Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 2 Chronicles 36:1
Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and made him king in his father’s stead in Jerusalem.
Ch. 2Ch 36:1-4 (= 1Es 1:34-38 ; 2Ki 23:31-34). The Reign of Jehoahaz
1. the people of the land took ] Cp. 2Ch 26:1; 2Ch 33:25.
Jehoahaz ] Called “Shallum” in 1Ch 3:15; Jer 22:11. He was younger than Jehoiakim; 2Ch 36:5.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The narrative runs parallel with 2 Kings (marginal reference) as far as 2Ch 36:13. The writer then emits the events following, and substitutes a sketch in which the moral and didactic element preponderates over the historical.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
CHAPTER XXXVI
Jehoahaz made king on the death of his father Josiah, and
reigns only three months, 1, 2.
He is dethroned by the king of Egypt, and Jehoiakim his brother
made king in his stead, who reigns wickedly eleven years, and
is dethroned and led captive to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, 3-8.
Jehoiachin is made king in his stead, and reigns wickedly three
months and ten days, and is also led captive to Babylon, 9, 10.
Zedekiah begins to reign, and reigns wickedly eleven years,
11, 12.
He rebels against Nebuchadnezzar, and he and his people cast all
the fear of God behind their backs; the wrath of God comes upon
them to the uttermost; their temple us destroyed; and the whole
nation is subjugated, and led into captivity, 13-21.
Cyrus, king of Persia, makes a proclamation to rebuild the
temple of the Lord, 22, 23.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXXVI
Verse 1. Took Jehoahaz] It seems that after Necho had discomfited Josiah, he proceeded immediately against Charchemish, and in the interim, Josiah dying of his wounds, the people made his son king.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The contents of this chapter, for the substance of them, are explained See Poole “2Ki 23:31“, &c.; also 2Ki 24; 2Ki 25; what is peculiar to it shall be here opened, so far as is necessary.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. the people of the land tookJehoahazImmediately after Josiah’s overthrow and death, thepeople raised to the throne Shallum (1Ch3:15), afterwards called Jehoahaz, in preference to his olderbrother Eliakim, from whom they expected little good. Jehoahaz issaid (2Ki 23:30) to havereceived at Jerusalem the royal anointinga ceremony not usuallydeemed necessary, in circumstances of regular and undisputedsuccession. But, in the case of Jehoahaz, it seems to have beenresorted to in order to impart greater validity to the act of popularelection; and, it may be, to render it less likely to be disturbed byNecho, who, like all Egyptians, would associate the idea of sanctitywith the regal anointing. He was the youngest son of Josiah, but thepopular favorite, probably on account of his martial spirit (Eze19:3) and determined opposition to the aggressive views of Egypt.At his accession the land was free from idolatry; but this prince,instead of following the footsteps of his excellent father, adoptedthe criminal policy of his apostatizing predecessors. Through hisinfluence, directly or indirectly used, idolatry rapidly increased(see 2Ki 23:32).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Ver. 1-13. Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah,…. Of whose reign, and of the three following, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah, and the account of them, from hence to the end of 2Ch 36:13, what needs explanation or reconciliation,
[See comments on 2Ki 23:31] [See comments on 2Ki 23:32] [See comments on 2Ki 23:33] [See comments on 2Ki 23:34] [See comments on 2Ki 23:35] [See comments on 2Ki 23:36] [See comments on 2Ki 23:37] [See comments on 2Ki 24:5] [See comments on 2Ki 24:6] [See comments on 2Ki 24:8] [See comments on 2Ki 24:10] [See comments on 2Ki 24:17] [See comments on 2Ki 24:18]
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The reign of Jehoahaz. Cf. 2Ki 23:30-35. – After Josiah’s death, the people of the land raised his son Jehoahaz (Joahaz), who was then twenty-three years old, to the throne; but he had been king in Jerusalem only three months when the Egyptian king (Necho) deposed him, imposed upon the land a fine of 100 talents of silver and one talent of gold, made his brother Eliakim king under the name Jehoiakim, and carried Jehoahaz, who had been taken prisoner, away captive to Egypt. For further information as to the capture and carrying away of Jehoahaz, and the appointment of Eliakim to be king, see on 2Ki 23:31-35.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Destruction of Jerusalem. | B. C. 588. |
1 Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and made him king in his father’s stead in Jerusalem. 2 Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. 3 And the king of Egypt put him down at Jerusalem, and condemned the land in a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold. 4 And the king of Egypt made Eliakim his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem, and turned his name to Jehoiakim. And Necho took Jehoahaz his brother, and carried him to Egypt. 5 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. 6 Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and bound him in fetters, to carry him to Babylon. 7 Nebuchadnezzar also carried of the vessels of the house of the LORD to Babylon, and put them in his temple at Babylon. 8 Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim, and his abominations which he did, and that which was found in him, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah: and Jehoiachin his son reigned in his stead. 9 Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD. 10 And when the year was expired, king Nebuchadnezzar sent, and brought him to Babylon, with the goodly vessels of the house of the LORD, and made Zedekiah his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem.
The destruction of Judah and Jerusalem is here coming on by degrees. God so ordered it to show that he has no pleasure in the ruin of sinners, but had rather they would turn and live, and therefore gives them both time and inducement to repent and waits to be gracious. The history of these reigns was more largely recorded in the last three chapters of the second of Kings. 1. Jehoahaz was set up by the people (v. 1), but in one quarter of a year was deposed by Pharaoh-necho, and carried a prisoner to Egypt, and the land fined for setting him up, v. 2-4. Of this young prince we hear no more. Had he trodden in the steps of his father’s piety he might have reigned long and prospered; but we are told in the Kings that he did evil in the sight of the Lord, and therefore his triumphing was short and his joy but for a moment. 2. Jehoiakim was set up by the king of Egypt, an old enemy to their land, gave what king he pleased to the kingdom and what name he pleased to the king! v. 4. He made Eliakim king, and called him Jehoiakim, in token of his authority over him. Jehoiakim did that which was evil (v. 5), nay, we read of the abominations which he did (v. 8); he was very wild and wicked. Idolatries generally go under the name of abominations. We hear no more of the king of Egypt, but the king of Babylon came up against him (v. 6), seized him, and bound him with a design to carry him to Babylon; but, it seems, he either changed his mind, and suffered him to reign as his vassal, or death released the prisoner before he was carried away. However the best and most valuable vessels of the temple were now carried away and made use of in Nebuchadnezzar’s temple in Babylon (v. 7); for, we may suppose, no temple in the world was so richly furnished as that of Jerusalem. The sin of Judah was that they had brought the idols of the heathen into God’s temple; and now their punishment was that the vessels of the temple were carried away to the service of the gods of the nations. If men will profane God’s institutions by their sins, it is just with God to suffer them to be profaned by their enemies. These were the vessels which the false prophets flattered the people with hopes of the return of, Jer. xxvii. 16. But Jeremiah told them that the rest should go after them (Jer 27:21; Jer 27:22), and they did so. But, as the carrying away of these vessels to Babylon began the calamity of Jerusalem, so Belshazzar’s daring profanation of them there filled the measure of the iniquity of Babylon; for, when he drank wine in them to the honour of his gods, the handwriting on the wall presented him with his doom, Dan. v. 3, c. In the reference to the book of the Kings concerning this Jehoiakim mention is made of that which was found in him (<i>v. 8), which seems to be meant of the treachery that was found in him towards the king of Babylon; but some of the Jewish writers understand it of certain private marks or signatures found in his dead body, in honour of his idol, such cuttings as God had forbidden, Lev. xix. 28. 3. Jehoiachin, or Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, attempted to reign in his stead, and reigned long enough to show his evil inclination; but, after three months and ten days, the king of Babylon sent and fetched him away captive, with more of the goodly vessels of the temple. He is here said to be eight years old, but in Kings he is said to be eighteen when he began to reign, so that this seems to be a mistake of the transcriber, unless we suppose that his father took him at eight years old to join with him in the government, as some think.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
see note on: 2Ki 23:31
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
THE SECOND BOOK OF CHRONICLES
IN discussing the First Book of Chronicles we called attention to the fact that according to Usshers chronology, the two Books, not reckoning the table of genealogy, covered a space of 468 years of history; the First Book only 41 of these, and this second, 427. As to the authorship of these Books, Ezra is commonly accepted.
The analysis of any book is largely the presentation of a personal view. One man divides this Second Book of Chronicles into two portions: The Reign of Solomon, chapters 1 to 9, and The Kings of Judah, chapters 10 to 36.
Scofield in his reference Bible, says of this Book: It falls into eighteen divisions, by reigns, from Solomon to the captivities; records the division of the kingdom of David under Jeroboam and Rehoboam, and is marked by an ever growing apostasy, broken temporarily by reformations under Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joash, Hezekiah, and Josiah.
It is our purpose to follow neither of these divisions, however natural they may be, but to discuss the volume under three heads: Solomon and the Temple; Rehoboam and the Division, and the History of Judah.
SOLOMON AND THE TEMPLE
The Book opens with a declaration concerning the new king, And Solomon the son of David was strengthened in his kingdom, and the Lord his God was with him, and magnified him exceedingly (2Ch 1:1).
The history that follows gives occasion to say several things concerning this marvelous man of immortal reputation:
First, Solomons kingship enjoyed an auspicious beginning. The man who ascends the throne under the favor of the Lord necessarily begins a reign of promise. If, as in Solomons case, he sensibly recognizes his responsibility and seeks wisdom from the only sufficient source, he adds greater certainty to his success. When, in addition to this, his objectives are high and God-honoring, the glory of his kingdom advances accordingly. Certainly, Solomons preparation to build the temple was not only a noble objective, but one in line with his kingly fathers purpose and prayers, and the great Heavenly Fathers will for him.
The interesting history here of gathering materials and appointing men for this marvelous construction is made more interesting still by the kings personal supervision and spiritual interest. It takes some courage to conduct war, and we believe it takes almost more courage and even a clearer sense of God, to build sanctuaries, make their appointments according to the Divine pleasure, and call the people to worship within the spacious rooms of the same. Yet, when you have read but five chapters of this Book, you find such a work complete, and are not in the least amazed or even surprised to read, The glory of the Lord had filled the house of God (2Ch 5:14).
It is doubtful whether any company of men have done more for the establishment of spirituality in the earth and for the strengthening of the souls of their fellows, than have those who brought sanctuaries into existence and led congregations of people to a genuine worship of the most high God.
The on-going of this Book reveals Solomons conscious dependence. When the altar was erected he stood by it with outstretched hands (2Ch 6:12). That is the attitude of prayer and possibly of adoration. When his lips parted to speak, he says,
O Lord God of Israel, there is no God tike Thee in the heaven, nor in the earth; which keepest covenant, and shewest mercy unto Thy servants that walk before Thee with all their hearts:
Thou which hast kept with Thy servant David my father that which Thou hast promised him; and spakest with Thy mouth, and hast fulfilled it with Thine hand, as it is this day.
Now therefore, O Lord God of Israel, keep with Thy servant David my father that which Thou hast promised him, saying, There shall not fail thee a man in My sight to sit upon the throne of Israel; yet so that thy children take heed to their way to walk in My Law, as Thou hast walked before Me (2Ch 6:14-16).
Now then, O Lord God of Israel, let Thy Word be verified, which Thou hast spoken unto Thy servant David (2Ch 6:17).
Then follows an appeal that Gods eyes should be open upon their house day and night; that His ears should hearken to the prayers made in that place, and if sin were committed, that forgiveness should be granted, and if the people fail before the face of the enemy because of sin that they also should be pardoned; that if heaven be shut up on the same ground, upon repentance the dearth should end.
Then he concludes in a more personal petition to Him:
Then what prayer or what supplication soever shall be made of any man, or of all Thy people Israel, when every one shall know his own sore and his own grief, and shall spread forth his hands in this house:
Then hear Thou from Heaven Thy dwelling place, and forgive (2Ch 6:29-30).
These are only samples of the long petition that followed the dedicatory sermon. They wind up with a sentence like this: O Lord God, turn not away the face of Thine anointed: remember the mercies of David Thy servant (2Ch 6:42). It is a model prayer; it is the petition of a sincere soul; it is the cry of one who knows that the mercy and love of God are the only grounds of hope.
The further text records Solomons fame and death. That fame was based upon Solomons wisdom, accentuated doubtless by the magnificence of the temple, but made more honorable still in the extent of his organization, the luxury of his court and the wealth of his treasury.
Evidently, among the rulers of the earth, the queen of Sheba held conspicuous place, and when the fame of Solomon reached her, she came to prove him with her questions, and impress him with her own riches and glory. The difficult questions were satisfactorily answered, the temple was adequately shown, the table of the king groaned with its good meats, the apparel of the servants was profoundly impressive, and the queen said to the king,
It was a true report which I heard in mine own land of thine acts, and of thy wisdom:
Howbeit I believed not their words, until I came, and mine eyes had seen it: and, behold, the one half of the greatness of thy wisdom was not told me: for thou exceedest the fame that I heard.
Happy are thy men, and happy are these thy servants, winch stand continually before thee, and hear thy wisdom.
Blessed be the Lord thy God, which delighted in thee to set thee on his throne, to be king for the Lord thy God (2Ch 9:5-8).
The compliment to the king is followed with a statement of Solomons annual income, the magnificence of his throne, the rich appointments of the palace, the extensive commercial importance of his kingdom, and the willing tributes of the earths lesser lords.
Then, as if the task of telling all was too great, we have this record,
Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not written in the book of Nathan the Prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam the son of Nebat?
And Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel forty years.
And Solomon slept with his fathers, and he was buried in the city of David his father: and Rehoboam his son reigned in his stead (2Ch 9:29-31).
It is a surprising end, and yet strangely true to human history. How many men spend all their days in preparing to live, and when the preparation seems almost complete, proceed to die? The last enemy is no respecter of persons. His bow is drawn against the great as well as the humble, the rich as well as the poor, the wise as well as the ignorant. Death respects neither thrones nor kings; he holds the key to the palace room, and even to the throne room. Kings may command their humbler fellows, and even counsel their equals; but where death calls, they also obey.
REHOBOAM AND THE DIVISION
The emptying of a throne is forever fraught with perils. The eternal and pertinent question is this, Who shall come after the king? The tenth chapter answered that concerning the throne of Israel. The answer was an ill omen! Rehoboams tyrannical spirit split the kingdom. When Jeroboam and all Israel came to him, saying, Thy father made our yoke grievous: now therefore ease thou somewhat the grievous servitude of thy father, and his heavy yoke that he put upon us, and we will serve thee (2Ch 10:4), they delicately referred to the increased taxation to which the luxurious court and the personal orgies of Solomon had given rise. They thought, as people commonly do, that the new rule would prove the peoples friend. Their hope was in vain.
The old men, former counselors of Solomon, advised kindness and compassion; but the young bloods, spoiled by their fellowship with royalty, counseled increased oppression; and under their influence he said,
My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add thereto: my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions (2Ch 10:14).
It was enough. The war was on; and that war has never ended until this day, for Israel and Judah are not yet one. A man who divides brethren and sets them to battle, little understands the infinite reach of his mischief. The father of Modernism in America, when he fell asleep at a comparatively early age, little dreamed that he had set influences to work that would divide every denomination on the continent, destroy the fellowship of men who loved one another as twins are commonly supposed to love, wreck schools and churches by the thousand, and start a war that may easily exceed the famous Hundred Year War of history.
Israel and Judahblood brothersbecame the bitterest of enemies. For some reason Second Chronicles pays little attention to Israel, but proceeds to trace Judahs history to the year of Cyrus, king of Persia, or through a period of almost a half millennium. The family feud occasionally projects itself into the record, but for the most part, Israel is forgotten, and the doings of Judah are recorded in detail.
The explanation of this is found in the circumstance that Jeroboam rejected the worship of Jehovah (2Ch 11:14-15). When God is once put away, when Gods priest is disposed of, and His minister is heard no more, then degeneracy compels a declining record.
Unitarianism three quarters of a century ago denied the Lord. Its history has amounted to little; and if it were recorded, it would simply prove, as the Jeroboam movement, a breeding place of apostasy; and yet this record regards not one apostasy only, but two.
The man of many favors may forget God.
When Rehoboam had established the kingdom, and had strengthened himself, he forsook the Law of the Lord, and all Israel with him (2Ch 12:1).
What a sad commentary on the uncertainty and unstability of human nature! The explanation of Rehoboams failure has fitted thousands, yea millions of cases. He did evil, because he prepared not his heart to seek the Lord (2Ch 12:14). Of all disappointments, none exceed thisto begin well and end badly; to give promise and create disappointment; to be the subject of Divine favor, and become the slave of Gods adversary.
THE HISTORY OF JUDAH
Chapters 11 to 36 contain the roster of kings. The fortunes of the country answer accurately and inevitably to the characters of their rulers. On the whole, the history is a down-grade. In that respect, it runs true to form. The doctrine of evolution may find an illustration in national life if it goes from the simple to the complex, but in so far as it contends for improvement, history fails to illustrate it. Degeneracy of nations has more often taken place than has social and moral progress.
The foundations of Judah were laid under David; the kingdoms glory appeared under Solomon. From that moment until this, one word expresses Judahs coursedecline.
Africa was once an advanced nation, now a heathen one; Italy once ruled the world, now she holds an inconspicuous place; Greece once represented the climax of physical and mental accomplishment, now she boasts neither. The reasons for decline are varied, but in Judah they were one the God who had made her great was too often forgotten, too willingly offended. When the nations neglect the source of their strength, weakness naturally ensues. Judahs strength was in the Lord, and when her kings forgot Him, despised His Word, entered into unholy alliances that were followed by the people, her fame declined, and her land fainted.
The mixed social condition manifested her sinfulness. We have a phrase, Like people, like priest. We can paraphrase that, Like princes, like people. The study of these kings results in no compliment to human nature. Some of them were utterly evil; most of them were a mixture of the good and bad; two or three of them were sound. Among the utterly evil ones, Jehoram, Ahaziah, Athaliah, Manasseh, Amon and Jehoiakin held first place. The ones that represent a mixture of good and bad were Jeroboam, Jehoshaphat, Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, Jehoiakim; while the truly good consisted of Jotham, Hezekiah and Josiah. In all probability the reign of each of these good kings was profoundly affected and made spiritually fruitful by the ministry of Isaiah, the greatest preacher among Old Testament Prophets. It is perhaps a fact of history that no rulers have ever proven faithful to God without the stimulating and salutary influence of the Gospel ministry.
The judgments and mercies of Second Chronicles alike vindicate Jehovah. In this record wickedness does not go unpunished; and yet it is a marvelous revelation of Divine mercy.
There is never the least sign of penitence on the part of the ruler and the people without an immediate and generous response from Jehovah.
When Jehoshaphat declined in his loyalty and effected a sinful coalition with Ahab, judgment fell; but instantly upon his repentance, mercy was shown. Judgment is always and everywhere Gods strange work, the work in which He takes no pleasure. As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Eze 33:11).
Mercy is His nature, His essential character, for to the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness. He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy (Pro 28:13).
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
CRITICAL NOTES.] This chapter gives the reigns of Jehoahaz (2Ch. 36:1-4), of Jehoiakim (2Ch. 36:5-8), of Jehoiachin (2Ch. 36:9-10), and of Zedekiah (2Ch. 36:11-21); the proclamation of Cyrus (2Ch. 36:22-23). Parallel with 2Ki. 23:21-25. The chapter scarcely adds anything to our knowledge of the later history of the Jewish kingdom, but it was requisite to complete the design of the work, which aimed at tracing the fortunes of the Jewish people from the death of Saul to the return under Zerubbabel [Speak. Com.].
2Ch. 36:1-4.Succession of Jehoahaz. Original name Shallum (Jer. 22:11); third son of Josiah (1Ch. 3:15); took name of Jehoahaz (the Lord possesses) on accession. 2Ch. 36:3. Necho followed up advantage gained in Judah, deposed J. Condemned, fined the land, and set up Eliakim as vassal on the throne. 2Ch. 36:4. Turned, change of Eliakim into Jehoiakim (God sets up, into Jehovah sets up), in deference to the king and people, and in keeping with politic character of Necho. Eg., where he died.
2Ch. 36:5-8.Jehoiakim two years older than Jehoahaz, and of a different mother (2Ki. 23:31-36); evil, followed the course of idolatrous predecessors. 2Ch. 36:6. Nebuchad., first expedition against Palestine in lifetime of his father, Nabopolassar, who was old and infirm, and adopted his son Neb. joint sovereign, dispatched him against Egyptian invaders of the empire. Neb. victorious at Carchemish, drove them from Asia, reduced provinces west of Euphrates, and Jehoiakim became vassal of Assyrian kingdom (2Ki. 24:1). At end of three years J. rebelled, but vanquished, stripped of possessions, and taken prisoner. Allowed for a short time to remain in his tributary kingdom, gave fresh offence. Jerusalem besieged, and the king slain in a sally (cf. 2Ki. 24:2-7; Jer. 22:18-19; Jer. 36:30).
2Ch. 36:9-10.Jehoiachin. Eight: As Nebuchad carried away this kings wives (2Ki. 24:15), it is plain that eight here is a slip of the transcriber for eighteen, the number found in 2Ki. 24:8; and even in the Sept. Jehoiachin is otherwise Jechoniah (1Ch. 3:16), and even Coniah (Jer. 22:24). His reign of three months and ten days scarcely called a reign, as he merely claimed the crown until taken away by Nebuchad. [Murphy]. Year expired, lit., at the return of the year, in spring, when campaigns began City captured, temple pillaged, king, nobles, and skilful artisans carried to Babylon (2Ki. 24:8-17).
2Ch. 36:11-21.Zedekiahs reign. Originally Mattaniah, appointed by Nebuchad., from whom he received crown on conditions of solemn oath. 2Ch. 36:13. Swear, took oath of allegiance, which he broke, and was censured (Eze. 17:13). 2Ch. 36:14. Further justification for Gods rejection. Idolatry added to other sins. 2Ch. 36:15. Messengers, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and others. Betimes, continually and carefully. 2Ch. 36:16. No remedy, no healing; sinned beyond mercy (2Ki. 24:4). 2Ch. 36:17. Slew, out and slew; reference to God, who caused disasters to fall upon them for sins. Slaughter fearful at capture of city (cf. Eze. 9:6-7; Lam. 2:7-10). 2Ch. 36:20. Vessels enumerated (2Ki. 25:14-15). The pillage more sweeping than in days of Jehoiakim (2Ki. 25:1-10; Jer. 39:1-8). Those who escaped from sword carried into exile till accession of Persian king; servants, slaves to Neb. and his sons, employed in forced labour which great works necessitated. 2Ch. 36:21. Word (Jer. 25:11; Jer. 29:10). Sabbaths (Lev. 26:34-35). The seventy years to be counted from first taking of Jer. by Neb. in fourth year of Jehoiakim (605 B.C.).
2Ch. 36:22-23.Proclamation of Cyrus. Peculiar to Chron. An interval of fifty years passed over in silence [Murphy]. First year, as sovereign of second monarchy of Daniel (B.C. 538). Stirred up, mode not mentioned; prophecy (Isa. 44:28; Isa. 45:1) may have been shown to him by Daniel, and exercised powerful influence over him. God of heaven, similar formula at commencement of the great majority of Persian inscriptions [Speak. Com.]. Intimates acquaintance with supreme God, not necessarily an intelligent adherent; Cyrus considered that he was charged, chosen agent to build Gods house, and therefore invites his people to return. Such is the finale of Chronicles. It thereby shows itself to be an introduction to the history of the returning exiles of Judah and Israel, which is contained in Ezra and Nehemiah, and an exposition of the peculiar principles by which the restored people had to be governed [Murphy].
HOMILETICS
THE REIGN OF JEHOAHAZ.2Ch. 36:1-4
After death of Josiah, a deplorable period of misrule and imbecility. Unhappy sons struggled for independence, but entailed miseries of siege and capture. Kings recede into obscurity: Jeremiah, the prophet, the central figure around whom gather interests of a falling State. For three-and-twenty years almost alone, he endeavours to avert, delay, or mitigate the judgments, but in vain. When he cannot give hope, says one, or consolation, or peace, he gives his tender sympathyis himself the sad example of exile, persecution, misery, death.
I. The method of his accession. The people of the land made him king. Not the eldest son of Josiah, but popular favourite on account of his martial spirit (Eze. 19:3), and determined opposition to aggressive measures in Egypt. Anointeda ceremony not deemed necessary in regular and undisputed successionto impart greater validity to popular choice and render disturbance from Necho less likely, who, like all Egyptians, associated idea of sanctity with regal anointing. Man proposeth, but God disposeth.
II. The shortness of his reign. He reigned three months, and the king put him down. Necho on victorious return from the Euphrates deposed him, and deemed it expedient to have a king of his own nomination on the throne. The will of the people, the solemnity of anointing of no avail. The autocrat, good or bad, a Solomon or a Herod, is without control. (Sic volo; sic jubeo; stat pro ratione voluntas), He doeth whatsoever pleaseth him, and who may say unto him, What doest thou? (Ecc. 8:3-4).
III. The taxing of the land. Put the land to a tribute (a hundred talents of silver, 3,418 15s.; and a talent of gold, 5,475; total amount of tribute, 8,893 15s.). Heb., set a mulct upon the land (2Ki. 23:33). This a dishonour, a sign of subjection and dependence. What a fall from exalted position and former greatness!
IV. The end of his career. The deposed king sent for to Riblah, in Syria, arrested in chains, taken prisoner, and carried into Egypt, where he died. Something there had been in his character, or in the popular mode of his election, which endeared him to his country. A lamentation, as from his father, went up from the princes and prophets of the land for the lions cub (Eze. 19:14), that was learning to catch his prey, caught in the pitfall, and led off in chainsby a destiny even sadder than death in battle. Weep not for the dead, nor bemoan him, but weep sore for him who goeth away. He was the first King of Judah who died in exile. He shall return no more, he shall return no more to see his native countryhis native land no more (Jer. 22:10-12) [Stanley].
JEHOIAKIM, THE WICKED PRINCE.2Ch. 36:3-8
Jehoiakim second son of Josiah, born B.C. 634, and eighteenth king of separate throne of Judah for a period of eleven years, set up as vassal of Egyptian king.
I. The significant change of his name. Originally Eliakim (El-yakim), changed into Jehoiakim (Jeho-Yakim). Heathen princes gave new names to those who entered their service usually after their gods. This an Israelitish name, bestowed probably at Eliakims own request, whom Hengsten-berg supposes to have been influenced by a desire to be connected with the promise (in 2Sa. 7:12), where not El, God, but Jehovah will set up. The change signifies loss of liberty and dependence. A striking contrast between the beauty of the name and the misery of its fate. Aspire to that new name which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it.
II. The wickedness of his conduct. A reign filled with idolatry, oppression, and misfortunes. Sketched with masterly hand in Jer. 22:13-23, and in Eze. 19:5 to Eze. 9:1. In his restoration of idolatry. He followed the example of idolatrous predecessors, people eagerly availed themselves of vicious license of a lax government. Land filled with heathen abominations.
2. In his tyrannical measures of government. Jeremiah reproaches him for covetousness, cruelty, injustice, violence, and luxury (Jer. 22:13-17). Bloodthirsty (2Ch. 26:20-23), selfish, and most extravagant. Indifferent to sufferings of his people, and at a time of impoverishment of land by heavy tributes to Egypt, he squandered large sums in building luxurious palaces.
3. In his impious defiance of God. From beginning of his reign the voice of Jeremiah predicts and prefigures danger by striking signs. Attempts to silence the prophet by princes, priests, and false prophets. Jehoiakim used the penknife to cut up the leaves of the Book and destroy the effect of the message, at a period of solemn fast. The counsel of God stood sure, but no impression made upon the mind of the king by the fresh roll.
