeans, 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 s.p.a.cious 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 n.o.bles. 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 s.h.i.+vered like a potter's vessel. Certainly he sinned grievously against G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 Chaldaeans 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 emba.s.sy 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 s.h.i.+loh, 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?