The Pulpit Commentary — 2 Chronicles — Section 445

·orn~I hnve been born in his father's fourteenth year. (2) As to means, by the help of Necho II., who deposed his usurping brother (ver. 3), partly perhaps because he was a usurper, but partly also, it may be assumed, because the people had elected that brother without havin~ 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 (Jer. xxii. 15, reading of two Septuagint manuscripts, adopted by Cheyne). (1) Idolatrous: "He did thnt which wa~__ evil in the sight of t~e Lord_";(v~r. 5), as his half-brother had done (2 Kings :nm. 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. vii. 9, eto., xvii. 2 ; xix. 4, 5; Ezek. viii. 9-17). (2) Violent; in this respect like his brother' compared to a young lion who learnt to catch the prey and devoured men (Ezek. xix: 6, 6; cf. Jer. xxii. 17); the worst examples of his violence being his murder of Urijah thP- prophet, whom he fetched out of Egypt and slew (Jer. xxvi. 22), and his burning of Jeremiah's roll, accompanied with an order to arrest the prophet (Jer. xxxvi. 23, 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. xxii. 14, 15). "At another time certainly no one could have blamed J ehoiakim 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 N echo's war-fine?" (Cheyne, ' Jeremiah: his Life a.nd Times,' p. 141). (4) Exacting; grinding the faces of his people with severe taxation to pay the tribute to Pharaoh (2 Kings xxiii. 33), and cheating of their hard-earned wages the very labourers who built his palace (Jer. xxii. 13). (5) Licen- tious; abandoning himself to lewdness (Ezek. xi:x. 7, margin; 1 Esdr. i. 42). In short, " he rema!Ded fixed in the recollections of his conntrymen 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 rei,gn. 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. i. 2; 1 Esdr. i. 40, LXX.), he was probably, like Manasseh (eh. xxxiii. 13), permitted after a. time to return to his own land (Keil, Bertheau, Jamieson), since (2) according to 2 Kings (xxiv. 6), Jehoiakim" slept with his father11," 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" (x.xii. 19), and that hie dead body should be" cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost" (xx:xvi. 30). The reconcilia- tion, 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 2 Kings x.xiv. 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 buriecl with the burial of an ass, his bones may have been collected and interred i.tl the sepulchre of Manasseh (Rawlinson). II. A NEW ENEMY AT THE GA.TE OF JEBUBALEH. (Ver. 6.) 1. Bis person. Nebuchad- nezze.r, Nebuchadrezzar (Jer. xxi. 2), Nabuchodonosor (LXX.), in the inscriptions NabiJ,..Jcudurri-uBur, meaning "Nebo protect the crown." 2. His descent. A son of Nabopolassar, a general of Sarak, the last K!ng of Nineveh (Ewe.Id), perhaps ~he viceroy of Babylon (Uheyne). On the fall of Nrneveh he founded the new Bahyloma11 empire (B.c. 625-610). 3. His title. King of Babylon. Hitherto the enemies of Jeru- Ealem and Judah had been kings of Egypt (eh. xii. 2; xxxvi. 3) or of Assyria (eh. xxviii. 20; xxxii. 1, 2); now it is a King of Babylon. According to the canon of Ptolemy, Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne in n.c. 604; according to Bcroeue, 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 P1renicia as well as Egypt. 4. Ilis invaaion. According to Daniel, this occurred iii on. xxxvr. 1-23.] THE SECOND BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. 449