4. In his rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar. After three years subjection, deluded by Egyptian party in court, he ventured to withhold tribute and throw off Chaldan yoke (2Ki. 24:1). Perhaps desired to spend money in luxury and pride, not to pay the King of Babylon; perhaps sought to become independent since severance of Egypt from Syria at battle of Carchemish. But the step, contrary to earnest remonstrance of Jeremiah, in violation of oath of allegiance, and the ruin of king and country.
III. The Calamities of his reign. Scripture statements brief but graphic.
1. The invasion of his kingdom. Nebuchadnezzer too busy in conflict between Lydian and Median empires to march against Jerusalem and chastise his rebellious vassal, sent his governors to rouse surrounding nations, and Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites united with Chaldan forces to harass Judah. No rest or safety out of the walled cities. At length, in seventh year of his reign (B.C. 598), Nebuchadnezzar took field in person, concentrated forces, marched first against Tyre, which had rebelled about time of Judah; then, after investment of city, went against Jerusalem.
2. The desecration of the Temple. Carried the vessels of the house of the Lord to Babylon. A portion of sacred vessels, perhaps in lieu of tribute unpaid, and deposited in the house of Belus, his god (Dan. 1:2; Dan. 5:2).
IV. The dishonour of his end. Though a prisoner and chained to be carried to Babylon at first, he was permitted to remain in his tributary kingdom. In siege of the city, by an engagement with the enemy, or by the hand of his own oppressed subjects, who thought to conciliate the Babylonians by the murder of their king, he came to a violent end in eleventh year of his reign. His body ignominiously treated as predictedcast over the walls, left exposed, dragged away with the burial of an ass beyond the gates of Jerusalem (cf. Jer. 22:10 and Jeremiah 36). Warning lost upon J.; disregarded future with its clear and awful signs, held the throne in sufferance, until he fell into disgrace and ruin. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
ZEDEKIAHS REIGN: THE EXTINCTION OF THE ROYAL LINE.2Ch. 36:11-21
Zed. the twentieth and last king of Judah. His proper name, Mattaniah, changed to Zedekiah at accession, may be in allusion to Jeremiahs prophecy of Israels future as Jehovah-tsidkenuJehovah, our Righteousness (2Ch. 23:5; 2Ch. 23:8). Rather weak than wicked, Z. requested the prophet to pray for him, but refused his advice. Rebellion brought siege to the city, destruction to the Temple, and exile to himself and Royal family. The events of his reign summed up in brief record
I. Reckless disregard of Divine warnings. Jeremiah a true prophet and best friend, but unheeded; treated alternately as a traitor and a madman (Joseph. Ant. 2Ch. 10:7, sec. 41); and at last imprisoned. Admonished, but amended not. He humbled not himself before Jeremiah, &c.
II. Ruinous policy pursued. Policy of Jeremiah prevailed for a while in foreign matters. An embassy sent to Babylon to take solemn oath with Nebuchadnezzar in the sacred name of Elohim, which Israel and Babylon alike acknowledged.
1. In throwing off yoke of allegiance. Rebelled against N., who had made him sware by God that he would keep the kingdom for Nebuchad., make no innovation, enter into no alliance with Egypt (Eze. 17:3; Joseph, 2Ch. 10:7, s. 3). He acted in contravention to this oath, perjured his character, and committed the crowning act of wickedness, according to the high standard of prophetic morality. Shall he prosper? shall he escape that doeth such things? or shall he break the covenant and be delivered? As I live, saith the Lord God, surely in the place where the king dwelleth that made him king, whose oath he despised, and whose covenant he brake, even with him in the midst of Babylon shall he die (Eze. 17:15-16).
2. In persisting in rebellion. Hananiahs prophecy had been falsified, and he himself had died according to the word of Jeremiahthe folly of a mere remnant opposing a mighty nation was exposed. Egyptian help in vain, and real alliance with surrounding nations impossible. Yet the king infatuated, held out and was mined.
III. Incurable idolatry into which the nation had fallen.
1. All classes were corrupted. All the chief of the priests who should have opposed idolatry, and the people transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen. Into the sacred precincts of the temple idolatrous rites had crept. In the outer court women wept and wailed for Tammuz (Eze. 8:14); in subterranean chambers incense offered by elders to creeping things and abominable beasts (ib. 2Ch. 10:11); and at the entrance to the temple building, between porch and altar, the rising sun was worshipped, by those who turned their backs to the sanctuary and their faces to the east (2Ch. 36:16). Thus they polluted the house of the Lord which he had hallowed in Jerusalem.
2. The prophets of God were insulted. Mocked in words, opposed openly in acts, and ill-treated in life. This affront to God who sent them, an evidence of implacable enmity and an invincible determination to persevere in sin. But those that abuse Gods messengers provoke his wrath and cannot escape.
3. The nation beyond all hope. The wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy (2Ch. 36:16). No healing, no physician, for a body corrupt and already dead. Sins beyond mercy, which the Lord would not pardon (2Ki. 24:4). Possible to sin too long, to sin away the day of grace. They would none of my counsel; they despised all my reproof, therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way and be filled with their own devices.
IV. The execution of Divine judgments. The end rapidly coming. The city besieged and reduced to extremities. Fire of besiegers aided by severe famine within. Inhabitants resorted to terrible expedience (Jer. 38:9; Lam. 4:10). At length a breach effected and Chaldns entered.
1. The temple burned;
2. The city ruined; and
3. The inhabitants carried to Babylon. Sacred vessels taken, palaces of princes levelled to the ground, fortifications demolished, and predictions fulfilled to the letter. No escape by flight. Zedekiah pursued, caught, and despatched to Riblah. Nebuchadnezzar, with cruelty characteristic of the times, ordered his sons to be killed and his own eyes to be thrust out (cf. Jer. 32:4 and Eze. 12:13). The king of Babylon bound him in chains and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death.
1. Transgressors cannot escape from appointed judgments.
2. The bitterness of sin is seen in the overthrow which it creates.
3. Since we have not otherwise any guarantee against national humiliation, what need to have the Lord on our side!
Justice, like lightning, ever should appear
To few mens ruin, but to all mens fear [Swenam].
THE PROCLAMATION OF CYRUS.2Ch. 36:22-23
God pitied his people in captivity. Predicted long before that he would restore them again to the land of their fathers. The promise not forgotten. In the first year, when Cyrus gained possession of Babylon, an edict granting exiles permission to return to Jerusalem.
I. The work Cyrus was called upon to undertake. He hath charged me to build him an house. Jerusalem in ruins, materials and men required to rebuild. Some pull down and delight in destruction. Cyrus felt responsible for rebuilding of Temple, construction of Theocracy, and arrangements for future kingdom and welfare of Gods people. The secular welfare of his government and the religious interests of his own country overlooked. Absorbed in one grand mission. Israels disobedience to Gods charge aggravated by obedience of Cyrus, a heathen king.
II. The proclamation for help in this work. He made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom. His dominions first confined to province of Persia, successively enlarged by addition of Media, Lydia, Asia Minor, Babylon and Assyria, Samaria and Judea.
1. The proclamation was inspired. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus. Not the suggestion of Magi in the city; not the instruction of Daniel, who informed Cyrus of predictions concerning him. But the Lord God of heaven, who influences the heart of kings like rivers of water, prompted him to fulfil this duty.
2. The proclamation was written. Written in Jewish language to be understood by tribes in distant provinces. Written and proclaimed aloud, caused a voice to pass, like a jubilee trumpet to sound deliverance to captives.
3. The proclamation was gracious. Political considerations might prompt. Egypt a formidable rival to the great world empires. Might be advantageous to have an advanced post in south of Judea to protect against invasion, or from which to make rapid descent upon lands of the Nile. But higher aim in the emancipation of Jews and liberty to return.
III. The response to the proclamation. Cf. Ezra 1. Leaders and chief men responded heartily. God disposed many to make sacrifices and return, others remained in Babylon.
1. The response must be immediate. Let him go up without delay.
2. The response must be voluntary. Who is there among you of all the people?
3. The response must be accepted. May involve risk, long journey and great sacrifices; but duty urges, God promises, and privileges enjoyed if we comply. The gospel preaches deliverance to the captives, but many in love with sin, prefer to stay in the world and have no portion in Jerusalem.
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
2Ch. 36:8. Found in him.
1. Evil latent in every heart.
2. Circumstances only required to discover and develop it.
2Ch. 36:13. Three steps in wickedness. Broke his engagement, stiffened his neck, and hardened his heart. Rebelled, &c.
1. The sanctity of an oath. Though taken under compulsion, and not due on natural equity: yet must be held sacred, not binding merely till exigency should pass away.
2. The danger of infringement. Its violation not excused, nor passed in silence; but the filling up of the cup of the nations guilt. Contracts and oaths not mere legal forms, to be lightly esteemed, but solemn obligations. Violations more criminal than breaking promises; sins of great deliberation, signs of lax morals, and may be precursors of national ruin.
2Ch. 36:16. His prophets.
1. Prophetic teaching a constant element in Israels history. Not left in darkness like heathen nations. Crises and master minds. Moses, Samuel, David, Elijah, &c.
2. The method of this teaching unique and worthy of consideration. Divinely taught. Each set apart; all pre-eminently raised above their fellow-men, the messengers of God. Earnestly taught. Rising up betimes, i.e., earnestly and carefully: unwearied anxiety and solicitation. Patiently taught. Sending them constantly, though ill-treated and set at nought. What kindness and forbearance!
3. Rejection of this teaching brings guilt and danger. Guilt aggravated, until the wrath of the Lord arose. Escape hopeless, till there is no remedy. Gods long-suffering and earnest entreaties by servants rising early and protesting to them. The most awful aggravations of guilt in refusing to hear (cf. Jer. 11:11).
God sends his teachers with every age,
To every clime and every race of men,
With revelations fitted to their growth
And shape of mind [Lowel].
No remedy. These words contain three facts of great importance.
1. That there was, at least at one time, a remedy.
2. That the remedy went on, and might have been used, for a very long period.
3. That there came a time when the remedy ceased.
1. All life is a remedy. The conditions of things require it. Life a great restorative process.
1. Comes that marvellous provision of God in Jesus Christ.
2. Subordinate to this great remedy of the cross of Christ, and working with it, all providences have a curative character.
3. Every one carries within himself an antidote to himself. Conscience, till silenced, a sure antidote for evil. II. Notice the word till. It shows how slow God is to take away the remedy. His mercy holds back the arm of justice. But we may sin ourselves into a state, not in which there is no forgiveness, but no thought or desire to seek forgiveness. No remedy, not on Gods account, but your own; not in Gods want of will to save you, but in your own incapacity to will your own salvation [J. Vaughan, Sermons].
2Ch. 36:21. As long. Seventy years desolation predicted by Jeremiah. The idea that the duration of the desolation was determined in the Divine counsels by the number of the neglected sabbatical years, and that the enforced fallow was intended to compensate for previous unlawful cultivation, is not found in Jeremiah, and, indeed, appears only in Lev. 26:34-35, and in this place [Speak. Com.]. Learn
1. The purpose of God in the affliction of his people.
2. The providence of God in regulating affliction for good, and as regardsa, method; b, degree; c, time. As the exodus from Egypt came in the exact time, so return from Babylon after seventy years. Times of deliverance correspond with minute exactness to prophetic announcements. Hence patience, submission, and hope. Even the selfsame day it came to pass (Exo. 12:41).
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
18. THE REIGN OF JEHOAHAZ (2Ch. 36:1-3)
TEXT
2Ch. 36:1. Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and made him king in his fathers stead in Jerusalem. 2. Joahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign; and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. 3. And the king of Egypt deposed him at Jerusalem, and fined the land a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.
PARAPHRASE
2Ch. 36:1. Josiahs son Jehoahaz was selected as the new king. 2. He was twenty-three years old when he began to reign, but lasted only three months. 3. Then he was deposed by the king of Egypt, who demanded an annual tribute from Judah of $250,000.
COMMENTARY
Josiahs son, Jehoahaz, was put on Judahs throne during the crisis of Josiahs death. His name meant Jehovah hath grasped, or He has taken hold of me. The Egyptians asserted power over Jerusalem and took Jehoahaz (Joahaz) captive into Egypt. Eliakim (Jehoiakim) was Jehoahaz brother. After Jehoahaz had reigned only three months, the Egyptians put Eliakim on the throne.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
XXXVI.
THE REIGN OF JEHOAHAZ (2Ch. 36:1-4). (Comp. 2Ki. 23:30-35; 3 Esdr. 1:32-36.)
(1) Then.And.
The people of the land took Jehoahaz.Comp. 2Ch. 26:1; 2Ch. 33:25. Jehoahaz or Shallum was not the firstborn (1 Chron. iii 15). See Notes on 2Ki. 23:30, with which this verse agrees.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
2Ch 36:9 Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD.
2Ch 36:9
1Ch 3:16, “And the sons of Jehoiakim: Jeconiah his son, Zedekiah his son.”
Jer 22:24, “As I live, saith the LORD, though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence;”
Comments – We are told in 2Ki 24:8 that Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign.
2Ki 24:8, “Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother’s name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem.”
Note the Hebrew ( ) son of eighteen years.
Note the Hebrew ( ) son of eight years.
There are several ideas that scholars use to justify this difference in age.
1. Jehoiachin Co-Reigned with His Father – It is possible that Jehoiachin began to co-reign with his father at the tender age of eight, and that he took full leadership at the age of eighteen. However, this is only speculation.
2. Jehoiachin’s Reign Began in the Eighth Year of Babylonian Captivity John Gill refers to John Lightfoot, who suggests that he was eighteen years old when he began to reign, which was the eighth year of the Babylonian captivity based on 2Ki 24:12. [47] However, this is also speculation.
[47] John Gill, 2 Kings, in John Gill’s Expositor, in e-Sword, v. 7.7.7 [CD-ROM] (Franklin, Tennessee: e-Sword, 2000-2005), comments on 2 Kings 24:8.
2Ki 24:12, “And Jehoiachin the king of Judah went out to the king of Babylon, he, and his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and his officers: and the king of Babylon took him in the eighth year of his reign .”
3. A Copyist Error – Many scholars believe that this is a copyist error, this idea being supported by the fact that the ancient Syriac and Arabic versions correct both texts to read “eighteen.”
It is not probable that Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign. This is because an eight-year old child would not be considered as doing “that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.” (2Ch 24:9), and also because he would not have had wives at this early age, as the Scriptures declare in 2Ki 24:15.
2Ki 24:15, “And he carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon, and the king’s mother, and the king’s wives , and his officers, and the mighty of the land, those carried he into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon.”
2Ch 36:9 “and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem” Comments – We see in 2Ki 24:8 that Jehoiachin reigned in Jerusalem three months only, without the reference to ten days. Scholars believe that the author of 2 Kings was simply rounding off this figure.
2Ki 24:8, “Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother’s name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem.”
2Ch 36:16 But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against his people, till there was no remedy.
2Ch 36:16
Note other uses of this same Hebrew word, “remedy”:
Pro 6:15, “Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly; suddenly shall he be broken without remedy .”
Pro 29:1, “He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy .”
The opposite of “remedy” would be “trouble or calamity.” Note the use of the same Hebrew as it is translated “health, healing”:
Jer 8:15, “We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health , and behold trouble!”
Jer 14:19, “Hast thou utterly rejected Judah? hath thy soul lothed Zion? why hast thou smitten us, and there is no healing for us? we looked for peace, and there is no good; and for the time of healing , and behold trouble!
2Ch 36:21 To fulfil the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years.
2Ch 36:21
Lev 25:4-5, “But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land.”
2Ch 36:22 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying,
2Ch 36:22
[48] Jack Martin Balcer, “Cyrus the Great,” in The World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 4 (Chicago: World Book, Inc., 1994), 1208.
Isa 44:26-28, “That confirmeth the word of his servant, and performeth the counsel of his messengers; that saith to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be inhabited; and to the cities of Judah, Ye shall be built, and I will raise up the decayed places thereof: That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers: That saith of Cyrus , He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.”
Isa 45:1, “Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut;”
Ezr 1:1-2, “Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The End of the Southern Kingdom.
The Reign of Jehoahaz, Johoiakim, and Jehoiachin.
v. l Then the people of the land, as before, in the case of Josiah and Uzziah, took Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah, and made him king in his father’s stead in Jerusalem. His name before his accession to the throne was Shallum, and the people chose him in preference to his older brother Eliakim, probably because they believed he would show an aggressive spirit over against the encroachments of Egypt.
v. 2. Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem, v. 3. And the king of Egypt put him down at Jerusalem, v. 4. And the king of Egypt made Eliakim, his brother, king over Judah and Jerusalem, and turned his name, v. 5. 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. v. 6. Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, v. 7. Nebuchadnezzar also carried of the vessels of the house of the Lord to Babylon, v. 8. Now, the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim and his abominations which he did, v. 9. Jehoiachin v. 10. And when the year was expired,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
One short chapter now brings to a conclusion the work, in so many aspects remarkable, called ‘The Chronicles.’ And thirteen verses sum the contents of the four last pre-Captivity kings of the line of Judah. The words of Keil, in opening this last chapter in his commentary, are not unworthy of note. He says, “As the kingdom of Judah after Josiah’s death advanced with swift steps to its destruction by the Chaldeans, so the author of the Chronicle goes quickly over the reigns of the last kings of Judah, who by their godless con-duet hastened the ruin of the kingdom. As to the four kings remaining, who reigned between Josiah’s death and the destruction of Jerusalem, he gives, besides their ages at their respective accessions, only a short characterization of their conduct towards God, and a statement of the main events which, step by step, brought about the ruin of the king and the burning of Jerusalem and the temple.”
This chapter, then, contains, first, very brief accounts of the four reigns of Jehoahaz (2Ch 36:1-4), Eliakim or Jehoiakim (2Ch 36:4-8), Jehoiachin (2Ch 36:9, 2Ch 36:10), and Zedekiah (2Ch 36:10-13); next, general remarks on the iniquity that heralded the destruction of the nation and the punishment of it by the Chaldean captivity (2Ch 36:14-17); thirdly, the methods of that destruction and captivity (2Ch 36:17-21); and lastly, the restoring proclamation of Cyrus King of Persia.
2Ch 36:1
The people of the land took Jehoahaz (see parallel, 2Ki 23:30). The form of expression may indicate the hearty zeal of the nation for this chosen son of Josiah, who seems to have been not the eldest. In the next verse, as Revised Version, he is called Joahaz. In 1Ch 3:15, as in the affecting passage Jer 22:10-12, his name appears as Shallum. His mother’s name was Hamutal, while the name of the mother of his immediate sue-cessor was Zebudah (2Ki 23:31 and 2Ki 23:36).
2Ch 36:3
Put him down; Hebrew, ; i.e. deposed him (Revised Version). At Jerusalem. In something more than three months Pharaoh-Necho seems to have been returning, and in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. The parallel (2Ki 23:31) tells us that he put Jahoahaz “in bands” at “Riblath in the land of Hamath” (Eze 19:4). And condemned the land; i.e. inflicted a fine on the land; Hebrew, . From this time nothing further is heard of Jehoahaz or Shallum.
2Ch 36:4
Eliakim. The meaning of the word is “God sets up;” the meaning of Jehoiakim is “Jehovah sets up.” An Egyptian king knew and recognized the word “God,” but possibly meant to taunt the “Jehovah” of the Jew.
2Ch 36:5
Here we note the age of Jehoiakim as greater than that of Jeoahaz, and in the parallel we read that his mother was different.
2Ch 36:6
Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon. Our mere allusions in this and the following verse to Nebuchadnezzar’s relations to Jehoiakim and Judah are strange in comparison with the graphic account furnished by the parallel (2Ki 24:1-6). The name is the same with Nabokodrosoros, is written in the Assyrian monuments Nebu-kuduri-utzur, and meaning, “Nebo (Isa 46:1), protector from ill,” or “protects the crown.” In Jeremiah (Jer 49:28) we have the name written Nebuchadrezzar, as also in Ezekiel. Nebuchadnezzar, second King of Babylon, was the son of Nabopolassar, who took Nineveh B.C. 625, and reigned above forty years. Though we are here told he bound Jehoiakim in chains, to take him to Babylon, for some reason or other he did not carry out this intention, and Jehoiakim was put to death at Jerusalem (Jer 12:1-17 :18, 19; Jer 36:30; Eze 19:8, Eze 19:9). The expedition of Nebuchadnezzar was B.C. 605-4 (Dan 1:1; Jer 25:1), and during it, his father dying, he succeeded to the throne.
2Ch 36:7
(Comp. Dan 2:2.) The temple here called his temple was, no doubt, the temple of Belus, or in the vernacular “Merodach,” the Babylonian god of war. This rifling of the sacred vessels of Jerusalem’s temple for Babylon’s temple was the significant beginning of the end for Judah now at last, after many a warning.
2Ch 36:8
The rest of the acts of Jehoiakim. As our compiler has literally told us none at all, we need but note his expression here as a convenient formula, indicating his own intentional brevity, and the fact that he was privy to all in the original sources, which he nevertheless now omitted; yet see Jer 7:9; Jer 19:13, etc. The telling expression, what was found in him, is too readily to be filled up from the parallel, in its Jer 19:3, Jer 19:4. Jehoiachin his son. In 1Ch 3:16 he is called Jeconiah, and in Jer 22:24 he is called Coniah.
2Ch 36:9
Eight years old. Our text, not the writer, is in error, and the parallel furnishes the correction, “eighteen years old.”
2Ch 36:10
When the year was expired; i.e. at the beginning of the new year, in spring (2Ch 24:23). It appears, from 2Ki 25:27-30, that the captivity of Jehoia-chin, which thus began, lasted thirty-seven years, till b.c. 561, past the end of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, and that he was thenceforward kindly treated by Evil-Merodach. Compare particularly with this verse the parallel in its 2Ki 25:10-16. Zedekiah his brother; i.e. not adopting the very generic usage of the terms of relationship, so common in Old Testament language, his uncle. His mother (Hamutal, 2Ki 25:18 of parallel) was the same with the mother of Jehoahaz. Ten years old evidently when Jehoiakim began his reign, he must have been thirteen years younger than his whole brother Je-hoahaz. Zedekiah’s name was before Mat-taniah. The account of Zedekiah in the parallel (which see) is very much more full.
2Ch 36:12
Humbled not himself before Jeremiah the prophet. Very numerous passages in the Book of Jeremiah (21-51.) illustrate both this clause and generally the feeble character and uncertain career of Zedekiah.
2Ch 36:13
He also rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God (Elohim). The criticism of the Prophet Ezekiel upon this oath-violation on the part of Zedekiah is to be found Eze 17:12-20; Eze 21:25. Unto the Lord God of Israel. Note here the resorting on the part of the Jew to the name, Jehovah. It is not this name that is used at the commencement of the verse.
2Ch 36:14
This, with the following three verses, may be regarded as the formal and final indictment of the people of Judah, and may be compared with that of Israel (2Ki 17:6-23). All the chief of the priests (see 1Ch 24:1, 1Ch 24:3-19). The heads of the twenty-four courses there spoken of, with the high priest added, sum up the twenty-five men of Eze 8:16, the entire of which chapter may well be read with the present history, and its description of the culminating pitch of wickedness of king, priests, and people.
2Ch 36:15
His messengers. The chief of these were presumably Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. The marginal references (Jer 25:3-7; Jer 35:12-15) are very interesting, both for this verse and the following.
2Ch 36:16
No remedy (comp. our 2Ch 21:18; Pro 6:15; Pro 29:1; Jer 8:15; Jer 14:19; Jer 33:6; Mal 4:2 [3:20]).
2Ch 36:17
Powerful illustrations of this verse may be read in Lain. 2. and Eze 9:1-11. throughout the length of the chapters.
2Ch 36:18
Compare the parallel in its 2Ch 36:13-17 (2Ki 25:1-30.); Jer 52:15-23.
2Ch 36:19, 2Ch 36:20
(Compare the parallel, 2Ki 25:1-12; Jer 39:1-10; Jer 52:24-30.) The reign of the kingdom of Persia; i.e. the ascending on the throne of the Persian king. The immediate successor of Nebuchadnezzar was his son Evil-Merodach.
2Ch 36:21
The word of the Lord. Note marginal references (Jer 25:9-12; Jer 29:10). The three score and ten years of desolateness may probably best be dated from Nebuchadnezzar’s first taking of Jerusalem, b.c. 606-5. Although this date does not tally exactly with the b.c. 538 of Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon, yet the discrepancy is easily explained on more than one sufficiently natural supposition (e.g. that Cyrus’s reign was not exactly synchronous in the beginning of it with his conquest of Babylon, etc.). Enjoyed her sabbaths (see Le 26:34, 35, 43-46).
2Ch 36:22
In the first year of Cyrus King of Persia. A period of half a century has elapsed between the latest date of the foregoing verses and the date signalized here (circ. b.c. 5.38-6). With the proclamation of Cyrus begins in fact the manhood, with all its mystic, its wonderful, and its still non-progressing struggles, of the Jew. His simple childhood, wilful youth, am indeed for ever gone. But he and his nation are with unspeakably painful travail born. No life of nation that is or ever has been merits the devout observation and study that this unchal-lengeably does. Our present verse and the one succeeding it are, sentence for sentence, the same with the opening verses of the Book of Ezra, which may possibly once have joined on to Chronicles, as one work, though we think this exceedingly unlikely. Cyrus (the of the Hebrew text) was the son of a royal Persian, Cambysses; his mother was Mandane, daughter of Astyages, last King of Media. The name appears on the monuments, written Kurus. Cyrus defeated his grandfather Astyages, b.c. 559; ending thereby the Median royal line; and he defeated Croesus, b.c. 546, possessing himself thereby of the kingdom of Lydia; he took Babylon, as above, b.c. 538. He himself died in battle, b.c. 529. That the word of the Lord by Jeremiah might be accomplished (see Jer 25:11-14; Jer 29:9-11). The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus. The fact is told us, and this, no doubt, as on a thousand other unsuspected occasions of far more intrinsic and vital interest in the Bible, is sufficient. It would have been interesting to know, however, even here, the mode in which Cyrus was appealed to; as, e.g; it has been plausibly suggested that Daniel may have been in part instrumental in the work, and that, again, in part perhaps by directing the attention of Cyrus to Isa 44:28; Isa 45:1.
2Ch 36:23
Hath the Lord God of heaven given me the Lord his God be with him. The adopting by Cyrus of the Hebrew “Jehovah” in both these places cannot escape our notice. There can be no room to doubt that Cyrus was acquainted with the sacred literature of the Hebrews, and especially with the writings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, as with the language of Daniel. It may have been partly a graceful act on the part of Cyrus to word his proclamation to the Jews thus, or it may have been simply, what under the circumstances came most naturally to him, with little or no intention in it either way. The numerous passages in Ezra parallel in matter with this verse do not need specification here. Now begins the new period of Jewish life, with fiercer probation, with unbounded and various trial, and probably of world-length continuance.
HOMILETICS
2Ch 36:1-23
The final indictment, sentence, and execution of it.
It is in 2Ch 36:11-21 of this chapter that we are given to read the final summary of, first, the folly and sin of Judah, her king, princes, and people; and second, the just displeasure and necessary punishment of Jehovah after an unparalleled forbearance. The historic incidents of the four reigns which occupy this chapter abound in pathetic, tragic interest. The account of them given in the parallel (2Ki 23:31-25:30) is fuller. And both are illustrated and extraordinarily enhanced in interest by the light and by the cross-lights flung on the scene in the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel (particularly Jer 21:1-14; Jer 24:1-10; 27-29; 32-34; Jer 37:1-21; Jer 38:1-28; 51:59-52:34; Eze 1:1-3; Eze 12:13; Eze 40:1). Many of these portions of history write, and loudly utter forth as well, their own emphatic and impressive homilies. The present Scripture, however, offers matter of most solemn reflection, in summarizing the long indictment of centuries that lay against Judah, and in a most pathetic rehearsing of the compassionate, forbearing, ever-forgiving ministration of Divine love which had for equal length of time striven to prevail over her infidelity, yet all in vain! Her day of visitation had been not one day only; it had been many a day! She “knew” them not, and “now they are hid from her eyes.” Judah’s long-drawn sin, of many a day, year, generation, and even century, had been, in one word, idolatry. That sin incurs the guilt of the first two commandments set at nought. There is a sense, only too obvious and too certain, in which it is the world’s fundamental source of sin and snare of sin. No age, no people, exempt from the danger, and every individual exposed, at any rate, to it.
