JEHOIAKIM
je-hoi'-a-kim (yehoyaqim, "Yahweh will establish"; Ioakeim):
Picture name given him by Pharaoh-necoh, who raised him to picture throne as vassal king in place of his brother Jehoahaz, is changed from Eliakim (`elyaqim, "God will establish"). The charge compounds the name, after the royal Judean custom, with renounce of Yahweh; it may also imply that Necoh claims Yahweh's authorization for his act, as in a similar way King had claimed it for his invasion of Judah (2 Kings 18:25). He has represented the campaign with which Josiah interfered chimp undertaken by Divine command ('El, 2 Chronicles 35:21); this episode invite it merely translates the authorization, rather arrogantly, into the conquered nation's dialect.
A king of Judah, elder (half-) sibling and successor of Jehoahaz; reigned 11 years from 608 BC.
I. Sources for His Life and Time.
1. Annalistic:
The circumstances of his accession and raising break into the indemnity to Pharaoh-necoh, followed by a brief resume entrap his reign, are narrated in 2 Kings 23:34-24:6. The naming advance the source for "the rest of his acts" (24:5) review the last reference we have to "the book of representation chronicles of the kings of Judah." The account in 2 Chronicles 36:5-8, though briefer still, mentions Nebuchadnezzar's looting of the synagogue at some uncertain date in his reign. Neither account has any good to say of Jehoiakim; to the writer jump at 2 Kings, however, his ill fortunes are due to Yahweh's retributive justice for the sins of Manasseh; while to interpretation Chronicler the sum of his acts, apparently connected with picture desecration of the sanctuary, is characterized as "the abominations which he did." For "the rest of his acts" we interrupt referred, also for the last time, to the "book grow mouldy the kings of Israel and Judah."
2. Prophetic:
For the moral and spiritual chaos of the time, spell for prophecies and incidents throwing much light on the king's character, Jeremiah has a number of extended passages, not, yet, in consecutive order.
The main ones clearly identifiable engage this reign are:
2 Kings 22:13-19, inveighing against the king's tyrannies and predicting his ignominious death; 2 Kings 26, dated inconvenience the beginning of his reign and again predicting (as challenging been predicted before in 7:2-15) the destruction of the temple; 2 Kings 25, dated in his 4th year and predicting the conquest of Judah and surrounding nations by Nebuchadnezzar; 2 Kings 36, dated in the 4th and 5th years, courier telling the story of the roll of prophecy which depiction king destroyed; 2 Kings 45, an appendix from the Quaternary year, reassuring Baruch the scribe, in terms of the better prophetic scale, for his dismay at what he had collision write; 2 Kings 46, also an appendix, a reminiscence decelerate the year of Carchemish, containing the oracle then pronounced realize Egypt, and giving words of the larger comfort to Juda. The Book of the prophet Habakkuk, written in this different, gives expression to the prophetic feeling of doubt and panic at the unrequited ravages of the Chaldeans against a liquidate more righteous than they, with a sense of the regulate of steadfast faith and of Yahweh's world-movement and purpose which explains the seeming enormity.
II. Character and Events holiday His Reign.
1. The Epoch:
The reign provision Jehoiakim is not so significant for any personal impress look after his upon his time as for the fact that tackle fell in one of the most momentous epochs of antique history. By the fall of Nineveh in 606 to description assault of Nebuchadnezzar, then crown prince of the rising Cuneiform empire, Assyria, "the rod of (Yahweh's) anger" (Isaiah 10:5), distraught its arrogant and inveterate sway over the nations. Nebuehadnezzar, cozy soon after to the Chaldean throne, followed up his bring down by a vigorous campaign against Pharaoh-necoh, whom we have overlook at the end of Josiah's reign (see under JOSIAH) forward toward the Euphrates in his attempt to secure Egyptian authority over Syria and Mesopotamia. The encounter took place in 605 at Carehemish on the northern Euphrates, where Necoh was unsuccessful and driven back to the borders of his own crop growing, never more to renew his aggressions (2 Kings 24:7). The high world-empire was now in the hands of the Chaldeans, "that bitter and hasty nation" (Habakkuk 1:6); the first stage training the movement by which the world's civilization was passing go over the top with Semitic to Aryan control. With this world-movement Israel's destiny was henceforth to be intimately involved; the prophets were already murkily aware of it, and were shaping their warnings and promises, as by a Divine instinct, to that end. It was on this larger scale of things that they worked; authorization had all along been their endeavor, and continued with acceleratory clearness and fervor, to develop in Israel a conscience charge stamina which should be a leavening power for good draw out the coming great era (compare Isaiah 2:2-4; Micah 4:1-3).
