1. Son of Chenaanah, a prophet at the court of Ahab, head, or, if not head, virtual leader, of the college. He appears but once, viz., as spokesman when the prophets are consulted by Ahab on the result of his proposed ex- pedition to Raraoth-GUead (1 Kings xxii; 2 Chron. xvili). B.C. 896. Zedekiah had prepared himself for the interview with a pair of iron horns, after the sym- bolic custom of the prophets (comp. Jer. xiii, xix), the horns of the i-eem, or buffalo, which was the recognised emblem of the tribe of Ephraim (Deut. xxxiii, 17). With these, in the interval of Micaiah's arrival, he il- lustrated the manner in which Ahab should drive the Syrians before him. When Micaiah appeared and had delivered his prophecy, Zedekiah sprang forward and struck him a blow on the face, accompanying it by a taunting sneer. For this he is threatened by Micaiah in terms wliich are hardly intelligible to us, but which evidently allude to some personal danger to Zedekiah.
The narrative of tlie Bible does not imply that the blow struck by Zedekiah was prompted by more than sudden anger, or a wish to insult and humiliate the prophet of Jehovah. But Josephus takes a very dif- ferent view, which he develops at some length {Ant. viii, 15,3). He relates that after Micaiah had spoken, Zedekiah again came forwanl, and denounced him as false, on the ground that liis prophecy contradicted the prediction of Elijah, that Ahab's blood should be licked up by dogs in the field of Naboth of Jezreel ; and, as a further jiroof that he was an impostor, he struck him, daring him to do what Iddo, in somewhat similar cir- cumstances, had done to Jeroboam — viz. wither his hand. This addition is remarkable; but it is related by Josephus with great circumstantiality, and was per- haps drawn by him from that source, now lost, from which he has added so many touches to the outlines of tlie sacred narrative.
As to the question of what Zedekiah and his follow- ers were, whether prophets of Jehovah or of some false deity, it seems hardly possible to entertain any doubt. True, they use the name of Jehovah, but that was a habit of false prophets (Jer. xxviii, 2; comp. xxix, 21, j51); and there is a vast difference between the casual manner in which they mention the awfid name and the full and, as it were, formal style in which Micaiah pro- claims and reiterates it. Seeing, also, that Ahab and his queen were professedlv worshippers of Baal and Ashtaroth, and that a few years only before this event they had an establishment consisting of two bodies — one of 450, the other of 400 — prophets of this false wor- sliip, it is dithcult to suppose that there could have been also 400 prophets of Jehovah at his court. But the in- quiry of the king of Judah seems to decide the point. After hearing the prediction of Zedekiah and his fel- lows, he asks at once for a prophet of Jehovah : " Is there not here besides ("11") a prophet of Jehovah that we may inquire of him?" The natural inference seems to be that the others were not prophets of Jehovah, but were the 400 prophets of Ashtaroth (A. V. " the groves") who escaped the sword of Elijah (comp. 1 Kings xviii, 19 with 22,40). They had spoken in his name, but there was something about them — some trait of manner, costume, or gesture — which aroused the sus- picions of Jehoshaphat, and, to the practiced eye of one who lived at the centre of Jehovah-worship and was well versed in the marks of the genuine prophet, proclaimed them counterfeits.— Smith. See Micaiah.
2. The sou of Hananiah, one of the princes of Judali
ZEDEKIAH
1078
ZEDEKIAH
who were assembled in the scribes' chamber of the king's palace when Jlicaiah announced that Baruch had read the words of Jeremiah in the ears of the people from the chamber of Gemariah the scribe (Jer. xxxvi, 12). B.C.«05.
3. The last king of Judah and Jerusalem. B.C. 598- 588. He was the son of Josiah, and his genealogy is given in 1 Chron. iii, 15. from which it appears that the sons of Josiah were Johanan the first-born (who is never elsewhere mentioned, and therefore probably had died young, or had been set aside by some jjopular resolu- tion, to which Shallum may have been indebted for the crown in preference to liis elder brother, Jehoia- kim), the second Jehoiakim, the third Zedekiah, and tlie fourth Shallum. Since Jehoiakim was twenty-five at his father's death, and Jehoahaz, or Shallum, twenty- three, while Zedekiah was not twenty-one till his acces- sion to the throne, eleven years later, there must be a different order from that of age adopted with the last two sons of Josiah : perhaps it was arranged so as to bring together the two sons of Josiah, who reigned each eleven years, each having been preceded by a king who reigned for only three months. Zedekiah is, indeed, called the brolhei- of his predecessor Jehoiachin (2 Chron. xxxvi, 10); but the word must be used in an indefinite sense, for he certainly was his uncle. His mother was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Lib- nah ; so that he was full brother of Jehoahaz (2 Kings xxiii, 31 ; xxiv, 18). — Fairbairn.