I. THE CLAIM OF GOD UPON MAN IS THAT MAN WORSHIP HIM. The honoured word “worship” is often dishonoured, in our not keeping in vivid memory all its strangely beautiful import. To love supremely, to obey perfectly, to serve perpetually, to express praise and render homage intelligently, and to say without a reserve that all this is the simple due of the object adoredthis is to worship! Notice:
1. The claim is absolute, one undivided and unshared, and always operating without intermission.
2. It is natural, reasonable, vindicable in every sense, and from every point of view. Nothing else could be thought, nothing else would ever have been thought, except from one circumstance.
3. It postulates the consent, not the conflict, of that in man which is called his free-will. That free-will is a great fact in human nature-solemn, responsible, and inspiring factbut it is the central fact of a moral nature, instead of a merely physical or merely animal nature. Nay, more; it is the head and the crownthe very crown of that moral nature, resting on its brow, and by rights resting there as an imperishable crown. Unless miserably and most mournfully forfeited, it is such. There belongs to it by equal rights immortality of honour, and the honour of immortality. The lesson Judah never learnt effectually was that she was not her own. The last lesson any of us learns absolutely perfectly isjust that same. Happy is the fresh full life, the patience, the strength, the confidence, the love, of that man who has learnt, “rising up betimes,” that he is not his own; and that he ought not to be sin’s and Satan’s, but the blest property of God, and prized (with and because of his freewill and all) of that God! It is when our free-will becomes an infatuated will, perverse will, self-will, that our glory is dragged in the dust, and our crown and diadem fall. There is no so great, broad, practical, ennobling rule for any man’s and every man’s life than to study to remember well and absolutely that he is God’s and Christ’s, and not (as also a man often says, oftener thinks in his heart, of his money), NOT his own, to do with himself, his lifetime, his powers, his heart, his tongue,” what he likes.“
II. DIVINEST MINISTRY IS VOUCHSAFED IN SUPPORT OF THAT CLAIM.
1. That gracious ministry helps by informing. The force of habit, of example, of hereditary misinclinations and disinclinations, has been potent to put out the truth in this matter. “The Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people” (verse 15).
2. The informing ministry is the ministry of revelation.
3. It is a graciously persistent one, repeating over and over again its various methods.
4. It is a warning, and, if needs be, a threatening ministrysometimes so to the last degree, confronting a man, and standing awhile in his actual way, as the angel in the way of Balaam.
5. It is also an encouraging and rewarding ministry. None who heed it doubt this, or ever find it otherwise. Sin, how often it gave heart-ache and life-ache to king and people! but “the turning to the Lord God of Israel” (verse 13) never failed to do the contrary.
6. It is a punishing and again relenting and forgiving ministry. How often punishment is learnt, before it is experiencedif, alas! it should be so by anyfor the long last time!
7. When, after all, that ministry is sinned against, “mocked, despised, misused, till there is no remedy” (verse 16), then comes the wreck of “wrath,” that wrath which can no longer be made light of, decisive, irrevocable, and in itself dreadful.
III. AFTER JUDAH‘S IRREVOCABLE SENTENCE OF PUNISHMENT, AND THE DREAD SEVENTY YEARS OF HUMILIATION AND CAPTIVITY, THERE IS THE SUDDEN, UNEXPECTED, HEAVEN– SENT INTERPOSITION OF A GREAT REDEMPTION. After the banishment from Eden it was so; after the deluge of Noah it was so; now, after Israel and Judah had run their course as separate kingdoms, it was so; after Malachi, the last of “the prophets,” it was most chiefly so. And it is so now. The world of sin, the “mocking, despising, misusing” world of sin, the ever-suffering world of sin, pitiless toward itself, and mercilessly inflicting self-punishment, knows the announcement of an interposition great beyond all before, and the offer of a Heaven-sent, free, priceless hope and redemption!
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON
2Ch 36:1-10
Three melancholy spectacles.
As we read these verses we feel that we are drawing very near the end of the kingdom of Judah; there is an air of melancholy pervading this last chapter of the Hebrew chronicles. There are three things which it is sad to see.
I. A NATION SINKING INTO SERVITUDE. When Egypt comes up and deposes one king and sets up another, calling that other by a name that it pleases to confer, at the same time imposing a heavy tribute on the people of the land; and when, that power declining, Assyria sends its troops and, without any resistance, enters the capital, puts the sovereign in chains, and then extends to him a contemptuous protectorate; when this same power again comes up and carries away the sovereign after a brief reign of three months, and takes him away, with the most precious treasures of the capital;we are affected by a sense of pitiful national decline. We enter into the feelings of its patriot-subjects who could not have helped contrasting the glories of the age of David and Solomon with the abject humiliation of their own time. A strong and self-respecting people falling into servitude, bowing its head to an utterly relentless power which has no other force than that of the sword and the war-chariot,this is a melancholy spectacle indeed. It may profitably suggest to us the questionWhat is the real cause of a nation’s fall? and it will be found, on inquiry, that while this may be due to overweening ambition, it is much more likely to be ascribed to indulgence, to demoralization, to the weakness which must attend moral and spiritual deterioration. Simplicity and purity of life, sustained by Christian principlethis is the one security against decline, subjection, and ruin.
II. A YOUNG MAN‘S HOPES EXTINGUISHED. NO doubt the young prince Jehoahaz grew up in the court of Judah with high hopes for his future. His father was in possession of no mean estate, and there was every prospect of his succeeding to some measure, if not to the chief part of it. But, after three months’ occupancy or power and enjoyment of wealth, to be cast into chains and taken away to languish in confinement in Egypt until he died, was a sad and sorry portion. We do not know, but we can well imagine, that there was high hope extinguished, love broken off, much earthly brightness suddenly eclipsed. It is one of the consolations of obscurity that it is much less likely than is prominence to be subjected to such sudden and painful overthrow. It is most wise on the part of all of us to have in reserve a spiritual force that will sustain us if we “suffer the loss of all things” human and temporal.
III. A YOUNG MAN CHOOSING THE EVIL PATH. Of Jehoahaz, as well as of Jehoiakim and of Jehoiachin (see 2Ki 23:32, 2Ki 23:37; 2Ki 24:9), it is recorded that “he did evil in the sight of the Lord.” This is peculiarly sad as applicable to Jehoahaz. Considering the gracious influences under which he spent his childhood and his boyhood at court, he ought to have done (as he must have known) better things. Instead of confirming and consolidating the glorious revolution effected by his father, he dissipated all good forces and broke up all good institutions. It is not in the power of most young men to work evil on such a scale; but who shall measure the good left undone and the evil wrought when one young man deliberately chooses the evil part? Within the compass of one human life large capacities are included; how large only Omniscience can tell. Lot the young man feel that not for his own sake only, but also for the sake of a very large number of other human souls, it is of the greatest consequence that he should walk in the ways of heavenly wisdom.C.
2Ch 36:8
(with Jer 22:18).
An unlamented death.
We learn more of this King of Judah in the prophetic writings of Jeremiah than in these brief annals. There we learn that his foreign policy was not less condemnable than his conduct of home affairs. When his treasury was low by reason of heavy payments to the foreign powers, he must needs build for himself a splendid and costly mansion (Jer 22:14), and in order to do this he had to impress the labour of his subjects (Jer 22:13); he thus excited a strong feeling of just resentment and natural disaffection among them, and brought down upon himself the severe rebuke of the prophet of the Lord. We also learn from Jeremiah that the king acted in daring defiance of God’s holy Law, presuming to cut in two and to burn in the fire the sacred roll (Jer 36:23). By this wanton and impious action he still further drew down upon him the wrath of Jehovah, and by that act he terribly prejudiced and injured his country. How, then, can we wonder that the Chronicler writes, as in the text, of “the abominations which he did”? and how can we wonder that his death excited so different, so opposite a feeling throughout all his kingdom to that which the death of his father called forth (2Ch 35:24, 2Ch 35:25)? We have in him a melancholy instance of an unlamented death (Jer 22:18).
I. A LAMENTABLE ABSENCE OF SORROW. Let no man say lightly or cynically, “I don’t want any tears shed over my grave; I shall be quite content to die without any one sorrowing on my account.” There is no true unselfishness, but much thoughtlessness” in such a sentiment. Any minister of religion who has stood at the grave-side, and has been unable to ask for God’s comfort to be granted to those who are left behind, will know how little to be desired is the absence of grief at the death of a man or woman. For what does it mean? It means that God gave to such a man all the opportunities for winning human love, and that he did not gain it; for doing service, and that he left it undone; for rendering help and blessing, and that he did not render it; if means that a human life has been one long act of mean, barren, dreary selfishness, has been an utter failure, condemned of God and man! God forbid that any whom we love should die unlamented; with none to say, “Ah, my brother! ah, my sister!”
II. A SORROW MUCH TO BE DESIRED. Truly there is sorrow enough and to spare in this world of sin and woe. But there is one sorrow that no wise or good man would wish for one moment to be spared. It is that which we feel when our kindred and our friends are taken from us by death. The hope we have concerning these may chasten and (in time)supersede it. But sorrow there must be and should be. And it is well with us and for us that the heart bleeds freely then. For such sorrow is:
1. The tender tribute we pay to the worth of the departed, to their affection and to their goodness.
2. The proof that this hardening world has not petrified our spirit with its touch.
3. The share we have with all the best and truest of our race, enabling us to sympathize with them and to succour them.
4. The occasion which takes us often to the sympathizing Friend in elevating, chastening communion.
5. The unloosening of the ties which must soon he unbound to set us free.C.
2Ch 36:17
Stooping.
“No compassion on him that stooped for age.” There are many kinds of” stooping,” some of which are to be commiserated, one of which is to be honoured and even envied and emulated. There is the stooping which is
I. A MISFORTUNE. That of bodily deformity; such as was suffered by the poor woman of whom we read that “she had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bound together, and could in no wise lift up herself” (Luk 13:11). We do not wonder that the Lord of love had compassion on her, and “loosed her from her infirmity.” Perhaps few men and women are more to be pitied than the deformed. They see all ethers round them standing, walking, running, erect in the full stature and freedom of manhood, and they themselves are subjects of uncomeliness and inability. How cruelly unchristian to treat these with contempt, or even with disregard! How are we bound, as the followers of our Lord, to extend to these stooping ones our sympathy, our brotherliness, our honour! “Trust me no more, but trust me no less,” our great popular novelist makes such an afflicted one say continually; and here, as often, the secular writer is more Christian than he may know.
II. A MARK OF TIME. This is the case of those named in the text; they “stoop for age.” The burdens of life have rested on their shoulders and have made them stoop. They have carried much, and they bend with the weight of the years they have spent. It is an honorable mark, like that of the “hoary head.” Shall we pity them that stoop for age? Yes, if they have lived a life that has not been worthy, and move toward a future in which no star of hope is shining. No, if they are bent down with estimable and fruitful labour, with work that will leave many traces behind itespecially if the weight beneath which they stoop is the burden of others which they have generously and (perhaps) nobly borne (Gal 6:2); no, if this mark of the passage of time only indicates that he who thus stoops is nearing the end of his earthly service, that he may lay it down and take up the better work in the brighter light and the broader sphere, where toil knows no fatigue, and, instead of wearing out the worker, continually multiplies his power. But let those who “stoop for age” remember that their work below is nearly finished; that what else they would do here for the Master and for their kind they must do quickly; “so much the more (therefore) as they see the day approaching.”
III. A SERIOUS DISCREDIT. There is:
1. The stoop of servility. This is discreditable. No one need be and no one should be servile. It is a mistake as well as a fault and a dishonour. Civility every one appreciates; respect, all who are worthy of it look for and like to receive; but cringing or servility is as unacceptable to him to whom it is shown as it is dishonourable and injurious to him by whom it is offered.
2. The stoop of immorality; the lowering of the standard of morals in order to accommodate ourselves to circumstances, in order to be free to gain or to enjoy that which, in our truer and worthier moods, we could not touch. This stooping of the soul is pitiable indeed; it is also condemnable indeed. If we have yielded to it, let us be ashamed of it; let us rise to our true height, let us stand erect again in the full stature of honourable and estimable Christian manhood. Only then can we respect ourselves and enjoy the esteem of the pure and good.
IV. THE HIGHEST SPIRITUAL ATTAINMENT. We know who it is that has stooped the furthest; it is that Son of God who became the Son of man. It is he who, “though he was rich, for our sake became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich” (2Co 8:9; and see Php 2:3-8). We never rise so high in the estimation of our Divine Lord as when we stoop thus. When we are thus reduced we are enlarged indeed. When we renounce our right, whether it be
(1) of enjoyment, or
(2) of adornment, or
(3) of enrichment,
in order to reach and rescue others, then do we rise toward the nobility of our great Exemplar, and then are we in the way of reaping a large reward.C.
2Ch 36:18, 2Ch 36:19
Desecration and destruction.
We look at
I. A SAD HISTORICAL FACT. Perhaps a Jew would say, the saddest of all the facts of history. This is the very climax of disastersthe, great temple of Jehovah in Jerusalem burnt down, and all its precious treasures and all its sacred vessels carried away into a heathen land, to be there profaned by irreverent and wanton hands! Could anything happen more painful to the feelings, more shocking to the imagination, of the devout than that? All the work to which David consecrated his energies with such rare affection and devotion, to which Solomon brought all his wisdom and for which he obtained the most advanced culture of his time, brought to desolation by the ruthless hand of the heathen! That glorious, that sacred, that beloved building, meeting-place of God and man, where the people of God realized their highest privileges, and recognized their relation to their Redeemer and to one another, burned and desolated, the foot of the idolater intruding into its holiest sanctuary, and the hand of the spoiler taking away its most sacred treasure!
II. ITS SADDEST HISTORICAL ANALOGUE. Once there lived upon the earth a Son of man who could say of himself without presumption, “In this place is One greater than the temple” (Mat 12:6); and he once spake of “the temple of his body” (Joh 2:21). And well, indeed, might the Son of God speak thus of himself; for was he not the manifestation of the Divine to the children of men, and did he not reveal the truth of God to mankind, and in his presence men drew near to God as they did not even in “the holy of holies”? We know how that living temple of God suffered from the rude violence of men, and at last “with wicked hands was slain.” No such desecration took place when the temple was burnt and spoiled as was witnessed when Jesus Christ was crowned with thorns in the soldiers’ hall, and was crucified at Calvary.
III. ITS LAMENTABLE ILLUSTRATION NOW. Where shall we find the visible, approachable, appreciable manifestation of God now? Where, but in the life and the character of good men? We are the temple of God when we are what our Divine Father created us to be; such are we then, that, as men draw nigh to us and observe us and learn of us, they know God and learn of him. But how may this temple be desecrated and destroyed?
1. By the profanation of our powers and our affections. When our powers are expended on the furtherance of that which is evil and on the production of that which is baneful; when our affections are wasted on those who are unworthy of our love; when we prize and when we pursue that which is below our true aspiration, and which leads us downward and backward;then the temple of God is despoiled and desecrated.
2. By the guilty forfeiture of our life. What a destruction of the temple of God is a guilty suicide! And they are many who take their own lives. It is not only those who shoot or hang themselves that commit suicide; it is they who deliberately and repeatedly do those things which they must know are destroying their vitality and taking away their life; these are men who put a brand to the temple which God as well as man has built.
IV. ITS EXCELLENT OPPOSITE. This is found in the reverence we pay to the human body as the temple of God; the habit of regarding our bodily frameand how much more our human spirit!as a sacred thing, because it is (because we are) the very dwelling-place of God (see 1Co 2:9, 1Co 2:16, 17; 1Co 6:19; 2Co 6:16; Eph 2:20, Eph 2:21; 1Pe 2:5). It is this elevated and ennobling thought which, more than any other, stirs and strengthen us to “purify ourselves even as Christ the Lord is pure;” to seek, by earnest effort and frequent prayer, for the utmost attainable sanctity of spirit and of life.C.
2Ch 36:20
Exile.
“And them carded he away to Babylon; where they were servants [slaves] to him and his sons.” The captivity of the Jews in Babylon may be regarded in three light.
I. As A PENALTY. It undoubtedly was that; nothing can be clearer than that they were permitted to be “the prey to the teeth” of the enemy because of their sins. The very next verse (21) intimates that it was disobedience to the Law of God that resulted in the denudation of the land. And the truth that national calamity is the consequence of national transgression is “writ large’ and plain on every page of this Book of Chronicles. He may run that reads it. Sin entails penalty. The truth is written on the pages of national and individual history as well as on those of the Word of God. Every nation and every man may make up its (his) mind that, sooner or later, sin will entail defeat, humiliation, bondage. The penalty may take various forms, but penalty will most surely come. It may be obviously physical, or it may be principally spiritual; it will almost certainly be both the one and the other. But no man can harden himself against the Holy One and prosper. Whoso sinneth against him “wrongeth his own soul;” he deprives himself of inestimable good, and he makes himself the victim of deep and lasting evil. The children of Judah in Babylon had often occasion to say, “We suffer because we sinned against the Lord.” This is the explanation of the tribulation and distress, of the darkness and the death, of the human world.
II. AS A PURGATION. God meant that Babylonian captivity to be a fiery trial which should burn up the large measure of “wood, hay, and stubble” in the character of the Jews that needed to be consumed. Strange it may seem to us that they should learn purity of creed among the heathen; that, away from the city and the temple of God, they should acquire a taste and a love for his service and worship shown for many generations in their synagogues; that in the midst of many superstitions they should come to hate all idolatrous forms and tendencies with the utmost abhorrence. But so it was. In the land of the stranger they lost their inclination to apostatize from God; they were purged of their old folly and guilt. And what early instruction, what fuller privileges, what later experiences will not do, that Divine chastisement may accomplish. God passes us through the fiery trial to purge us of our dross, to consume our earthliness, our selfishness, our grossness, our unbelief. And in some “strange land,” in some place of spiritual solitude, in conditions under which we are compelled to feel as we never felt before, to learn what we never knew before, to lay to heart what we never realized before, we leave many things behind us which are weights and hindrances, we move on to that which is before us.
III. AS A PICTURE. Of what is that exile a picture? Is it not of our spiritual distance from God? To be living in sin, in a state in which we are not reconciled unto God,is not this the exile of the soul? For what does it mean?
1. It is distance from God. It is to be a long way, an increasing distance, from him, from his favour, from his likeness, from the desire to hold communion with him, and therefore from his felt presence.
2. It is captivity. It is to be in the hands of the enemy; it is to be where silken cords at first, and at last iron chains, of unholy habit hold us fast in a cruel and degrading bondage; where we are held fast to covetousness, or to vanity, or to procrastination, or even to some dishonouring vice.
3. It is unsatisfiedness or even misery of soul. In that “strange land” these exiles could not sing “the Lord’s song;” they “wept when they remembered Zion” Spiritual exile is joylessness of soul; unreconciled to him, there can be no “joy and rejoicing in him’ or in his holy service. But let us bless God that away in this saddest exile we have not to wait until an appointed term is fulfilled, or until some Cyrus issues a proclamation (2Ch 36:22); we may hear, if we will listen, the voice of One who does indeed rule over “all the kingdoms of the earth” (2Ch 36:23), who is ever saying to us, “Return unto me, and I will return unto you.” We may hear the blessed words of him who never ceases to address the generations of men, saying, “Come unto me, and I will give you rest.” We may ]earn of that Divine Teacher that whoever comes back from the “far country’ of sin, and seeks the heavenly Father’s mercy, shall find the most cordial welcome he could hope to meet, and be taken back at once to all the love and to all the freedom of the Father’s home.C.
HOMILIES BY T. WHITELAW
2Ch 36:1-4
Jehoahaz; or, three months of royalty.
1. ELECTED BY THE PEOPLE OF THE LAND. (2Ch 36:1.)
1. In his father‘s stead. When Necho had defeated Josiah, instead of turning back to seize Jerusalem, which was virtually in his power, he pushed forward on his first intended march towards the Euphrates. Accordingly, on Josiah’s death, Josiah’s second son, Shallum, “He who shall be requited” (Jer 22:11)a name of evil omen (2Ki 15:13)was called to the throne under the name Jehoahaz, “He whom Jehovah sustains.” Like his predecessor of the same name, Ahaz the son of Jotham (2Ch 28:1), he failed to follow in the steps of his pious father, and rather, like the earlier untheocratic kings, surrendered himself to the practice of idolatry under the guidance of the heathen party in the state (2Ki 23:2). According to Josephus, he was “an impious man, and impure in his course of life” (‘Ant.,’ 10.5. 2). Most likely it was he whom Ezekiel described as “a young lion that learned to catch the prey and devoured men, but, as soon as the nations heard of him, he was taken in their pit, and brought with hooks into the land of Egypt” (Eze 19:3, Eze 19:4).
2. Over his elder brother. As Eliakim was twenty-five years when he began to reign (verse 5), it is obvious he was older than Shallum, who must, therefore, have been elevated to the throne by the voice of the people. As Shallum was not the legitimate heir, he was anointed (2Ki 23:30)a custom usual in the case of founders of new dynasties (2Ki 9:3). He may have been preferred to his brother Eliakim on account of his ferocious character and supposed warlike qualities (Keil), or because Eliakim was at the time beyond their reach, having probably taken part in the battle of Megiddo and been made a prisoner (Rawlinson).
II. DEPOSED BY THE KING OF EGYPT. (Verse 3.)
1. After a short reign. Only three brief months was he allowed to retain the regal dignity. The other Shallum’s time of glory was still shorter. Sic transit gloria mundi.
2. At the request of his brother. This, at least, is not improbable. As Necho was not far distant, viz. at Riblath, in the land of Hamath (2Ki 23:33), the party favourable to Eliakim, the legitimate heir, may have craved his help against the usurper.
3. By means of treachery. The language of Ezekiel (Eze 19:3, Eze 19:4) seems to imply that he was caught by guile, entrapped by stratagem. That Necho actually returned from Riblah with part of his forces, besieged and captured Jerusalem (Keil), is doubtful, and is not required by the language of the Chronicler (verse 3). It is more likely that Jehoahaz was either expressly summoned by Necho (Josephus), or treacherously enticed into visiting the camp at Riblah (Ewald), where he was thrown into chains and so deposed.
4. With the imposition of a fine upon the land. “A hundred talents of silver;’ equivalent to 34,200, and “a talent of gold,” equivalent to 5475, were exacted in tribute, and as a pledge of fealty to Egypt.
III. SUCCEEDED BY HIS FATHER‘S SON. (Verse 4.)
1. Whose right was vindicated. The throne belonged to him by right of primogeniture.
2. Whose name was changed. Called Eliakim, “Whom God establishes,” he was designated, on acceding to the king-dora, Jehoiakim, “Jehovah has set up”
3. Whose throne was secured. The usurper being deported to Egypt, where he died (2Ki 23:34), removed the likelihood at least of civil strife.
IV. LAMENTED BY A PROPHET OF JEHOVAH. Jeremiah (Jer 22:10-12) probably only gave expression to the feelings of regard cherished by Jeheahaz’s subjects, who mourned:
1. For their own disappointed hopes. During his short reign he had pleased the people, caught the popular imagination, and excited in them expectations of being able to revive the faded glories and upraise the fallen fortunes of Judaea. But now these anticipations were scattered to the winds.
2. For his melancholy fate. This seemed worse than what had threatened to befall Hezekiah (2Ki 20:1; Isa 38:10)to be cut off in the middle of his days; worse even than what had overtaken his illustrious fatherdeath upon the battle-field (2Ch 35:23, 2Ch 35:24). No king of Judah had before been carried off into hopeless exile. Manasseh had, indeed, been deported to Babylon (2Ch 33:11), but had afterwards been restored to his crown and kingdom (2Ch 33:20). In the case of Jehoahaz no such alleviation of his misery could be looked for. Jehovah’s word, through Jeremiah, was the death-stroke to any such expectation: “He shall die in the place whither they have led him captive, and shall see this land no more.”
Learn:
1. The strange vicissitudes of mortal life.
2. The miseries of many kingsa check to ambition.
3. The certainty of God’s Word.W.
2Ch 36:5-8
The fortunes of Jehoiakim.
I. A NEW KING UPON THE THRONE OF JUDAH. (2Ch 36:5.)
1. His designation. Eliakim, “Whom God establishes,” changed into Jehoiakim, “Jehovah has set up;” not by himself, though it would almost seem as if Uzziah had adopted that name instead of Azariah on acceding to the crown (2Ch 26:1), and Pal had assumed the title Tiglath-Pileser, “Adar is my confidence,” on succeeding Shalmaneser of Assyria; but by Necho II. (verse 4; 2Ki 23:34), as Mattaniah’s name was changed into Zedekiah by Nebuchadnezzar (2Ki 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 (2Ki 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 (verse 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.
(1) Idolatrous: “He did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord” (verse 5), as his half-brother had done (2Ki 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 (Jer 7:9, etc.; Jer 17:2; Jer 19:4, Jer 19:5; Eze 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 (Eze 19:5, Eze 19:6; of. Jer 22:17); the worst examples of his violence being his murder of Urijah the prophet, whom he fetched out of Egypt and slew (Jer 26:22), and his burning of Jeremiah’s roll, accompanied with an order to arrest the prophet (Jer 36:23, Jer 36:26).
(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 (Jer 22:14, Jer 22:15). “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?”.
(4) Exacting; grinding the faces of his people with severe taxation to pay the tribute to Pharaoh (2Ki 23:33), and cheating of their hard-earned wages the very labourers who built his palace (Jer 22:13).
(5) Licentious; abandoning himself to lewdness. 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 (Dan 1:2; 1 Esdras 1:40, LXX.), he was probably, like Manasseh (2Ch 33:13), permitted after a time to return to his own land (Keil, Bertheau, Jamieson), since
(2) according to 2 Kings (2Ki 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” (Jer 22:19), and that his dead body should be “cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost” (Jer 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 2Ki 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. (Verse 6.)
1. His person. Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadrezzar (Jer 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.
3. His title. King of Babylon. Hitherto the enemies of Jerusalem and Judah had been kings of Egypt (2Ch 12:2; 2Ch 36:3) or of Assyria (2Ch 28:20; 2Ch 32:1, 2Ch 32:2); 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 (Dan 1:1), the year before Nebuchadnezzar defeated Necho at Carchemish (Jer 25:1; Jer 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 (2Ki 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 (2Ki 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. (Verse 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” (2Ch 12:9; 1Ki 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 (2Ch 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” (2Ki 18:15, 2Ki 18:16).
(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 (Jer 27:18, Jer 27:20) 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. verse 18; Dan 5:2; Ezr 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” (Dan 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.
2Ch 36:9, 2Ch 36:10
Jehoiachin the worthless.
I. HIS CORONATION.
1. His title to the throne, He was Jehoiakim’s son, his mother having been Nehushta, “The Brazen,” the daughter of El-nathan of Jerusalem (2Ch 36:8; 2Ki 24:6, 2Ki 24:8), one of the princes attached to Jehoiakim’s court (Jer 26:22; Jer 36:12, Jer 36:25).
2. His regal designation. Jehoiachin, “Jehovah has established,” perhaps expressive of the hopes with which he assumed the sceptre. His personal name appears to have been “Couiah” (Jer 22:24, Jer 22:28), or Jeconiah (1Ch 3:16), also signifying “Jehovah establishes.”
3. His age at accession. Eight years (2Ch 36:9), obviously a mistake for eighteen (2Ki 24:8), since he had wives (2Ki 24:15), and in Jeremiah is represented as a man, while, if Ezekiel (Eze 19:5-9) refers to him rather than Jehoiakim, the language in verse 7 is hardly suitable as applied to an infant or child of eight.