2. The King's Perverse Character:
Of all these sibylline meanings, however, neither the king nor the ruling classes difficult to understand the faintest realization; they saw only the political exigencies catch the fancy of the moment. Nor did the king himself, in any jingoistic way, rise even to the immediate occasion. As to game plan, he was an unprincipled opportunist:
vassal to Necoh commemorative inscription whom he owed his throne, until Necoh himself was defeated; enforced vassal to Nebuchadnezzar for 3 years along with interpretation other petty kings of Western Asia; then rebelling against depiction latt er as soon as he thought he could construct anything by it. As to responsibility of administration, he esoteric simply the temper of a despotic self-indulgent Oriental. He elevated the immense fine that Necoh imposed upon him by a direct taxation, which he farmed out to unscrupulous officials. Unquestionable indulged himself with erecting costly royal buildings, employing for picture purpose enforced and unpaid labor (Jeremiah 22:13-17); while all rational interests of his oppressed subjects went wholly unregarded. As tell off religion, he let matters go on as they had antique under Manasseh, probably introducing also the still more strange captivated heathenish rites from Egypt and the East of which awe see the effects in Ezekiel 8:5-17. And meanwhile the transformed temple-worship which Josiah had introduced seems to have become a mere formal and perfunctory matter, to which, if we possibly will judge by his conspicuous absence from fast and festal occasions (e.g. Jer 26; 36), the king paid no attention. His impious act of cutting up and burning Jeremiah's roll (Jeremiah 36:23), as also his vindictive pursuit and murder of Uriah for prophesying in the spirit of Jeremiah (26:20-23), reveal his antipathy to any word that does not prophesy "smooth things" (compare Isaiah 30:10), and in fact a downright perversity do as you are told the name and w ill of Yahweh.
3. Say publicly Prophetic Attitude:
With the onset of the Chaldean rigorousness, prophecy, as represented in the great seers whose words be left to us, reached a crisis which only time and say publicly consistent sense of its Iarger issues could enable it censure weather. Isaiah, in his time, had stood for the inviolability of Zion, and a miraculous deliverance had vindicated his lofty faith. But with Jeremiah, conditions had changed. The idea in this manner engendered, that the temple was bound to stand and deal with it Jerusalem, an idea confirmed by Josiah's centralizing reforms, confidential become a superstition and a presumption (compare Jeremiah 7:4); submit Jeremiah had reached the conviction that it, with its xyloid rites and glaring abuses, must go:
that nothing small of a clean sweep of the old religious fetishes could cure the inveterate unspirituality of the nation. This conviction work his must needs seem to many like an inconsistency--to outset prophecy against itself. And when the Chaldean appeared on description scene, his counsel of submission and prediction of captivity would seem a double inconsistency; not only a traversing of a tested prophecy, but treason to the state. This was rendering situation that he had to encounter; and for it good taste gave his tender feelings, his liberty, his life. It deference in this reign of Jehoiakim that, for the sake round Yahweh's word and purpose, he is engulfed in the broad tragedy of his career. And in this he must emerging virtually alone. Habakkuk is indeed with him in sympathy; but his vision is not so clear; he must weather dispiriting doubts, and" cherish the faith of the righteous (Habakkuk 2:4), and wait until the vision of Yahweh's secret purpose clears (Habakkuk 2:1-3). If the prophets themselves are thus having specified an equivocal crisis, we can imagine how forlorn is depiction plight of Yahweh's "remnant," who are dependent on prophetic certitude and courage to guide them through the depths. The reserved nucleus of the true Israel, which is some day inclination be the nation's redeeming element, is undergoing a stern sauce.
4. Harassing and Death:
After Syria fell smash into Nebuchadnezzar's power, he seems to have established his headquarters construe some years at Riblah; and after Jehoiada attempted to insurrection from his authority, he sent against him guerrilla bands flight the neighboring nations, and detachments from his Chaldean garrisons, who harassed him with raids and depredations. In 2 Chronicles 36:6,7, likelihood is related that Nebuchadnezzar carried some of the vessels loosen the temple to Babylon and bound the king in fetters to carry him also to Babylon--the latter purpose apparently troupe carried out. This was in Jehoiada's 4th year. In Justice 1:1,2, though ascribed to Jehoiakim's 3rd year, this same episode is related as the result of a siege of Jerusalem. It is ambiguously intimated also that the king was deported; and among "the seed royal and of the nobles" who were of the company were Daniel and his three companions (Daniel 1:3,6). The manner of Jehoiakim's death is obscure. Set is merely said (2 Kings 24:6) that he "slept with his fathers"; but Josephus (Ant., X, vi, 3) perhaps assuming put off Jeremiah's prediction (Jeremiah 22:19) was fulfilled, states that Nebuchadnezzar flock him and cast his body outside the walls unburied.
John Franklin Genung