4. His continuance upon the throne. Three months and ten daysten days longer than his uncle Jehoahaz (verse 2), and “just as long as Napoleon’s after his landing in March, 1815” (Cheyne). Another illustration of short-lived glory. Vanitas vanitatura!
II. HIS CHARACTER.
1. As a man. He was obviously no better than his father, in whose footsteps he walked. His father’s wickedness allured more than his father’s evil fortunes repelled him. Jehovah’s withering scorn of Coniah as “a despised and broken pot,” “a vessel wherein is no pleasure” (Jer 22:28; cf. Jer 48:38), significantly intimates the esteem in which he was held by him who tries the hearts and reins alike of kings and common men; while the relentless doom pronounced upon “this man” and “his seed” was a clear certification that the stock from which he sprang was incurably diseased, that the taint of vileness in the family was ineradicable, that he and his descendants were only fit to be cast out and trodden in the mire (Mat 5:13; Luk 14:34).
2. As a king. “He did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord” (verse 9), He had no power, even had he possessed the inclination, to arrest the downward progress of his nation. By personal preference as well as by official position he was bound neck and heels to the heathen party to which his mother Nehushta belonged, and which sought neither the prosperity nor the safety of their land and kingdom in maintaining the pure worship of Jehovah, but in serving Canaanitish, Phoenician, Egyptian, Assyrian, or Babylonian idols, whichever should at any time be thought most likely to serve their turn.
III. HIS CAPTIVITY.
1. The reason. Not stated by either the Chronicler or the author of Kings, this may have been suspicion of Jehoiachin’s fidelity, or knowledge of Egyptian troops advancing to the aid of Jerusalem.
2. The time. At the return of the year (verse 10), i.e. in springtime, when kings were accustomed to go forth to battle (2Sa 11:1). The year was the eighth of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign (2Ki 24:12), or B.C. 597.
3. The manner. (2Ki 24:10-15.)
(1) Nebuchadnezzar despatched his generals to besiege Jerusalem.
(2) Afterwards Nebuchadnezzar himself appeared in front of the city.
(3) Jehoiachin, accompanied by his mother, his wives, his servants, his princes, his officers, went out to make submission and surrender the city to Nebuchadnezzar, in the hope doubtless of being permitted, like Jehoiakim, to retain his kingdom as a vassal of Babylon. This, however, was not accorded him.
(4) Nebuchadnezzar made him prisoner and carried him off to Babylon, as Jeremiah (Jer 22:25) had some time before predicted he would do.
(5) In addition, Nebuchadnezzar carried off his mother, his wives, his officers, the chief men of the land, amongst whom was Ezekiel (Eze 1:1, Eze 1:2), even ten thousand captives, with seven thousand men of might, and a thousand craftsmen and smiths”a sad mitigation of his lot indeed, but one for which Jehoahaz might have envied him. All that was best and worthiest in the old capital city went with Jehoiachin to Babylon”.
(6) Only the poorest sort of people were left in the land, with the king’s uncle Mattanias, or Zedekiah, as king.
(7) The temple and palace were on this occasion completely plundered. “The goodly vessels of the house of the Lord” (verse 10), i.e. the larger articlesthe smaller ones having been previously taken (verse 7)were transported to Babylon.
4. The duration. Thirty-seven years. Then, on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month of the year, Evil-Merodach, on coming to the throne after Nebuchadnezzar’s death, lifted up his head out of prison (3 Kings 25:27-30).
Learn:
1. The incurable character of sin, at least by any merely human means.
2. The swiftness in some cases of Divine retribution.
3. The misery entailed by sin upon evil-doers and all connected with them.
4. The evil done to religion by the wickedness of those who profess and should adorn it.W.
2Ch 36:11-21
Zedekiah; or the fall of Judah.
I. AN EXAMPLE OF INSENSATE WICKEDNESS. (2Ch 36:11-16.)
1. On the part of the king. Seemingly the third (1Ch 3:15), but in reality the fourth, son of Josiah (cf. 2Ki 23:31, 2Ki 23:36), and the full brother of Jehoahaz, or Shallum (2Ki 23:31; 2Ki 24:18). but the half-brother of Jehoiakim (2Ki 23:36), Mattanias, or Jehovah s gift, as he was originally called, ascended the throne of Judah in his twenty-first year, by the favour of Nebuchadnezzar his overlord (2Ch 36:10). With his superior’s consent, like Jehoiakim, he adopted of his own accord, or had chosen for him by others (Cheyne), a special throne-name. Zedekiah, Zidkiah, meaning “Jehovah is righteous,” or “Justice of Jehovah,” had been the name of a former sovereign of Ascalon, whom Sennacherib had subdued; and whatever may have been the object of Mattanias or his princes in selecting this as the designation of Judah’s last king, it is hardly possible not to be struck with its singular propriety. To a people who were frequently instructed by “signs” it was a double symbolfirst by way of contrast of the utter corruption of the nation, both prince and people; and second by way of prediction of coming doom for the kingdom. So far as the king was concerned, it was a grim satire on holy things to designate a creature like him Zedekiah. If his person and character were remarkable for anything, it was for the absence of righteousness.
(1) His devotion to idols was intense. He did evil in the sight of the Lord his God (2Ch 36:12), by adhering to the heathen worship of his predecessors (2Ki 24:19; Jer 52:2).
(2) His unbelief was pronounced. He refused to believe Jeremiah the prophet speaking to him in Jehovah’s name (Jer 37:2).
(3) His disobedience was flagrant. He rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear (allegiance) by God (verse 13; cf. 2Ki 24:20; Eze 17:13-19)a wickedness for which Jehovah declared he should die in Babylon. The reason of this revolt was the accession of a new Pharaoh, Hophrah in Scripture (Jer 44:30), in the hieroglyphicinscriptions Uahibri, in the LXX; , or Apries, in Herodotus. To him Zedekiah, against Jeremiah’s advice, despatched ambassadors, hoping to obtain “horses and much people” (Eze 17:15). Nebuchadnezzar at once took the field, uncertain whether to march against Egypt or Jerusalem. By means of divination he decided for Jerusalem (Eze 21:20-22). In the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar with his armies sat down before Jerusalem (2Ki 25:1). Hearing, however, of Pharaoh-Hophra’s approach, he raised the siege (Jer 37:5). This having excited false hopes as to Nebuchadnezzar’s final withdrawal from the city (Eze 17:17), Jeremiah warned king and people that he would soon return (Jer 37:8-10). This warning Zedekiah would not hear (2Ch 36:16).
2. On the part of the people. Hardly second to their monarch were the priests, the princes, and the people.
(1) Their passion for idolatry was as great: “They trespassed very greatly after all the abominations of the heathen” (verse 14). “Like priest, like people”a proverb applicable to kings and subjects, masters and servants, as well as ecclesiastics and worshippers.
(2) Their insolence was as high. “They polluted the house of the Lord which he had hallowed in Jerusalem” (verse 14). “Jeremiah (Jer 23:11) alludes to practices specially inconsistent with the holy place, and one of the Jewish ,captives explains what they were (Eze 8:11-17). There was
(a) an image of Asherah;
(b) totemistic animal-emblems on the wall of a temple-chamber;
(c) weeping for ‘Tammuz dearly wounded;’
(4) sun-worship and the rite of holding up ‘the twig’ to the nose'”.
(3) Their unbelief was as daring. Though Jehovah had “sent to them by his messengers, rising up early and sending them,” yet had they “mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets” (verses 15, 16)a degree of criminality beyond that of which the Israelites had been guilty when they laughed Hezekiah’s messengers to scorn (2Ch 30:10), but not above that which hearers of the gospel may incur (Act 2:13; Act 17:32; Heb 10:29; 2Pe 2:3, 2Pe 2:4; Jud 2Pe 1:18).
II. AN INSTANCE OF DIVINE RETRIBUTION. (Verses 17-21.) The moral and spiritual corruption of the community in Zedekiah’s time was so great that nothing remained but to pour out upon them the vials of long-threatened wrath (Deu 28:21, Deu 28:36, Deu 28:52; Deu 31:16-21; Jer 5:19; Jer 32:28-36). In the expressive language of the Chronicler, “there was no remedy,” “no healing,” more; nothing but fire and sword. After defeating Pharaoh-Hophra, or causing him to retreat, Nebuchadnezzar returned to his head-quarters at Riblah, on the east bank of the Orontes, thirty-five miles northeast of Baalbec, and despatched his captains, Nergal-sharezer, Samgar-nebo, Sar-sechim, Rab-saris, Rab-mag, and others to resume the siege of Jerusalem, which, however, triumphantly withstood their assaults until the beginning of the eleventh year, when the supply of provisions began to fail (Jer 52:6). On the ninth day of the fourth month, i.e. in July, B.C. 586, “there was no bread for the people of the land.” The starving defenders of the city could no longer hold out. The horrors of the situation may be gathered from Lam 2:19; Lam 4:3-10; Eze 5:10; Baruch 2:3. The besiegers eventually effected a breach in the north wall, and poured in like a destroying flood. Then ensued:
1. Merciless carnage. The Chaldean soldiers butchered all and sundry, young and old, lad and maiden, not even sparing such as had taken refuge in the temple (verse 17). The massacre was wholesale, truculent, and pitiless, eclipsed in horror only by that which took place when Jerusalem was captured by Titus (Josephus, ‘Wars’ 6.9. 4).
2. Ruthless sacrilege. They completely despoiled the temple of its sacred vessels, great and small, as well as pillaged the royal palaces, carrying off their treasures (verse 18). Among the articles removed from the temple were the brazen and golden utensils of service, the two pillars, the brazen sea, and the vases which Solomon had made (2Ki 25:13-17; Jer 52:17-23).
3. Wholesale destruction. “They burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces” (verse 19); which was pure vandalism. This appears to have been done not on the night of the city’s capture (tenth day of tenth month), but seven months after, on the tenth day of the fifth month, i.e. in February, B.C. 587 (Jer 52:12), and to have been carried out by one of Nebuchadnezzar’s generals, Nebuzar-adan, captain of the king’s guards, or “chief of the executioners” (cf. Gen 39:1), despatched from Riblah for the purpose. What happened in the interval is narrated in 2 Kings (2Ki 25:4-7) and Jeremiah (Jer 52:7-11), viz. the capture, near Jericho, of Zedekiah with his court and his forces, who had escaped when the city was taken, and their journey north to Riblah, the head-quarters of Nebuchadnezzar, where, after judgment held (2Ki 25:6), Zedekiah’s sons and the princes of Judah were slain, and Zedekiah himself blinded according to an inhuman practice of the time, and cast into bonds preparatory to being deported to Babylon. In Babylon he was cast into prison until the day of his death (Jer 52:11); according to tradition, his work in prison was that of grinding in a mill like an ordinary slave (Ewald, ‘History of Israel,’ 4.273, note 5).
4. Pitiless expatriation. Those that had escaped the sword were driven off, like gangs of slaves, to become exiles in a strange land, and servants to the kings of Babylon, “until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths,” viz. for three score and ten years (verses 20, 21). Such transplantations of conquered populations were common in the ancient Orient. “Sargon transported the Samaritans to Gozan and Media; Sennacherib carried off two hundred thousand Jews from Judaea; Esarhaddon placed Elamites, Susianians, and Babylonians in Samaria. Darius Hystaspis brought the nation of the Paeonians from Europe into Asia Minor, removed the Barcaeans to Bactria, and the Eretrians to Ardericca near Susa”.
LESSONS.
1. The incorrigible character of some sit, hers.
2. The offensiveness in God’s sight of pride and hardness of heart.
3. The heinousness of oath-breaking and of unjustifiable rebellion.
4. The hopelessness of reformation in a city or a land when all classes are in love with wicked ways.
5. The infinite compassion of God towards the worst of men.
6. The certainty that mercy despised will turn into wrath displayed.
7. The pitiless character of Heaven’s judgments upon them for whom there is no remedy.
8. The indifference God shows towards the external symbols of religion when the inner spirit is wanting.
9. The impossibility of God’s Word failing.W.
2Ch 36:22, 2Ch 36:23
Cyrus of Persia; or, the return of the exiles.
I. The GREAT DELIVERER. (2Ch 36:22.)
1. Foretold in Scripture.
(1) That his name should be Cyrus.
(2) That he should come from the East.
(3) That he should be a mighty conqueror, subduing nations and dethroning kings.
(4) That he should overthrow Babylon, and become the sovereign of the empire of that name.
(5) That he should liberate the captive Jews in that city and empire.
(6) That he should issue orders or grant permission for the rebuilding of both the city and the temple of Jerusalem.
(7) That in doing all this he should act (whether consciously or unconsciously is not stated) under the immediate guidance and direct superintendence of Jehovah (Isa 41:2; Isa 44:28; Isa 45:1-5; Isa 46:11; Isa 48:14, Isa 48:15).
2. Raised up in history.
(1) He was called Cyrus, in Hebrew Coresh (2Ch 36:22; Ezr 1:1), in the inscriptions K‘ur‘us and Ku-ra-as.
(2) He came from the East, being named in sacred history (2Ch 36:22; Ezr 1:1; Ezr 4:3; Dan 6:28), as well as in profane (Herod; 9.122; Xen; ‘Cyr.,’ 8. 2.7), King of Persia, though the monuments now show that he was originally King of Elam, on the east of Persia.
(3) First he conquered Astyages the Median, who had marched against him in the sixth year of Nabonidus King of Babylon. Next, before the ninth year of Nabonidus, he must have acquired the sovereignty of Persia, as in that year he calls himself “King of Persia.”
(4) In the month Nisan, of the ninth year of Nabonidus, Cyrus marched his troops into Accad, or Northern Babylonia. In the tenth year Erech was captured. In the eleventh the situation remained in statu quo. In the seventeenth year, in the month of Tammuz, Cyrus encountered the army of Accad in the town of Rutum, upon the river Nizallat, when the soldiers of Nabonidus broke into revolt. On the fourteenth day the garrison of Sippara surrendered, while Nabonidus fled. On the sixteenth the governor of Gutium (Kurdistan) marched the troops of Cyrus into Babylon without requiring to strike a blow. Nabonidus, subsequently captured, was cast into fetters in Babylon. Whether the siege of Babylon described by Herodotus was this of Cyrus (Budge), or a later one of Darius Hystaspis (Sayce), need not here be determined; it is sufficient to note that after this Cyrus assumed the title “King of Babylon” (Ezr 5:13) in addition to his other titles”King of Persia and King of Elam.”
(5) The clay cylinder of Cyrus contains “a reference to the restoration of the Babylonian captives to their several homes. The experience of Cyrus had taught him that the old Assyrian and Babylonian system of transporting conquered nations was an error, and did but introduce a dangerously disaffected people into the country to which they had been brought” (Sayce, ibid.).
(6) “Those who chose to return to Jerusalem were allowed to do so, and there rebuild a fortress, which Cyrus considered would be useful to him as a check upon Egypt” (Sayce).
(7) In the Cyrus cylinder it is said, “Merodach sought out a king for himself who would perform according to the heart’s desire of the god whatever was entrusted to him. He proclaimed the renown of Cyrus the King of Anzan [Elam, Sayce; Persia, Budge] throughout the length and breadth of the land Merodach, the great lord, directed his (Cyrus’s) hand-and heart”.
II. THE CHEERING PROCLAMATION. (2Ch 36:23.)
1. Its date. The first year of Cyrus, i.e. the first year of his reign as King of Babylon, i.e. B.C. 538 (Canon of Ptolemy).
2. Its cause. The stirring up of his heart by Jehovah. Though the monuments have shown that Cyrus was not a monotheist, but a polytheist, they have also made it manifest that he considered himself as under the immediate guidance of Heaven in the taking of Babylon; and hence, it may be assumed, also in the liberation of the captives. That he was powerfully persuaded of the propriety of such an action, and regarded his impulse in that direction as “from Heaven,” is apparent. The sacred writer states that the true source of that inspiration was Jehovah. Cyrus believed it to be Merodach.
3. Its design. To fulfil the Word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah (Jer 29:10), that after seventy years the captives should be restored. This was Jehovah’s design, not Cyrus’sconcerning which see above. That the seventy years, in round numbers, were accomplished, can be seen from an easy calculation. Dating from b.c. 599, the year of Jehoiachin’s captivity, and setting down the first year of Cyrus as b.c. 538, the interval is only sixty-one years; but if the period of the exile be dated from the third (Dan 1:1) or the fourth year of Jehoiakim (Jer 25:1-12), i.e. b.c. 606, then the interval from Jeremiah’s prediction to Cyrus’s proclamation will be sixty-eight years, or sixty-nine inclusive, which, with the months that elapsed before the first company of exiles settled in Palestine (Ezr 3:1), will practically make seventy years. Or the prophetic year may be taken as consisting of 360 days; in which case 360 x 70 = 25,200 days = 69 years of 365 days.
4. Its form.
(1) Vocal; being probably proclaimed by means of heralds (cf. 2Ch 30:5, 2Ch 30:6).
(2) Written; being most likely set forth in two languagesPersian and Chaldee.
5. Its contents.
(1) A devout acknowledgment of Heaven’s grace. “All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me” (verse 23; Ezr 1:1), the term “Jehovah” being employed in the Hebrew copy instead of “Ormazd,” in the Persian. Persian sovereigns were accustomed to speak of the Supreme Being as the God of heaven (Ezr 6:9, Ezr 6:10; Ezr 7:12, Ezr 7:23), and to recognize their dependence on him for their earthly power, an inscription of Darius saying, “Then the land was mine, and the other lands which Ormazd has given into my hand. I conquered them by the grace of Ormazd” (‘Records,’ etc; 9.68). And the cylinder of Cyrus stating, “Cyrus King of Elam, he (Merodach) proclaimed by name for sovereignty; all men everywhere commemorate his name”.
(2) A hearty submission to Divine will. “He hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.” According to Josephus (‘Ant.,’ 11.1. 2), Cyrus learnt the Divine will concerning himself by reading Isaiah’s prophecy (Isa 44:28); but as Cyrus, whether a polytheist (Sayce) or a monotheist (Budge), was extremely tolerant to all religions, and as on capturing Babylon he immediately proceeded to restore the shrines of the Babylonian gods, he may have conceived himself as called upon by Jehovah to do the same thing for the Jews in Palestine.
(3) An earnest inquiry after Jehovah’s people. “Who is there among you of all his people. The proclamation was not limited to the Judahites, but extended to all worshippers of Jehovahto those who had been carried captive from both kingdoms.
(4) A free permission to return to Jerusalem. “Let him go up.” “Jerusalem was on a much higher level than Babylonia, and the travellers would consequently have to ascend considerably” (‘Pulpit Commentary on Ezra,’ Ezr 1:3.).
(5) A solemn benediction on those who availed themselves of his permission. The Lord his God be with him.” The expression of this wish or pray corresponded with the mild and benevolent character of Cyrus.
LESSONS.
1. The ability of God to fulfil his promises no less than his threatenings.
2. The secret access which God has to the hearts of menof kings no less than of common men.
3. The certainty that God can raise up at any moment a fitting instrument to do his will.W.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
p. Josiah: the Prophetess Huldah.Ch. 34, 35
. Josiahs Beginnings; the Extirpation of Idolatry: 2Ch 34:1-7
2Ch 34:1.Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. 2And he did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, and walked in the ways of David his father, and declined not to 3the right hand nor to the left. And in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a youth, he began to seek after the God of David his father; and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, 4and the asherim, and the carved images, and the molten images. And they pulled down before him the altars of Baalim; and the sun-statues which were above them he hewed down; and the asherim, and the carved images, and the molten images, he broke and pounded, and strewed upon the 5graves of them that had sacrificed to them. And the bones of the priests he 6burned upon their altars,1 and he purged Judah and Jerusalem. And in the cities of Manasseh, and Ephraim, and Simeon, even unto Naphtali, in their 7ruins2 around. And he pulled down the altars and the asherim, and he cut down the carved images to pound them, and hewed down all the sun-statues in all the land of Israel; and he returned to Jerusalem.
. The Purging of the Temple and the Recovery of the Book of the Law: 2Ch 34:8-21
8And in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he purged the land and the house, he sent Shaphan son of Azaliah, and Maaseiah the governor of the city, and Joah son of Joahaz the chancellor, to repair the house of the Lord 9his God. And they came to Hilkiah the high priest, and delivered the money that was brought into the house of God, which the Levites that kept the thresholds had gathered from the hand of Manasseh and Ephraim, and from all the remnant of Israel, and from all Judah and Benjamin, and the inhabitants3 of Jerusalem. 10And they put it into the hand of the work-masters who were appointed over the house of the Lord; and the work-masters who worked in the house of the Lord gave it to restore and repair the house. 11And they gave it to the carpenters and masons, to buy hewn stones and timber for girders and for joists of the houses, which the kings of Judah had destroyed. 12And the men wrought faithfully at the work, and over them were appointed Jahath and Obadiah the Levites of the sons of Merari, and Zechariah and Meshullam of the sons of the Kohathites, to oversee; and the 13Levites, all that had skill in instruments of song. And over the carriers, and overseeing all that were doing the work in any manner of service. 14And when they took out the money that was brought into the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the Lord by Moses. 15And Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord: and Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan. 16And Shaphan brought the book to the king, and returned to the king a report, saying, All that was committed to thy servants, they do. 17And they have poured out the money that was found in the house of the Lord, and 18given it into the hands of the overseers and of the workmen. And Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest hath given me a book: 19and Shaphan read in it before the king. And when the king heard the words of the law, then he rent his clothes. 20And the king commanded Hilkiah, and Ahikam son of Shaphan, and Abdon4 son of Micah, and Shaphan 21the scribe, and Asaiah the servant of the king, saying: Go, inquire of the Lord for me, and for them that are left in Israel and in Judah, concerning the words of the book that is found; for great is the wrath of the Lord that is poured out upon us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord, to do after all that is written in this book.
. Consultation of Huldah the Prophetess, and Solemn Reading of the Law in the Temple: 2Ch 34:22-33
22And Hilkiah and those who were appointed5 by the king went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum son of Tokehath, son of Hasrah, keeper of the wardrobe; and she dwelt in Jerusalem in the second (quarter); and 23they spake to her to this effect. And she said to them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Say ye to the man who sent you to me, 24Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, and upon its inhabitants, all the curses that are written in the book which they have read before the king of Judah: 25Because they have forsaken me, and have made burnings6 to other gods, to provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands; and my 26wrath is poured out on this place, and will not be quenched. And to the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, thus shall ye say: Thus saith the Lord God of Israel of the words which thou hast heard. 27Because thy heart was tender, and thou didst bow down before God, when thou heardest His words against this place and its inhabitants, and thou didst bow down before me and didst rend thy garments and weep before me, so have I also heard thee, saith the Lord. 28Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace, and thine eyes shall not see all the evil that I will bring upon this place and upon its inhabitants: 29and they brought the king word again. And the king sent and gathered all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. 30And the king went up into the house of the Lord, and all the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests and the Levites, and all the people, great and small; and one read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant that was found in the house of the Lord. 31And the king stood in his place, and made the covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep His commandments and testimonies and statutes with all his heart and with all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant which are written in this book. 32And he caused all that were found in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand to it; and the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers. 33And Josiah took away all the abominations out of all the countries of the sons of Israel, and bound all that were found in Israel to serve the Lord their God: all his days they departed not from the Lord God of their fathers.
. The Passover: 2Ch 35:1-19
2Ch 35:1.And Josiah kept a passover unto the Lord in Jerusalem; and they killed the passover on the fourteenth of the first month. 2And he set the priests in their charges, and strengthened them for the service of the Lord. 3And he said unto the Levites, who taught all Israel,7 who were consecrated to the Lord, Put the holy ark into the house which Solomon son of David, the king of Israel, built; it shall not be a burden on your shoulders: now 4serve ye the Lord your God, and His people Israel. And make you ready8 in your father-houses by your courses, after the writing of David king of 5Israel, and after the description of Solomon his son. And stand ye in the sanctuary after the divisions of the father-houses of your brethren, the sons 6of the people, and a part of a father-house of the Levites [ for each]. And kill the passover, and sanctify you, and prepare your brethren, to do according to 7the word of the Lord by Moses. And Josiah dealt to the sons of the people sheep, lambs, and kids, all for paschal offerings, for all that were found, to the number of thirty thousand, and three thousand bullocks: these were of the property of the king. 8And his princes presented a free gift to the people, to the priests, and to the Levites: Hilkiah, and Zechariah, and Jehiel, rulers of the house of God, gave unto the priests for the passover-offerings two thousand 9and six hundred [ sheep], and three hundred oxen. And Conaniah, and Shemaiah, and Nethaneel, his brethren, and Hashabiah, and Jeiel, and Jozabad, chiefs of the Levites, presented to the Levites for passover-offerings five thousand [ sheep], 10and oxen five hundred. And the service was prepared, and the priests stood in their place, and the Levites in their courses, at the command of the king. 11And they killed the passover, and the priests sprinkled [ the wood] from their hand, and the Levites flayed. 12And they removed the burnt-offering to give them to the divisions of the father-houses of the sons of the people, to offer unto the Lord, as it is written in the book of Moses; and so with the oxen. 13And they roasted the passover with fire, according to the ordinance; and the holy things they sod in pots and kettles and pans, and brought them quickly 14to all the sons of the people. And afterwards they made ready for themselves and for the priests: because the priests the sons of Aaron were engaged in offering the burnt-offering and the fat until night; and the Levites prepared for themselves and for the priests the sons of Aaron. 15And the singers the sons of Asaph were in their place, according to the command of David, and Asaph, and Heman, and Jeduthun the kings seer; and the porters were at every gate: it was not necessary for them to depart from their service, 16for their brethren the Levites prepared for them. And all the service of the Lord was prepared that day, to keep the passover, and to offer burnt-offerings 17on the altar of the Lord, at the command of King Josiah. And the sons of Israel that were present kept the passover at that time, and the feast of unleavened bread seven days. 18And there was no passover like that kept in Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet; nor did all the kings of Israel keep such a passover as Josiah kept, and the priests, and the Levites, and all Judah and Israel that were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 19In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah was this passover kept.
. Josiahs Battle with Necho of Egypt, and End: 2Ch 35:20-27
20After all this, when Josiah had prepared the house, Necho king of Egypt came up to fight at Carchemish, on the Euphrates; and Josiah went out against 21him. And he sent ambassadors to him, saying, What have I to do with thee, O king of Judah? I am not against thee this day, but against the house of my war;9 and God hath commanded me to make haste: withdraw thee from 22God, who is with me, that He destroy thee not. And Josiah turned not his face from him, but disguised himself,10 to fight with him, and hearkened not unto the words of Necho from the mouth of God, and he came to fight in the valley of Megiddo. 23And the archers shot at King Josiah: and the king said 24to his servants, Remove me, for I am sorely wounded. And his servants removed him from the chariot, and put him on his second chariot; and brought him to Jerusalem, and he died, and was buried in the sepulchres of his fathers: and all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah. 25And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah; and all the songsters and songstresses spake of Josiah in their laments unto this day, and they made them an ordinance for Israel: and, behold, they are written in the Lamentations.
26And the rest of the acts of Josiah, and his kindness, as it is written in the law of the Lord, 27And his deeds, first and last, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah.
q. Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah: Close.Ch. 36
. Jehoahaz: 2Ch 36:1-4
2Ch 36:1.And the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and made him king instead of his father in Jerusalem. 2Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he became king; and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. 3And the king of Egypt put him down11 in Jerusalem, and fined the land a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold. 4And the king of Egypt made Eliakim his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem, and turned his name to Jehoiakim: and Necho took Jehoahaz his brother and carried him to Egypt.
. Jehoiakim: 2Ch 36:5-8
5Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he became king; and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and he did that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord God. 6Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar king of Babel, 7and bound him in fetters, to carry him to Babel.12 And Nebuchadnezzar brought of the vessels of the house of the Lord to Babel, and put them in 8his palace at Babel. And the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim, and his abominations which he did, and that which was found against him, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah: and Jehoiachin his son reigned in his stead.
. Jehoiachin: 2Ch 36:9-10
9Jehoiachin was eight years13 old when he became king; and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem: and he did hat which was evil in 10the eyes of the Lord. And at the turn of the year, King Nebuchadnezzar sent and brought him to Babel, with the goodly vessels of the house of the Lord; and he made Zedekiah his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem.
. Zedekiah: 2Ch 36:11-21
11Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. 12And he did that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord his God; he humbled himself not before Jeremiah the prophet, from the mouth of the Lord. 13And he also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who made him swear by God: and he stiffened his neck, and hardened his 14heart from turning unto the Lord God of Israel. Also all the chiefs of the priests and the people transgressed very much, after all the abominations of the heathen; and polluted the house of the Lord, which He had hallowed in 15Jerusalem. And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by His messengers, rising early, and sending; because He had compassion on His people and His 16dwelling-place. And they mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord rose against 17His people, till there was no healing. And He brought up against them the king of the Chaldees, and slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and He spared neither young man nor maiden, the old nor the grey-headed; the whole He gave into his hand. 18And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and his princes; the whole he brought to Babel. 19And they burned the house of God, and pulled down the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all its goodly vessels. 20And he carried away those that remained from the sword to Babel; and they became servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia: 21To fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: all the days of the desolation she rested to fulfil seventy years.
. Close: the Return from Captivity under Cyrus: 2Ch 36:22-23
22And in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord, by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, and he made proclamation in all his kingdom, and also in writing, saying, 23Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and He hath charged me to build Him a house at Jerusalem: whoso is among you of all His people? The Lord14 his God be with him, and let him go up.
EXEGETICAL
Preliminary Remark.Whereas in 2 Kings 22, 23 the several moments of the reforming action of Josiah are so combined that they appear all conditioned and determined by the repair of the temple, and the discovery in it of the book of the law, the Chronist separates the several acts or steps of his reforming activity more exactly, and indeed chronologically, as he makes the work of the king begin with the eighth year of his reign, the commencement of his more energetic proceedings to fall in the twelfth, and its end in the eighteenth (comp. on 2Ch 34:3). In other respects the two accounts agree substantially, though the Chronist has related the cleansing of Judah and Jerusalem from idolatry (2Ch 34:3-7) with great brevity, and, on the contrary, the great passover (2Ch 35:1-19) so much the more fully; whereas the author of 2 Kings, in accordance with his It less careful attention to the history of the Levitical worship, has reversed this method, and treated of the passover quite briefly. Both historians relate the closing catastrophe of the history of Josiah at nearly the same length and in much the same manner, though the Chronist gives vent to the pragmatic reflective connection of this tragic end with the previous transactions of his reign (2Ki 23:25 f.). He proceeds, lastly, quite in the form of an epitome in his statements concerning the four last reigns, in 2 Chronicles 36, to which the author of the books of Kings devotes a great deal of space.
1. Josiahs Beginnings; the Eradication of Idolatry: 2Ch 34:1-7.
2Ch 34:1-2 agree with 2Ki 22:1-2, especially with regard to the eulogy applied to Josiah (alone of all kings), that he declined not to the right hand nor to the left; only the mention of his mother (Jedidah, daughter of Adaiah) is wanting in our passage.
2Ch 34:3. And in the eighth year of his reign, when he was sixteen years old. The seeking after God, as 22:19 and elsewhere. On the relation of the present chronological statements, especially that referring to the twelfth year of Josiahs reign as the date of the beginning of the abolition of idolatry, in 2Ki 22:3 ff, and 2Ch 34:33 of our chapter, see Bhrs full discussion (Bibelw. vii. 453 ff.). This agrees with the conclusion of almost all recent expositors in this, that neither the Chronist nor the author of 2 Kings proceeds exactly in chronological order, in so far as the latter compresses the whole measures of the purification of worship and extirpation of idolatry into the eighteenth year of his reign; but the former (according to 2Ch 34:4-7, which are to be taken partly as proleptic) attaches to that which was put in operation in the twelfth year part of that which was only carried into effect in the eighteenth year, as he himself indicates at the close of the chapter (2Ch 34:33).
2Ch 34:4. And they pulled down before him the altars of Baalim, and the sun-statues . . . he hewed down; comp. 2Ch 33:3, 2Ch 31:1; and for the sun-statues especially, 2Ch 14:4; and for that which follows, 2Ch 15:16.And strewed (the dust of the ground images) upon the graves of them that had sacrificed to them, literally, upon the graves that sacrificed to them. In 2Ki 23:6, perhaps more exactly the ashes of the great asherim merely are designated as strewn upon the graves of the idolaters.
2Ch 34:5. And the bones of the priests he burned; for the particulars, see 2Ki 23:13-14; 2Ki 23:16-20.
2Ch 34:6. And in the cities of Manasseh, and Ephraim, and Simeon, and unto Naphtali, that is, in all the land, from the most southern to the most northern part of the tribes. That the regions belonging to the northern kingdom (among which here, as in 2Ch 15:9, Simeon also is named as a tribe addicted to idolatry) were at that time wasted by the invasion of Shalmaneser and Sargon, is indicated by the addition: in their ruins around. For the exclusive admissibility of this reading (), see Crit. Note. Moreover, the present account (with the parallel statement in 2Ki 23:19-20 f.), according to which the kingdom of Josiah included again in some measure all the twelve tribes, is certainly to be estimated in the same way as the statement in 2Ch 30:18, according to which, even in the beginning of Hezekiahs reign, before the northern kingdom had fallen, a partial annexation of its inhabitants to the southern kingdom in respect of worship had taken place. Here also it is only the introduction of the remnant of the inhabitants of the north into the work of the purification of worship that is spoken of, not the exercise of a formal sovereignty over their country. What Neteler says, p. 261, of a supposed reunion of the country of Israel with the kingdom of Judah under Manasseh, and of an inheritance of this collective Israelitish kingdom, restored to its original compass, on the part of Josiah son of Manasseh, is devoid of all definite hold in the text as well of the books of Kings as of Chronicles.
2Ch 34:7. Pulled down the altars; here first is the chief sentence to the (in the form of an absolute sentence, 2Ch 34:6) premised determination of the scene of the kings action.And the asherim; is a perfect-like (retaining the vowel of the perfect) infinitive with , on which see Ewald, 238, d.And he returned to Jerusalem, from his campaign against the idols, which had carried him into the former region of Ephraim and Simeon. In 2Ki 23:20 also is this notice found, but there certainly in reference to the eighteenth year of Josiah. A chronological contradiction of the two accounts, however, can scarcely be found in this circumstance; comp. Bhr on the passage.
2. The Purging of the Temple and Recovery of the Book of the Law: 2Ch 34:8-21. Comp. 2Ki 22:3-13, and Bhr on the passage.In the eighteenth year . . . when he purged. is neither after the purging, after he had purged (Luther, de Wette, etc.), nor in order to purge (Berth., Kamph.), but a note of time and circumstance in the purging (Keil, Net.); comp. Jer 46:13. In the naming of Shaphan, his designation as scribe or royal secretary (2Ki 22:3) has perhaps fallen out of the text of our account by a mere oversight, for the two other officers named by the Chronist (reporting more exactly than 2 Kings) are introduced by the addition of their titles. For repair (literally, strengthen) the house of the Lord, see on 2Ch 24:5, and also on 2Ch 34:9 of the present report concerning the repair of the temple under Joash (2Ch 24:11-13); see, moreover, the Crit. Note on 2Ch 34:9.
2Ch 34:10. Put it into the hand of the work-masters, etc. is a resuming of the same verb in the foregoing verse, but connected with , into the hand, by which the sense of handing is reached. For the plur. (for ), comp. 1Ch 23:24.The work-masters . . . gave it, etc.; so according to the received text; but if, as 2Ki 22:5 seems to show, a has fallen out before , it should be rendered: they gave it to the work-masters (or labourers). The latter reading appears the more suitable, though it cannot be affirmed that it is the original one.
2Ch 34:11. And timber for girders and for joists of the houses, literally, to joist the houses; comp. Neh 3:3; Neh 3:6. This means, naturally, not any houses of the city, but the buildings of the temple.Which the kings of Judah had destroyed, let go to ruin; a like exaggeration of phrase as in the case of Athaliah, 2Ch 24:7.
2Ch 34:12. And the men wrought faithfully at the work, literally, were working. For , truly, conscientiously, see on 2Ch 31:12.To oversee the building; comp. in essentially the same meaning, Ezr 3:8.And the Levites, all that had skill in instruments of song; comp. 1Ch 15:16; 1Ch 25:7; Dan 1:17. These closing words of 2Ch 34:12 are to be connected with 2Ch 34:13 a, so that the repeated is = as well as. This is simpler and less violent than the proposal of Bertheau, accepted by Kamph., to erase the first of 2Ch 34:13, and annex the words over the carriers to 2Ch 34:12. On 2Ch 34:14, comp. 2Ki 22:8.The book of the law of the Lord by Moses, that is, the Mosaic law (comp. for the phrase, 2Ch 33:8). The whole Torah at all events is meant, not merely Deuteronomy, as the modern critical school (last of all, Hitzig, Gesch p. 236) think; and not merely the groups of laws contained in the three middle cooks of the Pentateuch (according to Bertheaus hypothesis, Beitrge zur israelit. Gesch. p. 375). Decisive grounds against these modern hypotheses, especially so far as they endeavour to connect the assertion of an origin from Manasseh or even Josiah with our passage, see in Kleinert, Das Deuteronomium und der Deuteronomiker, 1871, and in Klostermann, Das Lied Mosis und das Deuteronomium, Theol. Stud. und Krit. 1871, ii.;1872, ii. and iii. Comp. also Sthelin, Einleit. ins A. T. (1862) p. 242 ff.; J. Frst, Gesch. der bibl. Literat. i. 351 ff.; and Bhr on 2Ki 22:7.
2Ch 34:16. And Shaphan brought the book to the king. Somewhat different in the parallel 2Ki 22:9, where at first it is only related: and Shaphan the scribe came to the king, and where, therefore, no , yet, stands in the following: and brought the king word. The structure of the words in the Chronist appears in every respect the younger, although none of its deviations is of any essential importance; comp. Keil on this passage.
2Ch 34:17. Given it into the hands; comp. on 2Ch 34:10 at the beginning.
2Ch 34:20. And Ahikam son of Shaphan, the father of Gedaliah and protector of Jeremiah; see Jer 26:24; Jer 40:5. For the probable originality of the reading Achbor for Abdon, see the Crit. Note. The Achbor of this passage appears the same who is so named Jer 26:22; Jer 36:12.
Ver 21. And for them that are left in Israel, literally, for that which is left; a significant phrase, like the parallel 2Ki 22:13 : for the people and for all Judah. The expression that is poured out () stands for the essentially synonymous that is kindled () of the parallel.
3. Consultation of Huldah, and Solemn Reading of the Law in the Temple: 2Ch 34:22-33. Comp. 2Ki 22:14-20; 2Ki 23:1-3, and Bhr on this passage.Went to Huldah . . . the wife of Shallum. The forefathers of this husband of Huldah are called in 2 Kings, not Tokehath and Hasrah, but Tikvah and Harhas.15 Which of these (nowhere else occurring) names are original cannot now be decided. For the second quarter or district of the lower city, see Bhr.And they spake to her to this effect, namely, as Josiah had said to them; this , which reminds us of 2Ch 32:15, is wanting in 2 Kings.
2Ch 34:24. All the curses, etc.; in 2 Kings less strong: all the words.
2Ch 34:25. And my wrath is poured out on this place. As in 2Ch 34:21, here again stands the verb instead of , the one usual in the parallel (2Ki 22:17), which latter, moreover, the Sept. expresses also in our passage, perhaps because it appears to suit better the following words: and will not be quenched.
2Ch 34:27. Because thy heart was tender . . . when thou heardest his words. In the original text the construction is somewhat different, namely, the words which thou hast heard (2Ch 34:26 for example), because thereby thy heart was made tender, and thou didst bow down before God, when thou heardest, etc. The words , absolutely prefixed, can scarcely be translated. In 2Ki 22:19, moreover, the words against this place are rendered still more distinct by the addition wanting here: that they should become a desolation and a curse.
2Ch 34:28. And they brought the king word again; comp. 2Ch 34:16.
2Ch 34:32. Caused all . . . to stand to it, namely, to the covenant. In 2Ki 23:3, instead of stands rather the Kal, joined with , and all the people stood to the covenant.
2Ch 34:33. And Josiah took away all the abominations. For the relation of this statement, that reverts to 2Ch 34:3-7 in the way of recapitulation, to 2Ki 23:4-20, see above, Preliminary Remark, and on 2Ch 34:3, By all the countries of the sons of Israel are here meant the territories of the former kingdom of the ten tribes, as distinguished from Jerusalem and Benjamin, 2Ch 34:32 (that is, Jerusalem, Judah, and Benjamin). Comp. above, 2Ch 34:6, also 2Ki 23:15; 2Ki 23:19, where in particular Bethel and the cities of Samaria are mentioned as places of the former Israel that were subjected to the great purging process of Josiah.And bound all to serve ( ), caused to serve, bound to the service of the Lord.All his days they departed not from the Lord. This theocratic behaviour of the people during the whole reign of Josiah can, at all events, have only been external, without true conversion of heart, and therefore without real constancy; see Evangelical and Ethical Reflections, No. 1.
4. The Passover: 2Ch 35:1-19. Comp. 2Ki 23:21; 2Ki 23:23; as also the tolerably close Greek version of our section in 1Es 1:1-21 (in Tischendorfs edit. of the Sept. the first book of Esdras).And they killed the passover on the fourteenth day of the first month; thus, though Hitzig (Gesch. p. 235) doubts it without any ground, at the time prescribed by law, otherwise than in the passover of Hezekiah, 2Ch 30:2 ff. The year of this solemnity is (2Ch 35:9; see on this verse) the eighteenth of Josiahs reign, and therefore 623 (or 622) b.c.
2Ch 35:2. And he set the priests in their charges (watches; comp. 2Ch 7:6, 2Ch 8:14), in their functions; comp. 1Ch 23:32.And strengthened them for the service of the Lord, by comforting, encouraging exhortation, as also by instructions in their legal functions; comp. Neh 2:18, where stands in the same sense, and 2Ch 29:5.
2Ch 35:3. Who taught all Israel. Comp. in Neh 8:7; Neh 8:9, also the synonymous above, 2Ch 17:8-9. For the following designation of the Levites as consecrated to the Lord, that is, alone entitled to enter His sanctuary and conduct His holy service, comp. 2Ch 23:6.Put the holy ark into the house. These words are somewhat surprising, and admit of various interpretations, as a parallel yielding a more definite explanation is wanting. But although not , bring back, but , give place, is the verb used, yet the assumption of a previous removal of the ark from its place in the holy of holies appears to present itself with constraining necessity, even if we think (with many ancients, as well as Berth. and Kamph.) of Manasseh or Amon as the author of this temporary transference of the ark; in which case, however, it would be very surprising that nothing should be expressly stated in the reign of these godless kings concerning so profane a violation; or if (with Starke and others) we consider Josiahs repair of the temple to be the occasion of the temporary removal of the ark from its place, which is undoubtedly the simplest and best supposition. Quite arbitrary is the hypothesis of some ancients, that the ark was, in the days of the idolatrous kings, sometimes carried round the country as a means of strengthening the faith of the people, and Josiah now forbids this custom in the present words (see v. Mosheim in Calmets Bibl. Untersuchungen, vi. 226 ff.); and equally so the Rabbinical conceit, that Josiah here gives orders to remove the ark from its place in the holy of holies to a subterranean chamber, to place it in safety from the impending destruction of the temple. But even the rendering: Leave the holy ark in the house, leave it in the temple, to which it properly belongs (Keil, after the ancients), is arbitrary; and so is Netelers attempted emendation, which, against the grammar, would change the imperat. into the perf. (from = , give), and translate accordingly: And he said to the Levites, Those who taught all Israel, who were consecrated to the Lord, have put the ark of the sanctuary into the house, etc. Were such an explanation of the passage possible, how surprising that it is first discovered in the 19th century !It shall not be a burden on your shoulders; comp. Num 4:15; Num 7:9. The sense of these words can only be: ye have to minister to the ark of the Lord not as a moveable sanctuary, to be carried laboriously on the shoulders, through the wilderness or from city to city, but as the throne of God standing in the centre of the temple; the times of the toilsome and perilous (comp. 1Ch 13:9) transport of the ark are over; an easier ministry before this sanctuary, but not the less conscientiously to be discharged, now lies upon you. If we take the words thus (with Keil, Kamph., etc.), there seems to be no necessity for Bertheaus assumption that the Levites at the pass-over had carried round the ark on their shoulders in an inconsiderate way, and Josiah therefore instructed them that this function of carrying was no longer binding on them with regard to the ark of the covenant.
2Ch 35:4. And make you ready (see Crit. Note) . . . after the writing of David, properly, in the writing, etc. (, as in 2Ch 29:25). There were then writings or notes (, as in 2Ch 26:22, 1Ch 28:19) of David and Solomon, in which these kings had established as law their prescriptions for the ministry of priests and Levites in the sanctuary, from which also our author had directly or indirectly drawn his former communications on this subject (1 Chronicles 23-26); comp. Introd. 5, for example, and the preliminary remark in explanation of 1 Chronicles 23-26
2Ch 35:5. And a part of a father-house of the Levites (for each); so that to every division (, as Ezr 6:18) of the non-Levitical father-houses may correspond a part of a Levitical father-house (comp. 1Ch 24:6). In this way it is not necessary to erase before in the sense of and indeed, or namely (against Berth.).
2Ch 35:6. Kill the passover and sanctify you, namely, by washing, before ye hand to the priests the blood to sprinkle on the altar; comp. 2Ch 30:16 f.
2Ch 35:7-9. The King and his Princes bestow Victims.And Josiah dealt to the sons of the people; , bestow as a heave-offering, as in 2Ch 30:24, Ezr 8:25.To the number of 30,000 head of small cattle, and 3000 bullocks,the latter, as appears from 2Ch 35:13, for slaying and consuming as peace-offerings. All this was from the kings domains; comp. 2Ch 31:3, 2Ch 32:29.
2Ch 35:8. And his princes presented a free gift; so is to be taken here (comp. the corresponding for passover-offerings in the verse before), not as an adverb, willingly, as Berth. thinks. How many the princes gave as free gifts is not here mentioned (it is otherwise in 2Ch 30:24); for the three rulers of the house of God named in b as in 2Ch 35:9, and six chiefs of the Levites, are certainly as different from the princes of the king as the spiritual office-bearers in any kingdom are from the temporal. Moreover, of the three princes of the house of God, Zechariah, named next after the high priest Hilkiah, appears to be his nearest subordinate or deputy ( , 2Ki 25:18); but the third, Jehiel, seems to be the head of the line of Ithamar (comp. Ezr 8:2, and Berth, on this passage). Of the six chiefs of the Levites named in 2Ch 35:9, threeConaniah, Shemaiah, and Jozabadhave the same names with those named in 2Ch 31:12-15 on the occasion of the reform of Hezekiah, but are scarcely the same persons.
2Ch 35:10 ff. depicts the preparation of the passover and the sacrificial feast connected with it.And the service was prepared (or arranged, Luther), comp. 2Ch 35:16; 2Ch 29:35; for the following, also 2Ch 30:16 f.
2Ch 35:12. And they removed the burnt-offering; is here to separate the parts of the victim that were to be burned on the altar; comp. Lev 3:9 f., Lev 4:31. These parts are here called , because, as the law of the peace-offering, Lev 3:6-16 (especially 2Ch 35:11; 2Ch 35:16), directs, they were wholly burned as the burnt-offering, and, moreover, on the flesh of the evening sacrifice. A special burnt-offering is not to be thought of, because such were not prescribed on the evening of the 14th Nisan for the pass-over; the only offerings to be presented thereon were the paschal lambs.To give them to the divisions; them, namely, the separated pieces, to be burned as burnt-offerings.And so with the oxen; they also (those special gifts in oxen mentioned 2Ch 35:7-9, 3800 head in all) were presented not as burnt-offerings or holocausts to be wholly burned, but as peace-offerings, to be eaten as a joyful festival in part, that is, after taking away the fat that was to be burned.
2Ch 35:13. And they roasted the passover with fire, according to the ordinance; see Exo 12:8-9. The holy things () are the slain oxen (see 2Ch 29:33). If it is further said of these, that their flesh, after being sodden in pots, etc., is to be brought quickly to the sons of the people, that is, the non-Levitical partakers in the feast, it does not follow that this was done on the first evening of the feast, the 14th Nisan, and thus that all that was provided, passover lambs and peace-offerings, was consumed on the very first evening (as Berth. and apparently also Kamph. think). On the contrary, Keil justly remarks: Such a junction or rather mingling of the feast prepared of the roasted lambs with the eating of the boiled beef would have been so rude an offence against the legal prescriptions concerning the passover, that we shall not ascribe it either to King Josiah and the priests, or even to the author of Chronicles, as the latter expressly remarks that they proceeded in the festival according to the prescription of the law of Moses, and according to the ordinance. Accordingly, that which is here and in the two following verses recorded concerning the preparation of the offering and the feast refers not merely to the opening evening, but to the whole seven days of unleavened bread.
2Ch 35:14. And afterwards, when the laity were provided for.Because the priests . . . (were engaged) in offering the burnt-offering and the fat until night, and thus could not cook and prepare for themselves, the Levites must do this for them. Burnt-offering and fat appear to denote one and the same thing, and so to form a hendiadyoin; or also the conjunctive between the two phrases appears to be explicative (Keil).
2Ch 35:15. And the singers . . . were in their place (comp. 1Ch 23:28; 1Ch 25:1; 1Ch 25:6). What is here recorded concerning the co-operation of the singers and the porters in the solemnity clearly refers, as the comprehensive character of the scene shows, not merely to one, but to all the seven days of the feast. The phrase that day, at the beginning of 2Ch 35:16, does not oppose this view, but reverts to the 14th Nisan as the fundamental day of the festival; comp. the sing. in Gen 2:4 and in 2Ch 35:17, which shows most directly and clearly the correctness of our interpretation.
2Ch 35:18. And there was no passover like that kept. . . from the days of Samuel. This does not contradict 2Ch 30:26, for there the point of comparison is the magnificence and numerous participation in the solemnity; here, on the contrary, its theocratic purity and legitimacy. Comp. above on that passage, as well as Bhr on the parallel 2Ki 23:22. On all Judah and Israel that were present, that is, so far as they were present, comp. 2Ch 34:33.
2Ch 35:19. In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah was this passover kept; thus in the same year in which, according to 2Ch 34:8, the full execution and conclusion of Josiahs reform of worship took place (comp. on 2Ch 35:1). There is no proper chronological difficulty in this date, which is also found in 2Ki 23:23; for the 18th year which is here spoken of is a reign and calendar year (Bhr), and if dated from the autumn, from that time till the legal term of the paschal feast, about the middle of Nisan (in the spring of the following calendar year), all that is related in 2Ch 34:8-33 may take place. And all the more because not a little that referred to the cleansing and repair of the temple might have been already prepared in the previous years of Josiahs reign (from the 12th, 2Ch 34:3).
5. Josiahs Battle with Necho of Egypt, and End: 2Ch 35:20-27. Comp. 2Ki 23:25-30.After all this . . . Necho, king of Egypt, came up; not the Necho I. (Ni–ik–ku–u sar Mi–im–im–piu Sa–ai, king of Memphis and Sais, on an inscription of Asurbanipal) mentioned 2Ch 33:11, who had reigned before 664, but the successor of Psammetichus, Necho II., who reigned till about 605. The Assyrian (or rather Babylonian) king who is attacked by Necho in the present campaign is probably Asur-idil-ili, the Sarak of Abydenus and Syncellus (see Schrader, p. 231 ff.), or even, if Nineveh was already fallen, Nabo-polassar (see Then., Berth., Bhr, etc.), but by no means Sardanapalus (5. Gumpach, Zeitrechnung der Babyl. und Assyr. p. 146), who was much earlier. For Carchemish = Circesium, on the Euphrates, comp. the expositors on Isa 10:9; Jer 46:2.16
2Ch 35:21. What have I to do with thee? properly, what is there to me and thee? comp. Jdg 11:12; 2Sa 10:9; Joh 2:4.I am not against thee this day, I am come up (), my attack is not on thee; after the suffix of the second pers. is rendered emphatic by an added , which would be expressed in English by even thee.But against the house of my war. These words must, if original, be interpreted like the phrase: man of wars of Tou, 1Ch 18:10, or the similar form in 2Sa 8:10, and would thus denote the hereditary foe of the Egyptian king. But it seems more natural to amend, as in 1 Esdras 1, according to the Crit. Note.And God hath commanded me to make haste. By this God, to whose command he was obedient, Necho means not any Egyptian deity, as the Targ. as well as some recent expositors (appealing to Herodotus, 2:158) think, but, according to 2Ch 35:22, the true supreme God, the acknowledgment of whom in the mouth of Necho cannot surprise us more than 2Ch 36:23 in the edict of Cyrus. The older expositors assume a special divine command (sive per somnium, sive per prophetam aliquem ad ipsum a Juda missum) without sufficient necessity; what Necho had recognised as agreeable to the will of his Egyptian deity, that he transfers at once to a supposed indication of the will of Jehovah.
2Ch 35:22. But disguised himself to fight with him; he gave up his true character, the part of the peaceful, which he was bound to play, and engaged against the will of God in combat with Necho. Perhaps, however (with Berth., Kamph.), the reading of the Sept.: but made himself strong for battle (comp. 2Ch 25:11), is to be preferred. A literal disguise, such as that of Ahab, 2Ch 18:29, should in no case be thought of (against Starke and other ancients, also Neteler). For the well-founded opinion of our author, that the battle of Josiah with Necho was a contravention of the divine will, see Evangelical and Ethical Reflections, No. 1. For the valley of Megiddo, see on 2Ki 23:29 f.
2Ch 35:24. And his servants . . . put him in his second chariot, perhaps a more commodious one, which he had with him besides the war chariot. Not so exact 2Ki 23:30.
2Ch 35:25. And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah. This lamentation of Jeremiah was certainly included in the collection of lamentations () on Josiah mentioned immediately after at the end of the verse, but is no longer found in the present Lamentations of Jeremiah, which must be regarded as a later collection than that here named. Perhaps the passages in Jer 22:10; Jer 22:18, and Zec 12:11 contain allusions to the older laments in memory of Josiah that are here intended; comp. Ngelsbach on Jeremiah, and Khler on Zechariah.
2Ch 35:26. And his kindness; , as in 2Ch 32:32 of Hezekiah, but more exactly defined in our passage by the addition: as it is written in the law of the Lord, corresponding to the characteristic peculiarity of Josiah, as a prince living and reigning in the strictest sense according to law.
6. Jehoahaz: 2Ch 36:1-4. Comp. 2Ki 23:30-35.And the people of the land took Jehoahaz; the same mode of elevation to the throne as in Josiah, 2Ch 33:25, and Uzziah, 2Ch 26:1. In the present case, the will of the people took effect in a usurping way, as the younger brother (Jehoahaz, or properly Shallum; see 1Ch 3:15, and comp. remarks on this passage) was preferred to the older Jehoiakim, perhaps because they had learned to fear the latter on account of the tyrannical spirit early manifested by him (comp. on 2Ch 36:8).
2Ch 36:3. Put him down. For the here probably necessary supplement of after , see Crit. Note. On the terms 100 talents of silver and a talent of gold, which are also found in 2 Kings 23, see Bhr on this passage.
7. Jehoiakim: 2Ch 36:5-8. Comp. 2Ki 23:36 to 2Ki 24:7.Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he became king, and so two years older than his brother Shallum-Jehoahaz.Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar; according to the Assyrio-Babylonian monuments, Nabiuv–kudurriusur (comp. the Hebrew form , Jer 49:28 and Ezr 2:1, Kethib; likewise in Alex. Polyhistor, Megasthenes, and Abydenus). The name (according to Schrader, p. 235) is compounded of the idol name Nabiuv or Nabu, the subst. Kudur, crown (), and the imperat. usur or nasar, protect, and means: Nebo, guard the crown (not Nebo guards the crown, as Keil states our passage and at Dan 1:1).And bound him in fetters, as befell Manasseh, and as the Assyrio-Babylonish sovereigns were wont to do to all captive princes; comp. on 2Ch 33:11.To carry him to Babel. That this carrying to Babel was only intended, not executed, almost all recent expositors justly assume; comp. besides Movers (Chron. p. 333), Bertheau, Keil, Neteler on our passage, also Bahr on 2Ki 24:1 ff., Ngelsbach on Jer 22:17 ff., as well as my remarks on Dan 1:2. If the Sept., which presents a text often deviating from the Masoretic text, and amplified with many additions, makes out of to carry him () an actual and carried him (), and also 1 Esdras and the Vulg. translate accordingly (et vinctum catenis duxit Babylonem), this has its ground in the erroneous assumption derived mainly from a onesided view of Dan 1:2, as if already the misfortune of being carried to Babel had befallen Jehoiakim, which, according to the sequel, first overtook his son Jehoiachin, whereas he himself, according to the express statement of 2Ch 36:5, reigned eleven years at Jerusalem (the last of these eleven years, naturally, as the vassal of Nebuchadnezzar). On the date of this first invasion of Nebuchadnezzar, according to Dan 1:1 in the third year of Jehoiakim, about 606 or 605 b.c., comp. our remarks in the Introd. to the book of Daniel, 8 (Bibelw. xvii. 28, 30 ff.). On 2Ch 36:7, comp. Dan 1:2; Ezr 1:7.
2Ch 36:8. And his abominations which he did; not certainly a mere designation of the idolatry of Jehoiakim (as Berth. thinks, who understands of the making of idols), but also of his other evil deedsfor example, his shedding of innocent blood, 2Ki 24:4. The next phrase: and that which was found against him, is a still more general and comprehensive expression for these evil deeds; comp. 2Ch 19:3.
8. Jehoiachin: 2Ch 36:9-10. Comp. the fuller account, 2Ki 24:8-17.Jehoiachin was eight years old. That the number eight here is, at all events, a miswriting for eighteen, see in Crit. Note. Not merely in 2Ki 24:8 is Jehoiachin designated as a youth of eighteen years at his accession, but Eze 19:5-9 makes him appear at least as old, since he is depicted as a young lion, who practised man-stealing, oppressed widows, and laid waste cities, abominations which a boy of eight years could not have committed. Against Bertheaus opinion, that it follows from 2Ki 24:12; 2Ki 24:15, Jer 22:26, where Jehoiachins mother is mentioned along with him, that he was still in his minority, and thus the present statement of the Chronist that he is only eight years old is correct, is the joint mention of the queen-mother in the account of the accession of a new king which is usual in the books of Kings, and occurs, for example, also in Jehoahaz (2Ki 23:31), Jehoiakim (2Ki 23:36), and Zedekiah (2Ki 24:18). For the name Jehoiachin, and its relation to the kindred form Jechoniah or Coniah, comp. on 2Ki 3:16.
2Ch 36:10. And at the turn of the year, in the spring, when men are wont to open the campaign (comp. 2Sa 11:1; 1Ki 20:22).And brought him to Babel (caused him to come) with the goodly vessels, etc. In the mention of these goodly vessels (as in 2Ch 32:27) there is an advance in comparison with some of the vessels, as in 2Ch 36:7. The spoliation under Jechoniah (598 b.c.) was more thorough than under Jehoiakim.And he made Zedekiah his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem. That this designation of Zedekiah, the last king before the exile, as the brother of Jehoiachin is inexact, and, according to 2Ki 24:17, to be explained by fathers brother (uncle,), or even directly changed into this term, is shown by the full list of Josiahs four sons already communicated by the Chronist, 1Ch 3:15 f. Comp. on this passage, especially on 1Ch 3:16, where also mention is made of Mattaniah, the name borne by Zedekiah before he ascended the throne.
9. Zedekiah: 2Ch 36:11-21. Comp. 2Ki 24:18 to 2Ki 25:21, also Jeremiah 52. and 1Es 1:44-55.Zedekiah was twenty-one years old. The younger Zedekiah, brother of Jehoiachin, and nephew of Mattaniah Zedekiah (see 1Ch 3:16), could not have been so old at the time when Jehoiachin, being eighteen years old, was deposed. The eleven years of Zedekiahs reign extend from 598 to 587.
2Ch 36:12. Humbled himself not before Jeremiah the prophet from the mouth of the Lord, who spoke from the mouth of God; comp. 2Ch 35:22; Jer 23:16. Of these prophetic warnings and threatenings addressed by Jeremiah to Zedekiah, Jer 21:4 ff. especially comes into account; comp. also Jer 37:2 ff.
2Ch 36:13. And he also rebelled against king Nebuchadnezzar. This revolt is also censured by the prophet Ezekiel (Eze 17:13 ff.) as a grievous transgression.And he stiffened his neck (showed himself stiff-necked; comp. 2Ki 17:14; Jer 19:15, etc.) and hardened his heart, made his heart firm. Comp. Deu 2:30, where God is said to harden and make stiffnecked; which does not, however, warrant the conclusion that he must also here be the subject of , as Bertheau thinks; comp., on the contrary, Deu 15:7.
2Ch 36:14. Also all the chiefs of the priests and the people transgressed very much; comp. Eze 8:6 ff., where priests and people are described as sunk in base idolatry under the last kings, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah, while prominence is expressly given to the elders of the people (2Ch 36:11) and the priests (2Ch 36:16) as the chief participators in these abominations. Neither there nor here would a reference of the accusation concerning idolatrous abominations to an earlier time than that of the last kings, namely, to that of Manasseh and Amon, be justified (against Berth.). From the circumstance that in the prophetic discourses of Jeremiah such complaints of idolatry are less vehement under Zedekiah, no inference can be drawn against this view. The phrase: chiefs of the priests, denotes here, as in Ezr 10:5, the presidents of the twenty-four classes, together with the high priests, and therefore the same whom Ezekiel has in view in the twenty-five men in the temple; comp. Hitzig, Gesch. p. 238.
2Ch 36:15. Sent to them by his messengers, rising early and sending, constantly and earnestly; , as in Jer 26:5; Jer 29:19; Jer 35:14 f.Because He had compassion on His people, exercised forbearance toward them, did not wish to deliver them over instantly to condign punishment.
2Ch 36:16. And they mocked, literally, were mocking. (also occurring in Syriac in the sense of subsannantes) is . ., of like import with 30:10. Also the following (Hithp. of ), ape, befool, occurs only here; the equivalent pilel, see in Gen 27:12. On the contents of the present accusation, comp. especially Eze 33:22. If, then, at first only Ezekiel, the prophet of the exiles, is named as mocked by the people, yet it cannot be doubted that mocking and reproach were often cast upon the other prophets, especially Jeremiah, whose bold exhortations to repentance had to encounter so much opposition on the part of the ungodly population under the last kings before the exile. There is, therefore, in the plural messengers of God and prophets no exaggeration, though there may be some rhetorical generalization In the expression.Till there was no healing, till the threatening judgment could no longer be averted. Comp. on the phrase, 2Ch 21:18, 2Ch 30:20; Pro 6:15.
2Ch 36:17. And slew their young men with the sword. To , slew, or caused to slay, also is God the subject, as to the foregoing and following verbs. To bring in Nebuchadnezzar here as the subject is to import an unnecessary harshness of construction (against Keil, Neteler). The temple, where the young men were slain, is designated the house of the sanctuary, because they had profaned it by their idolatry; comp. 2Ch 36:14 b. The Sept. ( ) unnecessarily changes into (2Ch 7:20).The whole He gave into his hand; comp. Jer 27:6; Jer 32:3-4. The neutral , notwithstanding that persons only are previously named, is used, in view of the vessels and treasures about to be mentioned in the following verse; yet it may be rendered them all.
2Ch 36:19. And they burned; comp. Jer 39:8; 2Ki 25:9.And destroyed all its goodly vessels (comp. Isa 64:10, also 2Ch 36:10), literally, to destroy; comp. in 2Ch 12:12.
2Ch 36:20. And he carried away those that remained from the sword, literally, the remnant from the sword. The following words: and they became servants to him and his sons, coincide with the prophecy, Jer 27:7.
2Ch 36:21. To fulfil; , as in 1Ch 29:5; Dan 9:2. The oracle here quoted stands in Jer 25:11 f. (comp. Jer 29:10), where, however, only the seventy years duration of the Babylonish bondage is predicted; but nothing is said of a representation of these seventy years as an expiation or requital for the neglect of the sabbath years. This symbolizing of the seventy years duration of the exile predicted by Jeremiah, contained in the words: until the land enjoyed her sabbaths, is taken from the passage Lev 26:34, where such an expiation of neglected sabbath-year solemnities by an equally long time of desolation was announced to the people; and the added remark: all the days of the desolation she rested (kept a sabbath), is taken word for word from this passage of Leviticus. That there were exactly seventy neglected sabbath-years, and therefore a period of 490 years on account of which the seventy years of exile (with the beginning of the Persian monarchy as terminus ad quem, see 2Ch 36:20) were decreed, our author scarcely assumes. The terminus a quo of his reckoning of the neglected sabbath-years need not be sought exactly 490 years before the beginning of the exile (606 or 605), in the time of the last judges, Eli and Samuel; and we can scarcely suppose the whole period of the kingdom down to the exile to have been marked by the neglect of the sabbath-years, since under such theocratic sovereigns as David, Solomon, and Hezekiah, the observation of the precept in question was scarcely omitted. The whole statement is only approximate (like that in 2Ch 35:18 regarding the passover of Josiah, and its relation to the preceding one); it is in no way fitted to be the basis of any calculations, whether of the number of sabbath-years neglected till the exile, or of the point from which these acts of neglect date.
10. Close; The Return from the Captivity under Cyrus: 2Ch 36:22-23. Comp. Ezr 1:1-3 (also 1Es 2:1-5); and on the coincidence of the beginning of Ezra with the close of Chronicles, Introd. 2 and 3.And in the first year of Cyrus, in the first year of his sovereignty over the former Babylonian-Assyrian monarchy, immediately after the taking of Babylon. For the name Cyrus (. Pers. Quurus), see the expositions on Ezr 1:1 and Isa 44:28.That the word of the Lord might be fulfilled; (from perfici, 2Ch 29:34) thus = of the verse before, as the same prediction of Jeremiah is spoken of there as here.And he made proclamation, literally, let go a cry; comp. 2Ch 30:5.
2Ch 36:23. All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me. In the same way as Necho, 2Ch 35:21, Cyrus knows and confesses himself the instrument or the anointed (Isa 45:1) of the most high, living, and only true God, but designates Him not by the common name God, like the former, but at once as Jehovah, the name of the God of the Jews, whose existence and identity with his own supreme god he at once acknowledges, and therefore as the God of heaven, by the title which his supreme god, Ahuramazda, was wont to receive at the heads of all the royal edicts of the Persian sovereign. Comp. Evangelical and Ethical Reflections, No. 3.Whoso is among you all of his people, the Lord his God (be) with him. That here probably is to be read instead of , see in Crit. Note. On the abrupt termination of the narrative after these words of the royal edict, see Introd. as quoted above.
Evangelical And Ethical Reflections And Homiletic Hints On 2 Chronicles 34-36
1. The last mighty outburst of the theocratic spirit under Josiah, which brought in at the same time the last flourishing epoch of the Jewish kingdom and people, is depicted by our author with comparative fulness in one respect, namely, as regards the great passover after the purging of the temple, which accords with his Levitical leanings, with much greater fulness than by the author of the books of Kings. If he not only celebrates the theocratic purity, exactitude, and legitimacy of this festival, as one the like of which had not been held during the whole period of the kings (from the days of Samuel the prophet, 2Ch 35:18), but praises the pious deeds of Josiah as it is written in the law of the Lord, 2Ch 35:26, designates the single case in which he renounced his character as a prince of peace, walking strictly according to law, as a disguising of himself, as being untrue to himself (2Ch 35:22), and in the very opening of his description gives him a commendation which was given to no other king, namely, that he walked in the ways of David his father, and declined not to the right hand nor to the left (2Ch 34:2), nothing of all this appears to be exaggerated; on the contrary, the whole extremely favourable picture of the prince is correctly conceived and faithfully rendered from the standpoint of our author. In the second book of Kings, while no specially Levitical leaning affects the pragmatism of the narrator, the praise of his walking in the footsteps of David, without declining to the right or left, is set forth with equal prominence; and a special aspect of his theocratic disposition and demeanour, his zeal in the extirpation of idolatry, is there described still more minutely and commended with more fulness (2Ki 23:4-20) than in the account before us, which compresses that which is here referred to, as already sufficiently known, into a brief sketch of a few verses. But as there, so here, it is manifest, amid the glory of his theocratic success, that his strenuous efforts were unsatisfactory, and insufficient to effect a permanent recovery, a true regeneration of the people of God. That, notwithstanding the sincerity of his conversion, the Lord turned not from the great hotness of His anger which was kindled against Judah because of the provocations of Manasseh, but rather the divine sentence of extirpation against the kingdom of Judah remained unrevoked (2Ki 23:26 f.),this our author certainly does not say in the express words of the older parallel text; indeed he appears, according to 2Ch 34:33, to add to the testimony for the sincerity of the kings conversion the assurance of the reality of the conversion of the people, when he writes: All his days they departed not from the Lord God of their fathers. But even this all his days contains a fatal limitation of the praise here bestowed on the endeavours of Josiah; and the lamentable state of idolatrous degeneracy which betrayed itself immediately under his sons (2Ch 36:5 ff.), and which was the fault no less of the maladministration of these last kings than of the apostasy of the chiefs of the priests and the people (2Ch 36:14), sufficiently shows that the adherence of Judah to the law of the Lord during the period from the reform of Josiah to his death was by no means sincere or truly genuine, but rather the complaints uttered in the last days of the kingdom by Jeremiah, of the unfaithfulness, the inner apostasy, and immorality, uncleanness, corruption indeed, of the people (Jeremiah 11, 13, 25, etc.), were fully justified. The insufficiency of mere reforms of the theocratic worship, healing only the surface, not the deep seat of the wound, and accordingly, as all that could serve the king as the standard for his reforming action lay in the ordinances of worship, the inadequacy of the law to the production of true life, that (Rom 8:3), that impotence of the law to secure true freedom, true righteousness, and assured hope of the heavenly inheritance (Gal 3:4; Romans 7),all this came out with astonishing clearness in the history of the reform of Josiah, which was pursued with so much zeal and sudden success, and yet yielded so transient a result. The king hears the words of the law discovered in the temple; the curses which it pronounces on the infidelity of the apostates pierce through his heart; he rends his garments, weeps, and bows down in deep, sincere sorrow before God. He succeeds also in inspiring the rulers of the people, if not with the same spirit of sincere repentance, yet with the fiery zeal that turns to the monuments and instruments of idolatry, and repeats the deeds of an Elijah. And what does he effect by all this? The stern message of Huldah announces this to him: for himself, and for the duration of his reign, he shall enjoy the blessings of walking with God; in peace he shall be gathered to his fathers sepulchres; his eyes shall not see air the misfortune which the Lord is determined to bring upon his kingdom and city; for His wrath is now once for all poured out on this place, and nothing is now able to quench it (2Ch 34:23-28). It is impossible more thoroughly and powerfully to exemplify and exhibit what is the curse which the law works (Gal 3:13) than by these words of Huldah, of which it can scarcely be said whether they are more an exhortation to repentance or a promise of mercy (comp. the in many ways similar address of Azariah ben Oded to King Asa, 2Ch 15:1-7). And not even the salvation and blessing which they promise the king on account of his personal pietythat he shall depart in peace to his fathersis fulfilled in a perfectly satisfactory way. Josiah departs before he has seen all the misfortune that the Lord has threatened to send, but as a brand plucked from the fire! Not in a painless way is he brought home to his fathers, but through conflict, war, and bloodshed, as he himself had willed. The only infidelity of which he made himself guilty in an otherwise irreproachable walk is avenged by a certainly only temporal (slaying only the body, not the soul), but yet terribly sharp and severe punishment; and even thereby is the series of judgments which bring on the end of the Jewish state and kingdom immediately introduced.
2. Josiahs defeat and tragic decease is the beginning of the end. As a fair but rapidly-overspreading evening glow after a dull, rainy day indicates the approaching nightfall, so his reform of worship, as the last powerful movement of the theocratic spirit, almost immediately precedes the sinking of the people of God into the murky night of political annihilation and protracted subjugation. It goes rapidly down, after its better administration of the people and the kingdom had once risen to a certain height; and, like that better emperor of the house of Palologus shortly before the fall of the Byzantine Empire, or like the reign of Louis XVI. as the forerunner of the terror of the French Revolution, had delayed for a short time the execution of the sentence of extirpation, already ripened into an inevitable decree under the last preceding kings. The Chronist indicates this rapid riding of the dead that came on after the decease of Josiah, this entrance of the galloping consumption into the long since internally rotten and putrid state of Judah, by the extreme brevity with which he despatches the last four reigns. In a way more summary still than the author of the books of Kings, who likewise does not dwell very long on them, he depicts the ungodly practice of the first three successors of Josiah, to none of whom he devotes more than four verses, and for none of whom he has any word of praise or acknowledgmentnot even for Jehoahaz, with respect to whom he does not indeed employ the formula used of the following two, in harmony with 2 Kings, and he did that which was evil before the Lord (comp., on the contrary, 2Ki 23:32), but simply on account of his epitomizing habit, as he hastens to the end, not because he cherished any better opinion of him. On Zedekiah he dwells somewhat longer; but not to report more fully the public acts of this unfortunate last of the Davidic kings, nor to depict the terrible catastrophe of wasting and destruction forming the close of his reign with the same fulness as in 2 Kings 25 or Jeremiah 52, but only to exhibit the ungodliness and perversity, carried out to the end, of the course of both king and people, in a pragmatic, reflective way, as the cause of the inevitable judgment (see vers. 1316), and to display the contrast between this course and the incessant but always ineffectual cries of admonition and warning coming from the prophet Jeremiah (vers. 12, 21). His report of the fall of Jerusalem and the beginning of the Babylonish captivity (vers. 1720) is, compared with the fuller accounts of the parallels, in fact, as compendious as possible, but by its very conciseness and brevity produces only the deeper and more powerful impression.
3. The conclusion of his historical account, 2Ch 36:22-23, is also characteristic for the standpoint and method of our author. While the author of the books of Kings (2Ki 25:27-30) closes with a notice of the release of the captive king Jehoiachin in the middle of the exile, by the grace of the Babylonian king Evilmerodach, and thus, in correspondence with his paramount interest in the personal fate of the king, reports a mere prelude of the final release of Judah from the exile, and not the very release itself, our work closes with a notice, though brief, of the cessation of servitude in a foreign land by the gracious edict of Cyrus. In this characteristic trait is exhibited the historian who bears on his priestly heart the fortune of the whole people, not merely of the royal house. As he had set forth immediately before the divinely decreed and prophetically attested necessity of a servitude of seventy years, to compensate for the past neglect of seventy sabbath-years, so he cannot but point, at the close of his work, to the final fulfilment of this prediction. The internal organic connection of this closing notice, by which the fair perspective opens into a new and more fruitful beginning of the history of the covenant people after the exile, with that which was recorded immediately before concerning the last kings before the exile and their downfall, is as clear as day, and precludes any such opinion as that the contents of 2Ch 36:22-23 stood originally only at the beginning of Ezra, and was afterwards Added at the close of our work by a later hand (comp. Introd. 3, p. 7). But these closing Verses betray their originality and integral connection with the whole preceding work not only by the manifest reference to predictions of Jeremiah and Moses quoted in ver. 21, but also by this, that they add to that earlier testimony from the mouth of Necho to the fate of Israel-Judah as divinely decreed and carried on (2Ch 35:21) by the counsels of the supreme living God, the God of heaven (2Ch 36:22), a second such testimony on the part of a holder of the heathen world-power; as if it were intended to prove to superfluity that Gods judicially strict but also gracious rule over His deeply guilty and corrupt people might be known in its reality, and according to its salutary effect on the people, even on the part of the heathen executors of His judgments. Necho and Cyrus appearing as witnesses of the divine truth, as involuntary and more or less unconscious heathen prophetic announcers of the severity and the goodness of God in reference to the destiny of His people, as prophetic dispensers of blessing to Israel,as Balaam formerly,the one as a foe, but the other as a friend and protector, yea, as the type of its future Messiah (comp. Isa 45:1);in this light the close of our history presents the relations of the heathen world-powers to the people of God when entering the period of its development after the exile. His representation in this respect corresponds with the mode of thought of the prophets before the exile, especially Jeremiah, to whom the world-power external to Israel had ceased to appear as something absolutely opposed to God, so that they frequently warn their people against foolish opposition to it, and inculcate willing submission to its authority (comp. Bibelw. XV. p. X. ff., and especially E. Vilmar, Der Prophet Jeremia, in the monthly journal Bew, des Glaubens, Bd. v. 1869, p. 19 ff.); and on the other hand, with the view of the world taken by the prophetic men of God of and after the exile, as Daniel, Zechariah, etc., in accordance with which the dependence of the destiny of Israel on such of the world-powers as were occasional executors of the judicial and beneficent providence of God is presupposed as a thing understood of itself, a certain mission-call of Israel in reference to the heathen nations around is preached, and the continuance of this state to the entrance of the Messianic era is announced (comp. Bibelw. Bd. xvii. pp. 3 f., 37 f., 41; also Hengstenb. Gesch. des Reiches Gottes, ii. 2, p. 277 ff.). It is of no small consequence that the Old Testament Chronicles, the most comprehensive historical work of sacred literature, closes with such universalistic views of Israels call of salvation to all nations, and of the future union of all in faith in Jehovah as the one and only true God. Its end thus turns to its beginning. Setting out from the first Adam, the author concludes his work with the consoling expectation of the future and not far distant, but rather, in the reconstruction of the theocracy promoted by the edict of Cyrus, already guaranteed and necessarily involved restitution of the blessed kingdom of the second Adam, the Redeemer of the world.
Footnotes:
[1] is probably an error of transcription for
[2]Instead of the Keri , that appears formed after Eze 26:9, or Neh 4:7, but yields not suitable sense, we should point , in ruinis eorum (comp. Psa 109:10). The Kethib: , he chose (examined, searched) their houses, is scarcely warranted by the usage of speech.
[3]The Kethib is undoubtedly to be preferred to the Keri , and they returned.
[4]For the Syr. presents , which seems to be the original reading according to 2Ki 22:12.
[5]For is to be read, according to the Sept: , and whom the king had commanded.,
[6] Kethib , have burned offerings; Piel, as 2Ki 22:17 : have burned incense.
[7] Kethib , perhaps only a slip of the pen for (Keri), the teaching, instructing; some mss. give this directly as the Kethib; some have , which is perhaps only another way of miswriting the original .
[8]The Kethib (imp. Niph. make you ready) is undoubtedly to be preferred to the Keri , prepare ye (comp. 2Ch 35:6).
[9]The difficult phrase is not translated by the Sept.; the Vulg. gives the very free rendering: sed contra aliam pugno domum. The original text is perhaps still to be discovered from 1Es 1:25 : , namely, (comp. also Josephus, Antiq. x. 5, 1). So at least O. F. Fritzsche (on 1 Esdras), Berth., and Kamph.
[10]Instead of , disfigured, unrobed himself, the Sept. read () (comp. 2Ch 25:11); the Vulg. (prparavit) and 1 Esdras () appear only to have run into the indefinite.
[11]Instead of , and removed, put him down, the Sept. read () , agreeing with 2Ki 23:33. But the Vulg., Syr., and 1 Esdras confirm the Masoretic reading The last (1Es 1:33) seems to have read , with a supplement which Berth., Kamp., and others pronounce necessary before .
[12]The Sept., Vulg., and 1 Esdras change into the past ; comp. Exeg. Expl.
[13] , though the Sept. and Vulg. give the number 8, is certainly an error of the pen for ; comp 2Ki 24:8, also some Hebr. manuscripts, the Syr. and Arab. in our passage.
[14]For the parallels Ezr 1:3 and 1Es 2:5 present , which is perhaps the original form.
[15]Not Harham, as Luther and after him also Bhr (changing the into ) write
[16]Recently G. Maspero (De Carchemis oppidi situ et historia antiquissima, Lut. Par. 1872) has attempted to identify Carchemish with the town Mabug = k or Hierapolis, north-east of Aleppo, following the lead of Ephraem on 2Ki 23:30.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
This chapter brings us to the conclusion of the Chronicles. Here is contained the history of Jehoahaz, and his being deposed by Pharaoh. Jerusalem taken. Jehoiachin made king. Zedekiah’s short reign. The proclamation by Cyrus.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The very short reign of Jehoahaz furnished but little subject of observation. The time was now hastening when Judah, like Israel, should cease to be a kingdom. Here is the Egyptian king triumphing over Judah, putting down one king and setting up another, and changing his name at his pleasure. Is this God’s Judah? alas! what hath sin wrought! Here Jeremiah’s account appears to have been marked with truth when he said, The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron. Jer 17:1 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
XIX
THE DOWNFALL OF JUDAH AND JERUSALEM
2Ki 23:30-25:30
We take up now the downfall of Judah and Jerusalem. The causes which led to this downfall are almost identical with the causes which led to the fall of Samaria and the Northern Kingdom: the idolatry and wickedness of the people, their departure from the worship of Jehovah, their apparent determination to pay no attention to the words of the prophets, the conspiracy of the last king, Hoshea, with Egypt and his revolt against the king of Assyria. These were the causes remote and near which led to the fall of Samaria. The same causes operated in bringing about the fall of Judah and Jerusalem: the wickedness, the perverseness, the determination and incorrigibility of the people their refusal to give heed to the voice of the prophets, especially Jeremiah, the conspiracy of the last king with Egypt to form an alliance, and his attempt to throw off the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. These are the remote and near causes which brought about the destruction of the Southern Kingdom.
Let us look at the situation at the death of Josiah. That sad event occurred in the year 608 B.C. It was a death blow to the hopes of the prophets and the prophetic party and all the righteous ones of Judah. It was a death blow to the hopes of the nation, and the sadness and mourning that resulted from the death of Josiah is suggested to us by Zec 12:11 . Judah never forgot the death of this good king. Zechariah, prophesying of the times of the restoration and messianic age, when all Israel would repent and mourn for their sins, says, “In that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon.” The mourning of all Israel in the future when it shall repent of its sins and be restored is compared to the mourning of Judah at the death of Josiah.
Now let us glance at the political horizon as well. The great empire of Assyria had reached the climax of its conquests, and its oppressions, and was not hastening to its end. The Babylonian Empire had risen; they had formed a league with the Median Empire, and the two combined, with the help of many other small nations, had at last concentrated their energies upon old Nineveh, and it was soon to be destroyed.
Zep 2:13-14 gives a distinct prophecy of the destruction of Nineveh, the capital of the great Assyrian Empire. Zephaniah lived probably in the time of Josiah, possibly earlier. Let us read what he says in his prophecy: “And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria, and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness. And herds shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations: both the pelican and the porcupine shall lodge in the capitals thereof; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds: for he hath laid bare the cedar work.”
The entire prophecy of Nahum is on this one subject the downfall of Nineveh. Nahum is a poet, who gives a vivid description of the siege and fall of Nineveh. The world rejoiced when old Nineveh was destroyed. That occurred about 607 or 606 B.C.
Now looking more closely at Judah and Jerusalem, our first point is the Egyptian supremacy in Judah. I have called attention to the successes of Pharaohnecho, king of Egypt, and noted that it was to hinder his advance north that Josiah came out against him and was slain. Pharaohnecho pursued his victorious career north as far as the land of Hamath and conquered that country, and extended his kingdom as far north as the Euphrates River, thus subjecting all Syria to his sway and establishing his headquarters at Riblah in the valley of Hamath.
Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah, was put on the throne by the people, doubtless because of his popularity. He had a reign of only three months. During these three months he was under tribute to Pharaohnecoh who had conquered all this country, and he made him prisoner and carried him away to Egypt. His older brother, Jehoiakim, was put upon the throne by Pharaoh. Jehoahaz had a brief reign and a very wicked one. His end is unspeakably sad. Jer 22:10-12 gives an account of him.
Jeremiah at this time was a prophet of Judah and Jerusalem, and he was very active. Here is what he says about the end of Jehoahaz: “Weep not for the dead [that means Josiah], neither bemoan him; but weep sore for him that goeth away [Jehoahaz] ; for he shall return no more, nor see his native country. For thus saith Jehovah touching Shallum [another name for Jehoahaz] the son of Josiah, king of Judah, who reigned instead of Josiah his father, and who went forth out of this place: He shall not return thither any more; but in the place whither they have led him captive there he shall die, and he shall see this land no more.”
In Eze 19:3-8 we have a striking statement also. Ezekiel was in Babylon prophesying to the exiles. He says, “And she brought up one of her whelps [Judah and Jerusalem represented as a lioness]: he became a young lion, and he learned to catch the prey; he devoured men, . . .” It is Ezekiel’s description of the capture of Jehoahaz, a young lion that Pharaoh caught and took away to Egypt.
Jehoiakim, two or three years his senior, was placed upon the throne by Pharaoh-necho, paid him tribute doubtless, and reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. He was just the opposite of his father, King Josiah, in almost every particular. It seems remarkable that such good kings as Hezekiah and Josiah should have such bad sons, utterly reprobate sons, &a Manasseh and Jehoiakim, but we see that even today.
Nebuchadnezzar, the great Babylonian, rose up in the year 608 B.C. Nabopolassar, the king of Babylon, and the Medes destroyed Nineveh and left her such an utter ruin that the very place of her existence was soon forgotten. It was completely overwhelmed and devastated by the Babylonians and the Medes, who for centuries had been looking for a chance to get a blow at the ferocious Assyrians.
Nabopolassar was in the East undertaking that great work, and his son Nebuchadnezzar was sent to the West to check the advance of the Egyptian king. We have already stated that Pharaohnecho had extended his empire to the Euphrates River, and now he was ready to go farther. Nebuchadnezzar was sent with a large army to check him. They met near Carchemish, 605 B.C., and here one of the great decisive battles of the world was fought. We find an account of this in Jer 46 , beginning with the second verse. It was the greatest event of that time: “Against Egypt, came the army of Pharaohnecho king of Egypt, which was by the river Euphrates in Carchemish, which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon smote in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah.”
Our next point is the supremacy of Babylon. The result, of course, was that the army of Nebuchadnezzar swept down in hot pursuit of the fleeing Egyptians and all the country was transferred into the hands of the Babylonians again. At once Jehoiakim began to pay tribute. Every nation in this region was compelled to pay heavy tribute to Nebuchadnezzar, the invincible head of the Babylonian army. Thus the allegiance of Judah and Jerusalem was transferred, at it where, in a moment from Egypt to Babylon. Now at that time there occurred a raid of the Babylonians upon Judah and Jerusalem and evidently many of the nobles and princes of the people were taken away. Dan 1:1 shows that in this raid upon Judah and Jerusalem Daniel with others was among those that were taken to Babylon: “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it.” Then it goes on with the story of Daniel and his three friends. This is one of the first deportations leading up to the final downfall. Jer 52:28 is a reference probably to the same deportation by Nebuchadnezzar: “This is the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away captive: in the seventh year three thousand Jews and three and twenty.” That may refer to the first one or it may possibly refer to a later one, we cannot be positive as to the chronology.
The next thing we note about Jehoiakim is that he rebels against the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar. Perhaps he felt that he could make an alliance with Egypt, that old shame which Isaiah denounced, and which was one of the main things that caused the downfall of Samaria. Jehoiakim was evidently conspiring with Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar was in the far east engaged in his conquests; Jehoiakim, led on by his nobles and princes, thought he could free himself again from the galling yoke of Babylon and in spite of all Jeremiah’s entreaties he was determined to do so. In Jer 36 there is a little story of the prophecies which Jeremiah wrote and which were read in the presence of Jehoiakim as he was sitting in his winter palace before an open fire. When the roll was read to him, he took his penknife and cut it in pieces and threw it into the fire. Nearly all of those present with him seemed to approve of his action; only two or three are said to have begged him not to do it. This is the character of Jehoiakim and his attitude toward Jeremiah. In Jer 22:13-19 we have Jeremiah’s own description of Jehoiakim; also a reference to Jehoiakim in Jer 26:20-23 .
All this indicates Jehoiakim’s character, bold and incorrigibly defiant of God’s word and of every principle of right and truth. The result we find in 2Ki 24:2-4 : “And the Lord sent against him bands of the Chaldeans, and bands of the Syrians, and bands of the Moabites, and bands of the children of Ammon, and sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by the hand of his servants the prophets.” They did not destroy it utterly, but they carried away a good many captives and much spoil. Jehoiakim died in the year 598 B.C., and the manner of his death is a mystery. There is some difficulty in reconciling the Bible accounts. In 2Ch 36:6 we find: “Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and bound him in fetters, to carry him to Babylon.” Jeremiah said that he should be cast out, drawn forth out of the city and buried as a beast. In Jer 36:30 we also have a statement similar: “Therefore 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.” The explanation possibly is that Nebuchadnezzar found him to be such a traitor and such a wretch and villain that he would not take him to Babylon, but had him slain and his body cast forth as refuse out of the city of Jerusalem.
In the next place we have the brief reign of Jehoiachin. Judah and Jerusalem are still under the yoke of Babylon, but the people rise up and put Jehoiachin on the throne, a boy only eighteen years old, and he reigns but three months. Evidently Nebuchadnezzar found something false or treacherous about him; so he comes to the city and besieges it. Jehoiachin surrenders the city, with all his family, and is taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar and carried in chains to Babylon; there lodged in the palace prison spending the rest of his life in captivity. At last the king of Babylon brings him out from his dungeon, lifts up his head, speaks kindly to him, and gives him a place among the other kings, tributary to Babylon.
Now comes the reign of Zedekiah, last of the kings of Judah. He is made king by Nebuchadnezzar and at the same time there is a great deportation of treasures and of nobles and of artisans from Jerusalem. This is the second deportation, and the most important one of this period. Treasures all the treasures of the house of the Lord and the king’s house at Jerusalem all the princes and mighty men, craftsmen and smiths, all the artisans, the best and most skillful minds of Jerusalem, were taken and there was left only the poor and laboring classes. Nebuchadnezzar took away all these because he had a great deal of building to do in his own land, completing the walls of Babylon, and other general work, irrigating the lands of the country, etc. But there is another object in it also, viz: With all the best blood gone, Jerusalem could not offer much resistance.
Afterward Zedekiah rebels, doubtless because he had some hope of a league with Egypt and that he might throw off the yoke of Babylon. Jer 27:12 ; Jer 27:17 gives Jeremiah’s advice to Zedekiah and all the other small nations telling them in substance: “You keep on yourselves the yoke of Babylon, for that is the only thing that will save your kingdom from destruction.” But Zedekiah did not heed Jeremiah any more than Jehoiakim did.
The result is just what we might expect. Nebuchadnezzar sets his army in motion, and in a few years the armies of Nebuchadnezzar are again surrounding the city and this time he means business. Jeremiah pleads with Zedekiah to surrender and take upon himself the yoke of Babylon but the influence of the princes that surround the weak Zedekiah counteracts all the influence of Jeremiah and he goes out on his final rebellion. We find that discussed in Jeremiah 36-37.
But now a ray of hope dawns upon the people of Jerusalem; the siege has been on some time. They hear that the king of Egypt, at last, is coming up to help them. The siege is raised, Nebuchadnezzar moves his army away from Jerusalem in order to meet the Egyptians, but he very soon defeats the Egyptian army and again the walls of Jerusalem are encompassed with his hosts, and Jeremiah (Jer 37:5-11 ) gives what the prophet says about it at the time. The siege was raised, but he warns them against false hopes: “For though ye had smitten the whole army of the Chaldeans that fight against you, and there remained but wounded men among them, yet should they rise up every man in his tent, and burn this city with fire.” “The doom is inevitable, if you carry out your principle of rebellion.” Zedekiah refuses the advice absolutely and for eighteen months Jerusalem endures the horrors of a siege. The fourth chapter of the book of Lamentations describes this. It speaks about the pitiful mother boiling her own children, and those who have been brought up in scarlet as embracing the dunghills to find something to eat, the nobleman’s skin is blackened, going about like a walking skeleton, the babes crying after the mothers’ breasts, and the people perishing.
After eighteen months they try to escape by breaking through, and Zedekiah and his army flee down into the valley of the Jordan and are overtaken by the Chaldeans; he is captured and his army scattered. He is brought before Nebuchadnezzar and Zedekiah’s last vision is his sons slaughtered before his eyes, and then (according to the Assyrians) he is laid upon his back, a short spear driven through each eye, and Zedekiah’s day becomes night, and he sees no more in this world. He is taken to Babylon and there held a prisoner.
Nebuchadnezzar makes a thorough work of the destruction of Jerusalem. He sends his captain, Nebuzaradan, and destroys the entire city, burning up everything that would burn, throwing down everything that can be thrown down, and the best of the people: the priests, the scribes, old and young, young men and maidens, are slain. All these nobles who had been. Zedekiah’s advisers in his intrigues with Egypt are slain. They deserved it. Had it not been for them, Jeremiah might have influenced Zedekiah to surrender to Nebuchadnezzar, and thus saved the city and the people. All the treasurers were taken — everything that was worth anything and what could not be taken was broken to pieces. The description given in 2Ki 25:13-21 .
In connection with that event a large number of the best people of Jerusalem are again deported to Babylon and only the poor are left in the land that they may keep and dress the vineyards. This is the third deportation to Babylon; so the exile from Judah and Jerusalem was a process extending over about twenty years, altogether.
In the meantime, what happens to Jeremiah? Jer 40:1-6 , we have an account of the captain of the Babylonians, who took Jeremiah in chains, but he remembered the good services rendered Babylon by Jeremiah in trying to persuade Zedekiah to surrender to Babylon. So he gave Jeremiah the choice of going with him as a prisoner to Babylon where he would be well treated, or remaining at Jerusalem with the remnant of poor people left there. He remained with God’s people in his own land.
Next we have the governorship of Gedaliah. Jeremiah had prophesied that the captivity would last only seventy years, and he wrote the captives at Babylon a letter telling them what to do during that period, advising them to remain there and settle down and make the very best of it because seventy years was the appointed time for remaining in captivity. Gedaliah was made governor of the almost completely depopulated land. In a few months he was murdered by one of the Jewish princes that had survived, and others were murdered with him who were loyal to Babylon, and Ishmael and his friends gathered together to take advice. Jeremiah advises them to remain in the land and if they were faithful and true even yet, they would be blessed, but they paid no attention to Jeremiah, fled to Egypt taking Jeremiah with them.
That forty or more years of preaching by Jeremiah was without apparent success, but he stayed with it to the end. Down in Egypt they still worshiped idols and burnt incense to the queen of heaven in spite of all that Jeremiah could do, as is found in Jeremiah 43-44 and at last, according to tradition, the people became so incensed against him that they rose up and stoned him to death. Tradition says that such was the end of Jeremiah and it is quite probable. A picture of Jerusalem is found in Lamentations 1-3. What a picture of the desolation of Judah and Jerusalem! There is nothing superior to it in all literature.
How many deportations of Israel to the Far East were there altogether? The first great deportation was that of Tiglathpileser when he removed all the inhabitants east of the Jordan. The next one was that of Tiglathpileser when he carried away the inhabitants of the northern part of the Northern Kingdom, and the next was the deportation of Sargon after he had captured Samaria; the next one was that of Sennacherib when he came down in the reign of Hezekiah and swept all Judah and carried away two hundred thousand or more inhabitants. Then one was in the time when Daniel was taken away. The next one was in the time of Jehoiachin, and the last one recorded in Kings and Chronicles was at the end of the reign of Zedekiah. So we may reckon that there were several deportations of the Jewish people to the Far East; to Assyria, Babylon, Persia, etc. Thus more than a quarter of a million of Jews were deported to various places in central Asia, and some of their descendants, perhaps, are there yet.
The Exile, as we have said, was a process rather than an event. The people were brought into Babylon and there put to use in serving. They helped Nebuchadnezzar build his cities, his great treasuries, they helped to dig canals, as mentioned in Psa 137 : “By the rivers [or canals] of Babylon, we sat down and wept.” They helped to irrigate that vast plain between the two rivers.
This captivity did several things for Israel:
1. It permanently cured the nation of its idolatries. I mean that part of the nation that returned after the captivity and built up the Jewish nation at the period of the restoration. The vast multitude that remained in the East adhered to their idolatries.
2. It spiritualized religion. No Temple, no altar, no priesthood, no sacrifices, no holy of holies, no atonement! They were thrown upon their own individual responsibility and individual relation to God, and in this period we have the rise of what we call individualism in religion. We find that discussed at length by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. This is a period when mankind found that it could do without the externals of religion and made it an affair of the heart only, something new in the history of the world.
3. It made the problem of suffering an acute and real one; they were suffering because of their father’s sins, and complained about it: “In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own sin, every man that eateth sour grapes, his own teeth shall be set on edge.” “The soul that sinneth it shall surely die.”
4. It enlarged their conception of God. We find the noblest and highest and loftiest conception of God in Isaiah 40-66. These were written to meet the needs of the people in this trying period. God is pictured as the God of the world, the God of history, and the God of nations; God is pictured as raising up Cyrus as his own servant in order that he might conquer and subdue Babylon and let Israel go free.
5. It gave a truer conception of the mission of Israel to the world. Here we have the rise of the idea of the Suffering Servant of God, as the Servant suffering for the sins of Israel. Here we have the conception of Israel as being the means of bringing all the world to a knowledge of God.
The seventy years close. In the closing verses of 2 Chronicles it refers to Cyrus releasing the captives at Babylon, enabling them to return to rebuild their Temple and to restore their nation.
QUESTIONS
1. What was the religious conditions of Judah at the death of Josiah?
2. What was the political situation?
3. Who succeeded Josiah and how was he made king?
4. What was his character?
5. How was he deposed, what became of him, who succeeded him, how was he made king and what was his character?
6. What was Pharaohnecoh’s relation to Judah and who severed this relation?
7. Give an account of Jehoiakim’s rebellion and death.
8. Who succeeded Jehoiakim, what was his character and end?
9. Who was the last king of Judah and how was he made king?
10. Describe the first great deportation, stating who, what, and where carried.
11. What was Zedekiah’s character, what were his efforts to free himself and what results?
12. What reason here assigned for the ruin of Judah and Jerusalem?
13. Describe the siege of Jerusalem and Zedekiah’s captivity.
14. Describe the final overthrow of Jerusalem.
15. What disposition did they make of the nobles?
16. Give a list of the treasures taken by the Chaldeans.
17. What disposition did they make of the residue of the people?
18. Is this the last deportation? If not, what?
19. What was the length of the captivity and what determined it?
20. Did they carry all the people into captivity? If not, what provision was made for them?
21. What became of Gedaliah and what was the result?
22. What became of Jehoiachin?
23. How did these people get back to their land and when?
24. What prophet foretold this event and where do we find his prophecies?
25. What was the significance of the Exile, and what the several things it did for Israel?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
2Ch 36:1 Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and made him king in his father’s stead in Jerusalem.
Ver. l. Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz. ] See 2Ki 23:30 .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
2 Chronicles Chapter 36
“Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz” – for, indeed, it could not be said to be God now in any sense. “The people of the land took Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah, and made him king in his father’s stead in Jerusalem. Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem” (2Ch 36 ). And his brother, or near relative at any rate, Eliakim, was made king, with his name changed to Jehoiakim. But as the king of Egypt made him king, so the king of Babylon unmade him; for he comes up and carries him to Babylon, and sets up Jehoiachin his son in his stead. And he too did what was evil and was brought to Babylon; and Zedekiah his brother, as we are told, was made king over Judah and Jerusalem. He brings the disasters of Jerusalem to their last crisis, for he it was who was sworn by the oath of Jehovah, and broke it, and gave the awful spectacle before the world, that a heathen had more respect for the name of Jehovah than the king of Judah. Nebuchadnezzar trusted that that name, at least,- would have moral weight. Zedekiah feared it less than Nebuchadnezzar. Impossible, therefore, that God should allow such a stain to remain upon the throne and the house of David; so destruction came to the uttermost, and the last portion of Judah was swept away by the Chaldees, and the land must enjoy her sabbaths, “for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath to fulfil threescore and ten years.” And thus we see them back in captivity till God raises up Cyrus to make the way back for a remnant of Judah.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
the People of the land = the commonalty. Compare 2Ch 33:35. Not lawfully, for Jehoahaz was not the eldest son.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 36
Now at his death, Jehoahaz began to reign.
He was twenty-three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned for only three months in Jerusalem. And the king of Egypt came up, conquered him, and took him back as a captive to Egypt and made Eliakim his brother the king over Judah and Jerusalem, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, he reigned eleven years: he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD his God. And against him came Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon ( 2Ch 36:2-6 ).
And Nebuchadnezzar set upon the throne a vassal king, Jehoiachin, who was only eight years old and he reigned only for three months and ten days and did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. Now that’s, for an eight-year old kid who only reigned for three months that’s pretty good. Pretty bad.
And when the year was expired, king Nebuchadnezzar sent, and brought him to Babylon, with the goodly vessels of the house of the LORD, and he made Zedekiah his brother the king over Judah and Jerusalem. Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign, he reigned for eleven years. He did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD his God, and humbled not himself before Jeremiah the prophet speaking from the mouth of the Lord ( 2Ch 36:10-12 ).
In fact, Zedekiah had Jeremiah thrown in the dungeon.
And he also rebelled against king Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God: but he stiffened his neck, and he hardened his heart from turning unto the LORD God of Israel. Moreover all of the chief priests, and the people, transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen; and polluted the house of the LORD which he had hallowed in Jerusalem. And the LORD God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling place: but they mocked the messengers of God, they despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against his people, till there was no remedy. Therefore he brought upon them the king of the Chaldees, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion upon the young man or maiden, old man, or him that stooped for age: he gave them all into his hand. And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king, and of his princes; all these he brought to Babylon. And they burnt the house of God, broke down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed the beautiful vessels. And all of them that had escaped from the sword were carried away captive to Babylon; where they were the servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia: To fulfil the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years ( 2Ch 36:13-21 ).
Israel had existed for 490 years in the land which God had given unto them. Now, they were commanded in the law of Moses to let the land rest every seven years. They were to plant the land. They were to cycle their crops. Six years they were to plant. The seventh year they weren’t to plant. Just that which grew up by itself. They were to eat it. But they weren’t to plant any. Just let the land rest in the seventh year.
Now they failed to do that. They didn’t obey the commandment of God, the law of God. So when God brought them into captivity He said, “And because they have not obeyed for the 490 years the Sabbath law but have planted the land year after year, I will allow the land to lie desolate for seventy years because there are seventy Sabbaths that were missed by the land.” And so God said, “I’ll just let the land lie for seventy years in order that the land might have its Sabbaths that it missed while the people were living there because they disobeyed the law of the Lord.”
Here we find the captivity, the end of the nation and the beginning of what the scriptures call the time of the Gentiles from a biblical kind of a standpoint. The time of the Gentile reign beginning with Babylon and the Babylonian kingdom which will move to the Medo-Persian kingdom, which will move to the Grecian kingdom, which will move to the Roman empire, which finally will move into a ten-nation federation in the last days. Ten-nation European federation which we see taking place today.
But it is interesting that God in declaring, first of all, His love and because He loved them He sent His prophets, but they wouldn’t listen. They mocked the prophets. They despised the word of God. They misused the prophets of God. Therefore, the judgment was sealed by themselves. God withdrew His hand of protection. God withdrew His hand of blessing and judgment came.
What lessons there are for us to learn. “If you forsake the Lord,” the prophet said, “you will be forsaken by the Lord.” They forsook God. They were forsaken by God and are now carried away captive. Whenever they worshipped God, whenever they served the Lord, they were strong. God made them strong. God gave them victory over their enemies. They dwelt safely in the land. The land prospered. Whenever they turned their backs on God, their enemies were victorious against them. They were oppressed by their enemies and it was a time of national weakness and decline. Lessons that we need to pay close attention to in this day in which we live as we, too, have enjoyed the benefits and a nation, living in a nation where God was placed by the founding fathers at the heart of the national life. But even as they forsook God, so have we forsaken God. And we cannot long exist without God’s help.
We dare not to think of ourselves ever as independent from God. And our nation is in serious trouble tonight. Our leaders are beginning to tell us more and more about how serious that danger is. May God help us if it is not already too late to turn to God with all of our hearts.
Now the last two verses of this chapter are the same as the first two verses of the book of Ezra. So there is a definite tie between II Chronicles and Ezra. Ezra begins when they, after the seventy years of captivity, as they come back into the land. The book of Ezra and Nehemiah cover this period of the rebuilding of the temple after the seventy years of Babylonian captivity.
So next week we move into Ezra. We jump now the seventy years of Babylonian captivity. If you would like to really do some diligent Bible study, you should read this week along with the book of Ezra the books of Daniel and Ezekiel, because it is during this seventy years that they are in captivity that the books of Daniel and Ezekiel were written. So to get some, really, background and color, you should read Daniel and Ezekiel along with Ezra this week. I’d like to challenge you to do that.
It may mean that you won’t be able to watch Soap or Dallas. But I’ll tell you what, you’ll be a lot better off at the end of the week if you don’t pollute your mind with that stuff anyhow. I’d like to just challenge you to do it. I hope you’ll take up that challenge. I’ll do it, and I challenge you to do it. You’re not going to have much time to study anyhow. Soon be over, you might as well find out what it’s going to be like. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
2Ch 36:1-4
2Ch 36:1-4
GOD TERMINATES ISRAEL AS A KINGDOM
JEHOAHAZ (609 B.C.)
“Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and made him king in his father’s stead in Jerusalem. Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign; and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. And the king of Egypt deposed him at Jerusalem, and fined the land a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold. And the king of Egypt make Eliakim his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. And Neco took Joahaz his brother, and carried him to Egypt.”
Joahaz mentioned in 2Ch 36:4 is only the abbreviated name of the deposed king Jehoahaz. At this point, Neco was master of Judah and Jerusalem, and God’s people were merely vassals of Egypt.
E.M. Zerr:
2Ch 36:1. Made him king refers to the ceremonies of publicly acknowledging him as their king; he was actually made king by succession. It might be compared to the inauguration rites of a man who has been already elected to an office.
2Ch 36:2. Jehoahaz was the ruler by natural rights and thus the regular heir to the throne, yet he held it for 3 months only. The circumstances that made his reign so short will be reported soon.
2Ch 36:3. The inspired record does not explain why the Egyptian king was suffered to take such a prominent part in the affairs of Jerusalem. This is the same king who was opposed by Josiah, father of Jehoahaz. The Assyrians were in power at the time of Josiah’s death, but were nearing the end of their rule. In fact, it occurred in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, of whom we will read in the next verse. Jehoahaz was dethroned and the land condemned, which means it was put under a tribute of money.
2Ch 36:4. We are not told why Necho changed the name of Eliakim to Jehoiakim, but the name was recognized afterward by the writers of the Bible. The simple statement is made that Jehoahaz was taken to Egypt. But Jeremiah the prophet said he was to die there, never having seen his native land again. (Jer 22:11-12.)
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
This is the record of the final movements in the downward course of Judah. They are graphically given. First Jehoahaz reigned for three months, and was deposed by the king of Egypt. Jehoiakim succeeded by appointment of Pharaoh, and after eleven years of continued evil courses was carried prisoner by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon.
In turn he was succeeded by Jehoiachin, who persisted in the same evil courses for three months and ten days, and in turn was carried away by Nebuchadnezzar.
Zedekiah, appointed by Nebuchadnezzar to the succession, rebelled against him, and continued the same evil history for eleven years, during which corruption became practically universal, the priests and the people sharing therein. Through all these dark days God still patiently waited, sending His messengers because of His compassion. The men who had rebelled against His government contemned His mercy, until the Chaldeans, a people without compassion, swept down upon them like a terrible scourge, and carried the remnant away captive to Babylon.
The Book closes with a statement of the proclamation of Cyrus, which also opens the Book of Ezra.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
at the Mercy of the Foe
2Ch 36:1-10
The narrative here runs parallel with II Kings, but the events are described with a certain gravity of warning which enforces the lesson of history. Here was the final Catastrophe. Long predicted, at last it fell. The Jewish kings named here were mere puppets, and instead of turning to Jehovah, followed each other in persistent idolatry. Jehoahaz was deposed by Necho, who hoped for a more obsequious tool in his brother Jehoiakim; and the latter in his turn was deposed by Nebuchadnezzar, because he was Nechos nominee. Jehoiachin was carried into captivity because he was the choice of the people, and Zedekiah because he rebelled. These are the superficial reasons for the changes that followed each other with such terrible rapidity. But the pages of Jeremiah and Ezekiel reveal other and deeper reasons, alluded to subsequently in this chapter.
It was a long process of pruning through which Israel had to pass, before this stock could bear that one pure flower, the mother of our Lord, who was to give the human side of His holy nature to the world.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
2Ch 36:15-16
I. Prophecy is as old as the Hebrew nation itself, and indeed far older. The life of the nation begins with the age of Moses, but Moses in his writings leads us back to the fountain-head of man’s history, and shows us the first dawn of the Divine revelation, breaking through the darkness of that old-world history, and making it bright with the promise of a glorious, though far-distant, day.
II. The national life is everywhere closely intertwined with this Divine revelation, which both precedes and survives it. The vital connection is seen most clearly in each great turning-point of the history and in each mastermind which rules the crisis that it helps to create. (Examples: Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Elijah.)
III. Notice a few inferences from this sketch of prophecy in its external aspect. (1) Prophecy as it existed in Israel is a fact unique in the world’s history. (2) In Israel itself the prophetic gift is not general, nor even common, but each one in whom it appears is regarded as a man set apart from, and raised above, his fellows. He is pre-eminently “the man of God.” (3) We find the claim of the prophets universally acknowledged by the people among whom they lived, and to whom they were as often messengers of unwelcome reproof as of comfort or promise, and as often objects of fear and hatred as of reverence and wonder.
E. H. Gifford, Voices of the Prophets, p. 51.
2Ch 36:16
These words contain three facts, and each one is of the greatest importance. (1) That there was-at least, at one time-a remedy. (2) That the remedy went on, and might have been used, for a very long period. (3) That there came a time when the remedy ceased.
I. All life is remedy. The conditions of things require it. Life is one great restorative process. (1) First comes that marvellous provision which God has made for our recovery in Jesus Christ. (2) Subordinate to this great remedy of the Cross of Christ, and working with it, all providences have a curative character. (3) Every one carries within himself an antidote to himself. Conscience, till it is silenced, is a sure antidote for evil.
II. Notice the word “till.” It shows how slow God is to take away the remedy. His mercy still holds back the arm of justice. But we may sin ourselves into a state, not in which there is no forgiveness, but in which there will be no thought or desire to seek for forgiveness. There is the bourn-worse than any grave-from which no man has returned. “There is no remedy,” not on God’s account, but on your own; not in God’s want of will to save you, but in your own incapacity to will your own salvation.
J. Vaughan, Sermons, 15th series, p. 213.
2Ch 36:22-23
I. The name of Cyrus, the point of the compass indicative of his birthplace, and the direction of his march upon Babylon are distinctly foretold.
II. Isaiah describes with remarkable accuracy the personal character of Cyrus. His warlike spirit, his towering ambition, the rapidity of his conquests, the equity of his administration, and his heathen religion are all declared after the manner of prophecy.
III. The significance of the prophecy deepens when it comes to describe the conquests achieved by Cyrus. History but repeats these prophecies in describing the facts as they occurred.
IV. Isaiah explicitly foretells the restoration of Judah from captivity and the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem through the agency of Cyrus.
V. These facts suggest the admonition that young minds should guard with especial care against the beginnings of distrust in the Divine origin of the Bible. It is the word of God. True or false, it is inspired by an omniscient mind. If false, it is a fraud so stupendous that mortal man could never have originated it. The grandeur of the imposture would be as miraculous as the truth.
A. Phelps, The Old Testament a Living Book, p. 295.
Reference: 2Ch 36:22, 2Ch 36:23.-Expositor, J. M. Fuller, 3rd series, vol. ii., p. 469.
2Ch 36:23
I. The Israelites were to build a material temple.
II. Though we may best seek God in His house, we may find Him everywhere.
III. God’s truest temple is the upright heart and pure.
IV. In striving to hallow in our own mortal bodies a temple for God’s habitation, we shall be joining to build yet another temple-the Church or society of God’s children.
V. Truth is the condition on which God will deign to dwell in the house we build.
F. W. Farrar, In the Days of thy Youth, p. 209.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
9. The Final Decline and Apostasy
CHAPTER 36:1-14
1. Jehoahazs reign (2Ch 36:1-7)
2. Jehoiachins brief reign (2Ch 36:8-10)
3. Zedekiah (2Ch 36:11-14)
As the complete record of these three final rulers is given in the second book of Kings, the annotations are made there. Nothing needs to be added. It was the final plunge before the awful judgment overtook Jerusalem and Judah. And there will be a final plunge into apostasy in connection with the professing Church, before the predicted judgment with the coming of our blessed Lord will end this present evil age and usher in His glorious kingdom.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
the people: 2Ch 26:1, 2Ch 33:25, 2Ki 23:30-37
Jehoahaz: 2Ki 23:31-34, 1Ch 3:15, Jer 22:11
Reciprocal: 1Ch 3:14 – Josiah 2Ch 22:1 – the inhabitants Ezr 2:1 – whom Nebuchadnezzar Neh 7:6 – whom Nebuchadnezzar Neh 9:32 – on our kings Psa 80:13 – The boar Pro 28:2 – the transgression Jer 50:17 – this Eze 19:3 – it became Mat 1:11 – Jechonias
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
2Ch 36:1. The people of the land took Jehoahaz, &c. The principal contents of this chapter are explained in the notes on 2Ki 23:31, and 24., and 25., to which the reader is referred. What is peculiar to this chapter shall be noticed here.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
2Ch 36:2-3. Jehoahazthe king of Egypt put him down at Jerusalem. Necho summoned him to Riblah, put him in irons, and made his elder brother Eliakim king in his room, and changed his name to Jehoiakim, which signifies appointed of God. In the third year of this calamitous reign, Nebuchadnezzar having just ascended the throne, and completely driven Pharaoh-necho into Egypt, came to Jerusalem, and put Nechos viceroy into irons to carry him to Babylon; but on his good professions of obedience, he restored him again to the throne. From this time are to be reckoned the seventy years of captivity; for the king of Babylon carried whatever he would, both of persons and treasures to his capital. Among the persons were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.
2Ch 36:8. Jehoiakim, and his abominations. He burnt Jeremiahs prophecies, and imprisoned him. This was a profane deed, and showed that he was infatuated to his own destruction. He rebelled against the king of Babylon, who coming with an army against him, not only put him to death, but threw his body over the wall of the city, that he might have, as Jeremiah had said, an asss funeral: Jer 22:18-19; Jer 36:30. The Seventy say, he was buried with his father in Ganoza, or Ganozan; probably, after awhile, his remains were interred with Uzziah.
2Ch 36:9. Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign. In 2Ki 24:8, it is said that he was eighteen. The variation is reconciled by his beginning to reign in the eighth year of the captivity. This young prince, not pleasing his master, was dethroned when Nebuchadnezzar made his spring campaigns; and Zedekiah, who is said in the Septuagint to be his fathers brother, and consequently more likely to sway the sceptre, was put in his place. Ezekiel and Mordecai were now carried into captivity. Eze 1:2; Eze 40:1.
2Ch 36:16. Misused his prophets; stoned them, as they did Zechariah and his brothers. They were sawn asunder, and put in prison, as were Micaiah, Jeremiah, and others.
2Ch 36:21. Until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths. From the time of Jeroboam to the captivity was four hundred and ninety years, which included seventy sabbatical years, in which the Jews were forbidden to sow; yet the idolaters disregarded this law. See Ezekiel 20.
2Ch 36:23. Charged me to build him a house. Daniel the prophet had now lived to be a hundred years of age, and was spared to show Cyrus the forty fourth and forty fifth chapters of his prophecies, in which both his name, and the particulars of the siege of Babylon were foretold two hundred years before. Parchments so ancient could not be forgeries.
REFLECTIONS.
Zedekiah, being now on the throne, and tributary to Babylon, went on with the princes and rulers of Judah in every kind of wickedness; and the priests were not better than the princes. In those calamitous times the good prophets, though unable to avert the impending destruction, sought to make it less. While Jeremiah was preaching, wrestling, and suffering in Jerusalem, Ezekiel was fulfilling his ministry in Babylon, or in the scattered districts where the people were placed. We must carefully read his prophecies to have an adequate idea of his diligence, and of the wickedness of the Jews. What a sight to behold an idol at the gate of the temple, as in Eze 8:5; and the whole council immersed in gross idolatry. What a sight to see the whole twenty four courses of the priests turning their faces to the east to worship the sun. What a sight to see Jeremiah recognized as a prophet, and yet imprisoned a second time! Lord, it is time to strike! It is time to send on this guilty people a spirit of strong delusion, that they may suffer for their sins. And so the Lord did. It appears from Eze 17:11, that although Zedekiah had sworn by JEHOVAH to serve Nebuchadnezzar; yet he relied on Egypt for help, and rebelled against his benefactor. This completed Judahs ruin. This so exasperated the Babylonians, that on forcing the city and sanctuary, they slaughtered most of the people without respect either to age or sex. Neither the sucking child, nor the maiden, nor he that stoopeth for age, found mercy. They burnt the temple, and made the land desolate, that it might enjoy its sabbatical years. Zedekiah, with others, made his escape towards Jericho, Jer 39:5, but was overtaken and brought with seventy two principal men to the king of Babylon in Riblah. Here Zedekiah saw the sad end of Israels apostasy. He saw his own sons, and seventy of his officers of state, slain before his eyes; he saw Jeremiah, and his patron Ebed-melech caressed; then his eyes were put out, and a languishing captivity was allowed him in Babylon,we would hope for repentance. Now we are come to the sad issue of a faithless and an apostate nation, whom God has eminently raised up in his counsel, and set for the instruction of future ages. In this nation we see providence unfolded on a broad scale; and have a finished portrait of the way of heaven with offending man. It was the richest display of grace which chose Abraham from an idolatrous world, and made him so great a nation. Hence idolatry in his posterity must have been the greatest of crimes, and justly merited the punishment it received.
The special interference of heaven to deliver the Hebrews from Egypt, to give them the land of Canaan, and to deliver them so often by miraculous victories, shows the peculiar and promised care of God over this ungrateful and backsliding nation.
We are here expressly called to notice the paternal efforts which God made to reclaim this nation, by prophets in every age, from idolatry and vice. Look at Gideon, Samson, Jephthah, Barak, Samuel, David, Elijah, and all the prophets, and say, what could God have done for his vineyard that he had not done. Observe in the next place, when the depravity of the people, and the borrowed manners of the gentiles, proved too strong for the prophets, how slow the Lord still was to strike. What reprieves did he not grant, and on reformations which were but superficial or temporary. Surely we may here say of JEHOVAH, as is his majesty so is his mercy. Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy.
When God could not be glorified in his mercy, and when the most arduous conflicts of his prophets failed of effect, he was glorified in his justice. He brought upon Israel all the curses of the covenant, and all the threatenings of his prophets, as all Israel were obliged to acknowledge in the day of their captivity. Dan 9:6.
Lastly, in the preservation of Daniel and his colleagues; of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Ebed-melech, and others, we see that it shall be well with the righteous at the worst of times. Now all this was done, not only for the correction of the Jews, but also for the instruction of the christian church, as is often illustrated in the new testament. Learn then, oh my soul, to look on and profit. Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest, the sacred history of grace over a people punished for apostasy; for on the same principle, God still governs both the world and the church. Let Rome, Christian Rome, especially learn, that by worshipping saints and martyrs, she repeats the sins of the ancient Israelites; she ascribes omnipresence to mere creatures, and provokes the Lord to anger; and because the blood of his saints is found in her skirts, she must expect to drink of the wine of the wrath of God. Shun then, shun christian people, shun that house where angels are addressed, and where a crucifix is adored. That crucifix is not the Lord of glory, but the bones of a dead horse, sawn and filed to the figure of a man. It degrades the Lord: it localises his divinity: it is an abomination to the omnipresent God of heaven.Let us shun, in like manner, every error and every vice, and especially contempt of the prophets or ministers of God, which brought judgment to the uttermost on a nation once the chosen of God. Lord help us so to do.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
JEHOIAKIM’S REIGN AND CAPTIVITY
(vv.5-8)
Jehoiakim was evidently older than Jehoahaz for he was 25 when he began to reign (cf.v.2). He reigned 11 years in Judah, but he also dishonoured the memory of his father, Josiah by his ungodly actions. It was not Necho who came against him, however, but Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. He took Jehoiakim captive to Babylon. At the same time he took some of the articles from the temple and put them in his own temple at Babylon. The Lord allowed this as a warning, to Judah, for Nebuchadnezzar might have taken all the treasures of the house, but did not. If Judah had turned back to the Lord, this might have preserved them from the later damage of verses 10 and 18.
This book does not record the death of Jehoiakim, though 2Ki 24:6 does. He must have died in captivity. His son Jehoiachin then became king (v.8).
JEHOIACHIN’S REIGN AND CAPTIVITY
(vv.9-10)
Jehoiachin was 18 years old at this time (not 8, as is mistakenly given in one translation), but he reigned only three months, which was enough to prove him evil in the sight of the Lord. 2Ki 24:10-12 records that the Babylonians came to besiege the city, though we are not told the immediate reason for this. Jehoiachin and his servants surrendered without resistance. 2Ch 36:10 speaks of his being summoned by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon, and the costly articles from the house of God were also taken to Babylon, not all the articles as yet. This is a picture of how the truth of God has been gradually stolen from the Church in the present age because of the failure and disobedience of the people. Nebuchadnezzar then made Zedekiah, Jehoiakim’s brother (Jehoiachin’s uncle) king in Judah. Nebuchadnezzar’s dealings in deposing one king and setting up another seems rather ludicrous, but he evidently was trying to find one whom he could fully control.
ZEDEKIAH’S EVIL REIGN
(vv.11-14)
Zedekiah was the last of the kings ruling in Judah before their complete captivity. He became king at age 21, reigning 11 years, during which he proved as evil as the kings before him, though being a son of Josiah. Thus, following Josiah’s good reign, the condition of Judah degenerated rapidly.
RUIN AND CAPTIVITY
(vv.11-21)
The Book of Jeremiah speaks extensively of God’s warnings to Zedekiah through Jeremiah (Jer 34:2; Jer 34:21), and of Zedekiah’s fear of men in speaking with Jeremiah in secret. concerned about what God had spoken, but fearfully giving in to his nobles in disobeying the word of the Lord (Jer 37:16-21; Jer 38:4-27).
It was this fear of his servants that moved Zedekiah to rebel against Nebuchadnezzar after he had sworn an oath by God , an oath of allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar. This was plain dishonesty and God could not excuse it because of his fear of men. In fact, God says that Zedekiah stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against all God’s gracious advances. Together with the leaders and priests of the people, he resisted Nebuchadnezzar when that king besieged Jerusalem again, and refused Jeremiah’s words from God that he should surrender to the king of Babylon (Jer 38:17-20). Thus leaders and priests and people were guilty of transgressing more and more, which included gross idolatry and desecration of the house of God (v.14).
Verse 15 speaks of the many warnings God had given Judah by His servants (specially Jeremiah) because He had compassion on His people and the centre where He dwelt. “But they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of God arose against His people, till there was no remedy” (v.16).
This haughty refusal of both God’s goodness and His authority occasioned the final attack of the king of the Chaldeans who killed their young men even in the house of their sanctuary (v.17). They had no regard for the holiness of the place. But after all, Judah had been guilty of showing contempt for God’s house: how could they expect anything better from ungodly nations? Young men and virgins, aged or weak, were killed.
Also, all the treasures of the house of God, large and small, and the treasures of Zedekiah and his nobles were taken to Babylon (v.18). The Chaldeans also burned the house of God, a terrible insult for Judah to have to bear, broke down the wall of Jerusalem, burned its palaces with fire and destroyed everything of value in the city (v.19).
Those who were not killed were carried captive to Babylon where they became slaves to Nebuchadnezzar and his sons, until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, which took place when the Medes and Persians conquered Babylon on the same night that Belshazzar saw the handwriting on the wail (Dan 5:24-30).
Thus the word of God by Jeremiah was fulfilled that the land of Israel would be left desolate to enjoy the sabbaths that it had not enjoyed for years because of the greed of the people in wanting, crops in the seventh year as well as for the six years God had allowed them. Therefore God had told them by Jeremiah that the land would remain desolate for 70 years the length of Judah’s captivity in Babylon (Jer 25:9-12).
SEVENTY YEARS LATER
(vv.22-23)
The king of Babylon never did give release to any of the captives of Judah, but when the Medes and Persians defeated Babylon, this soon worked for the blessing of Judah. Darius the Mede ruled at first, but when the authority was taken over by the Persians, Cyrus was ruler. As Isaiah had prophesied some years before, Cyrus would perform all God’s pleasure in having Jerusalem rebuilt (Isa 44:28).
It was the Lord who stirred up the spirit of Cyrus to issue a proclamation 70 years after Judah’s captivity, sending the proclamation throughout all his kingdom (v.22), to the effect that the God of heaven had commanded him to build a house for God in Jerusalem. He did not say by what means God had given him this message, but he was evidently persuaded that it was authentic. Therefore he gave full liberty to any Israelites in captivity to go back to Jerusalem to help in this rebuilding. In fact, he encouraged them to do this, desiring that the Lord God would be with those who responded to this invitation. How beautifully this shows that God was still deeply concerned about His people Israel in spite of their previous departure and rebellion. Similarly today, He has not cast away His people (Rom 11:1), though they have been far from Him for almost 2,000 years! He will yet restore them, for He is a God of grace.
Thus the book of Chronicles does not end in total misery, but shows the pure grace of God that would not leave Israel in hopeless despair, but would graciously seek their restoration. We might well consider this in the light of conditions in the professing church today, when departure and rebellion against the pure truth of the New Testament has so broken and scattered the people of God that many are inclined to think the outlook is hopeless. But God still cares for His Church more faithfully than we do, and is willing to give to those who cry to Him the grace to maintain some testimony for Him in the face of all the opposition of Satan, together with the natural bent of our hearts to become discouraged.
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
Q. The Last Four Kings 36:1-21
The sovereignty of the Davidic kings over Judah had ended. With the death of Josiah, Judah fell under the control of foreign powers, first Egypt and then Babylonia. God used other more powerful kings and kingdoms to punish His people (cf. 2Ki 23:31 to 2Ki 25:17). The temple motif in Chronicles also climaxes in this section with its destruction.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
1. Jehoahaz 36:1-4
In these few verses, the will of the king of Egypt contrasts with the will of Judah’s people. Whereas the people still held out hope that a descendant of David would lead them to the great glories predicted for David’s greatest Son (e.g., Psalms 2), such was not to be the case any time soon. Other superpowers now dominated Judah’s affairs. God had given His people over into their hands in discipline (cf. Deu 28:32-57). This king of Judah, rather than lifting the Davidic dynasty to its greatest glories, ended his life as a prisoner in Egypt, the original prison-house of Israel.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
THE LAST KINGS OF JUDAH
2Ch 34:1-33; 2Ch 35:1-27; 2Ch 36:1-23
WHATEVER influence Manassehs reformation exercised over his people generally, the taint of idolatry was not removed from his own family. His son Amon succeeded him at the age of two-and-twenty. Into his reign of two years he compressed all the varieties of wickedness once practiced by his father, and undid the good work of Manassehs later years. He recovered the graven images which Manasseh had discarded, replaced them in their shrines, and worshipped them instead of Jehovah. But in his case there was no repentance, and he was cut off in his youth.
In the absence of any conclusive evidence as to the date of Manassehs reformation, we cannot determine with certainty whether Amon received his early training before or after his father returned to the worship of Jehovah. In either case Manassehs earlier history would make it difficult for him to counteract any evil influence that drew Amon towards idolatry. Amon could set the example and perhaps the teaching of his fathers former days against any later exhortations to righteousness. When a father has helped to lead his children astray, he cannot be sure that he will carry them with him in his repentance.
After Amons assassination the people placed his son Josiah on the throne. Like Joash and Manasseh, Josiah was a child, only eight years old. The chronicler follows the general line of the history in the book of Kings, modifying, abridging, and expanding, but introducing no new incidents; the reformation, the repairing of the Temple, the discovery of the book of the Law, the Passover, Josiahs defeat and death at Megiddo, are narrated by both historians. We have only to notice differences in a somewhat similar treatment of the same subject.
Beyond the general statement that Josiah “did that which was right in the eyes of Jehovah” we hear nothing about him in the book of Kings till the eighteenth year of his reign, and his reformation and putting away of idolatry are placed in that year. The chroniclers authorities corrected the statement that the pious king tolerated idolatry for eighteen years. They record bow in the eighth year of his reign, when he was sixteen, he began to seek after the God of David; and in his twelfth year he set about the work of utterly destroying idols throughout the whole territory of Israel, in the cities and ruins of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, even unto Naphtali, as well as in Judah and Benjamin. Seeing that the cities assigned to Simeon were in the south of Judah, it is a little difficult to understand why they appear with the northern tribes, unless they are reckoned with them technically to make up the ancient number.
The consequence of this change of date is that in Chronicles the reformation precedes the discovery of the book of the Law, whereas in the older history this discovery is the cause of the reformation. The chroniclers account of the idols and other apparatus of false worship destroyed by Josiah is much less detailed than that of the book of Kings. To have reproduced the earlier narrative in full would have raised serious difficulties. According to the chronicler, Manasseh had purged Jerusalem of idols and idol altars; and Amon alone was responsible for any that existed there at the accession of Josiah: but in the book of Kings Josiah found in Jerusalem the altars erected by the kings of Judah and the horses they had given to the sun. Manassehs altars still stood in the courts of the Temple; and over against Jerusalem there still-remained the high places that Solomon had built for Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Milcom. As the chronicler in describing Solomons reign carefully omitted all mention of his sins, so he omits this reference to his idolatry. Moreover, if he had inserted it, he would have had to explain how these high places escaped the zeal of the many pious kings who did away with the high places. Similarly, having omitted the account of the man of God who prophesied the ruin of Jeroboams sanctuary at Bethel, he here omits the fulfillment of that prophecy.
The account of the repairing of the Temple is enlarged by the insertion of various details as to the names, functions, and zeal of the Levites, amongst whom those who had skill in instruments of music seem to have had the oversight of the workmen. We are reminded of the walls of Thebes, which rose out of the ground while Orpheus played upon his flute. Similarly in the account of the assembly called to hear the contents of the book of the Law the Levites are substituted for the prophets. This book of the Law is said in Chronicles to have been given by Moses, but his name is not connected with the book in the parallel narrative in the book of Kings.
The earlier authority simply states that Josiah held a great passover; Chronicles, as usual, describes the festival in detail. First of all, the king commanded the priests and Levites to purify themselves and take their places in due order, so that they might be ready to perform their sacred duties. The narrative is very obscure, but it seems that either during the apostasy of Amon or on account of the recent Temple repairs the Ark had been removed from the Holy of holies. The Law had specially assigned to the Levites the duty of carrying the Tabernacle and its furniture, and they seem to have thought that they were only bound to exercise the function of carrying the Ark; they perhaps proposed to bear it in solemn procession round the city as part of the celebration of the Passover, forgetting the words of David that the Levites should no more carry the Tabernacle and its vessels. They would have been glad to substitute this conspicuous and honorable service for the laborious and menial work of flaying the victims. Josiah, however, commanded them to put the Ark into the Temple and attend to their other duties.
Next, the king and his nobles provided beasts of various kinds for the sacrifices and the Passover meal. Josiahs gifts were even more munificent than those of Hezekiah. The latter had given a thousand bullocks and ten thousand sheep; Josiah gave just three times as many. Moreover, at Hezekiahs passover no offerings of the princes are mentioned, but now they added their gifts to those of the king. The heads of the priesthood provided three hundred Oxen and two thousand six hundred small cattle for the priests, and the chiefs of the Levites five hundred oxen and five thousand small cattle for the Levites. But numerous as were the victims at Josiahs passover, they still fell far short of the great sacrifice of twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep which Solomon offered at the dedication of the Temple.
Then began the actual work of the sacrifices: the victims were killed and flayed, and their blood was sprinkled on the altar; the burnt-offerings were distributed among the people; the Passover lambs were roasted, and the other offerings boiled, and the Levites “carried them quickly to all the children of the people.” Apparently private individuals could not find the means of cooking the bountiful provision made for them; and, to meet the necessity of the case, the Temple courts were made kitchen as well as slaughterhouse for the assembled worshippers. The other offerings would not be eaten with the Passover lamb, but would serve for the remaining days of the feast.
The Levites not only provided for the people, for themselves, and the priests, but the Levites who ministered in the matter of the sacrifices also prepared for their brethren who were singers and porters, so that the latter were enabled to attend undisturbed to their own special duties; all the members of the guild of porters were at the gates maintaining order among the crowd of worshippers; and the full strength of the orchestra and choir contributed to the beauty and solemnity of the services. It was the greatest Passover held by any Israelite king.
Josiahs passover, like that of Hezekiah, was followed by a formidable foreign invasion; but whereas Hezekiah was rewarded for renewed loyalty by a triumphant deliverance, Josiah was defeated and slain. These facts subject the chroniclers theory of retribution to a severe strain. His perplexity finds pathetic expression in the opening words of the new section, “After all this,” after all the idols had been put away, after the celebration of the most magnificent Passover the monarchy had ever seen. After all this, when we looked for the promised rewards of piety-for fertile seasons, peace and prosperity at home, victory and dominion abroad, tribute from subject peoples, and wealth from successful commerce – after all this, the rout of the armies of Jehovah at Megiddo, the flight and death of the wounded king, the lamentation over Josiah, the exaltation of a nominee of Pharaoh to the throne, and the payment of tribute to the Egyptian king. The chronicler has no complete explanation of this painful mystery, but he does what he can to meet the difficulties of the case. Like the great prophets in similar instances, he regards the heathen king as charged with a Divine commission. Pharaohs appeal to Josiah to remain neutral should have been received by the Jewish king as an authoritative message from Jehovah. It was the failure to discern in a heathen king the mouthpiece and prophet of Jehovah that cost Josiah his life and Judah its liberty.
The chronicler had no motive for lingering over the last sad days of the monarchy; the rest of his narrative is almost entirely abridged from the book of Kings. Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah pass over the scene in rapid and melancholy succession. In the case of Jehoahaz, who only reigned three months, the chronicler omits the unfavorable judgment recorded in the book of Kings; but he repeats it for the other three, even for the poor lad of eight who was carried away captive after a reign of three months and ten days. The chronicler had not learnt that kings can do no wrong; on the other hand, the ungodly policy of Jehoiachins ministers is labeled with the name of the boy-sovereign.
Each of these kings in turn was deposed and carried away into captivity, unless indeed Jehoiakim is an exception. In the book of Kings we are told that he slept with his fathers, i.e., that he died and was buried in the royal tombs at Jerusalem, a statement which the LXX inserts here also, specifying, however, that he was buried in the garden of Uzza. If the pious Josiah were punished for a single error by defeat and death, why was the wicked Jehoiakim allowed to reign till the end of his life and then die in his bed? The chroniclers information differed from that of the earlier narrative in a way that removed, or at any rate suppressed the difficulty. He omits the statement that Jehoiakim slept with his fathers, and tells us that Nebuchadnezzar bound him in fetters to carry him to Babylon. Casual readers would naturally suppose that this purpose was carried out, and that the Divine justice was satisfied by Jehoiakims death in captivity; and yet if they compared this passage with that in the book of Kings, it might occur to them that after the king had been put in chains something might have led Nebuchadnezzar to change his mind, or, like Manasseh, Jehoiakim might have repented and been allowed to return. But it is very doubtful whether the chroniclers authorities contemplated the possibility of such an interpretation; it is scarcely fair to credit them with all the subtle devices of modern commentators.
The real conclusion of the chroniclers history of the kings of the house of David is a summary of the sins of the last days of the monarchy and of the history of its final ruin in 2Ch 36:14-20. All the chief of the priests and of the people were given over to the abominations of idolatry; and in spite of constant and urgent admonitions from the prophets of Jehovah, they hardened their hearts, and mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and misused His prophets, until the wrath of Jehovah arose against His people, and there was no healing.
However, to this peroration a note is added that the length of the Captivity was fixed at seventy years, in order that the land might “enjoy her sabbaths.” This note rests upon Lev 25:1-7, according to which the land was to be left fallow every seventh year. The seventy years captivity would compensate for seventy periods of six years each during which no sabbatical years had been observed. Thus the Captivity, with the four hundred and twenty previous years of neglect, would be equivalent to seventy sabbatical periods. There is no economy in keeping back what is due to God.
Moreover, the editor who separated Chronicles from the book of Ezra and Nehemiah was loath to allow the first part of the history to end in a gloomy record of sin and ruin. Modern Jews, in reading the last chapter of Isaiah, rather than conclude with the ill-omened words of the last two verses, repeat a previous portion of the chapter. So here to the history of the ruin of Jerusalem the editor has appended two verses from the opening of the book of Ezra, which contain the decree of Cyrus authorizing the return from the Captivity. And thus Chronicles concludes in the middle of a sentence which is completed in the book of Ezra: “Who is there among you of all his people? Jehovah his God be with him, and let him go up.” {2Ch 36:23}
Such a conclusion suggests two considerations which will form a fitting close to our exposition. Chronicles is not a finished work; it has no formal end; it rather breaks off abruptly like an interrupted diary. In like manner the book of Kings concludes with a note as to the treatment of the captive Jehoiachin at Babylon: the last verse runs, “And for his allowance there was a continual allowance given him of the king, every day a portion, all the days of his life.” The book of Nehemiah has a short final prayer: “Remember me, O my God, for good”; but the preceding paragraph is simply occupied, with the arrangements for the wood offering and the firstfruits. So in the New Testament the history of the Church breaks off with the statement that St. Paul abode two whole years in his own hired house, preaching the kingdom of God. The sacred writers recognize the continuity of Gods dealings with His people; they do not suggest that one period can be marked off by a clear dividing line or interval from another. Each historian leaves, as it were, the loose ends of his work ready to be taken up and continued by his successors. The Holy Spirit seeks to stimulate the Church to a forward outlook, that it may expect and work for a future wherein the power and grace of God will be no less manifest than in the past. Moreover, the final editor of Chronicles has shown himself unwilling that the book should conclude with a gloomy record of sin and ruin, and has appended a few lines to remind his readers of the new life of faith and hope that lay beyond the Captivity. In so doing, he has echoed the key-note of prophecy: ever beyond mans transgression and punishment the prophets saw the vision of his forgiveness and restoration to God.