Jehoahaz

“ Chapter 36 1 And the people of the land take Jehoahaz son of Josiah and cause him to reign instead of his father in Jerusalem. 2 Jehoahaz [is] a son of twenty-three years in his reigning, and he has reigned three months in Jerusalem, 3 and the king of Egypt turns him aside in Jerusalem, and fines the land one hundred talents of silver, and a talent of gold; 4 and the king of Egypt causes his brother Eliakim to reign over Judah and Jerusalem, and turns his name to Jehoiakim; and Necho has taken his brother Jehoahaz and brings him to Egypt. ”

“ For the younger son Jehoahaz, who was made king after his father's death by the people, was soon dethroned by Pharaoh-Necho, and led away captive to Egypt; and of the other sons Jehoiakim was set up by Pharaoh, and Zedekiah by Nebuchadnezzar, so that both were only vassals of heathen lords of the land, and the independent kingship of David came properly to an end with the death of Josiah. Johanan, the first-born of the sons of Josiah, is not to be identified with Jehoahaz, whom the people raised to the throne. ”

“ Now after the death of Jehoahaz, his son Joash took the kingdom, in the thirty-seventh year of Jehoash, the king of the tribe of Judah. This Joash then took the kingdom of Israel in Samaria, for he had the same name with the king of Jerusalem, and he retained the kingdom sixteen years. He was a good man, 17 and in his disposition was not at all like his father. Now at this time it was that when Elisha the prophet, who was already very old, and was now fallen into a disease, the king of Israel came to visit him ”

“ Jehoahaz was carried to Egypt, the land of the south, Jeconiah to Babylon, the land of the north, both far remote, the quite contrary way, and must never expect to meet again, nor either of them to breathe their native air again. Those that had abused the dominion they had over others were justly brought thus under the dominion of others. Those that had indulged and gratified their sinful desires, by their oppression, luxury, and cruelty, were justly denied the gratification of their innocent desire to see their own native country again. ”

“ These, then, are some instances of the light that is being thrown upon the Scriptures by these Assyrian writings—of the manner in which the Bible narrative is being filled out and illustrated with new and copious details, and on the [355] whole, as all critics are bound to say, is being confirmed in its statements.
Besides Ahab and Omri, Jehu and Hezekiah, the cuneiform tablets mention Menahem, Pekah, and Hoshea, kings of Israel; and Azariah, Ahaz, and Manasseh, kings of Judah. Ahaz is called Jehoahaz, his name, like so many more, being compounded with the name of Jehovah ”

“ Verses 31-32Verses 31-32
Reign of Jehoahaz (cf. 2Ch 36:1-4) . - Jehoahaz, called significantly by Jeremiah (Jer 22:11) Shallum, i.e., “to whom it is requited,” reigned only three months, and did evil in the eyes of the Lord as all his fathers had done. The people (or the popular party) , who had preferred him to his elder brother, had apparently set great hopes upon him, as we may judge from Jer 22:10-12, and seem to have expected that his strength and energy would serve to avert the danger which threatened the kingdom on the part of Necho. ”

“ For after speaking of Jehoahaz, Ezekiel says,—
[Pg 417] "Now when she [Judah] saw that she had waited [for the restoration of Jehoahaz] , and her hope was lost,
Then she took another of her whelps; [766]
A young lion she made him.
He went up and down among the lions;
He became a young lion." [767]
The historian says that Necho turned the name of Eliakim ("God will establish") to Jehoiakim ("Jehovah will establish") ; but by this can hardly be meant more than that he sanctioned the change of El into Jehovah on Eliakim's installation upon the throne. ”

“ Kings, though they are gods to us, are men to God, and shall die like men; so it appears in these verses, where we have a sentence of death passed upon two kings who reigned successively in Jerusalem, two brothers, and both the ungracious sons of a very pious father.
I. Here is the doom of Shallum, who doubtless is the same with Jehoahaz, for he is that son of Josiah king of Judah who reigned in the stead of Josiah his father (v. 11) , which Jehoahaz did by the act of the people, who made him king though he was not the eldest son, 2 Kings xxiii. 30 ”

“ What Micah calls "the statutes of Omri, and the works of the House of Ahab," [231] were still kept; and men, both in Israel and Judah, walked in their old sins. Even in the reign of Jehu's own son Jehoahaz there still remained in Samaria the Asherah, or tree consecrated to the nature-goddess, which Jehu seems to have put away, but not to have destroyed. [232] As he grovelled in the dust before Shalmaneser, did no memory of his own ferocities darken his humiliated soul? Must not he, like our Henry II., have been inclined to utter the wailing cry, "Shame, shame on a conquered king!" ”

“ But the defeat and death of Josiah and the deposition of Jehoahaz followed to discredit Jeremiah and his friends. In the consequent reaction it seemed as if the religion of Jehovah and the life of His people had become hopelessly corrupt.
We are too much accustomed to think of the idolatry of Israel as something openly and avowedly distinct from and opposed to the worship of Jehovah. Modern Christians often suppose that the true worshipper and the ancient idolater were as contrasted as a pious Englishman and a devotee of one of the hideous images seen on missionary platforms ”

“ Ahaziah, 6th king of Judah, was the son of Jehoram and Ahab’s daughter Athaliah, and reigned one year. He is described as a wicked and idolatrous king, and was slain by Jehu, son of Nimshi. He is variously called Jehoahaz and Azariah. ”

“ Soon after Jehoiakim came to the throne, word came from Egypt that Jehoahaz had died. It was then that Jeremiah, who with Shaphan and Hilkiah had quietly aided the king in his policy of reform, but had retired to his home in Anathoth when these reforms began to bear fruit, heard again the call to go out and prophesy to the people of Judah. Danger was threatening from the throne and this danger brought Jeremiah out of his seclusion, to the fore again. ”

“ Jehoahaz, the successor of Josiah, deposed by the Egyptians and exiled after a three months' reign, xxii. 10-12, was succeeded by the rapacious Jehoiakim (608-597) , who cared nothing for the warning words of Jeremiah (xxxvi.) , and his successor Jehoiachin, who was exiled to Babylon after a three months' reign, was followed by the weak and vacillating Zedekiah, who reigned from 597 to 586, when Jerusalem was taken and the monarchy perished. The priests and prophets were no more faithful to their high office than the kings. ”

“ The probability of such breaks as we suppose in the case of Jehoiada and Azariah, who lived under Hezekiah, is shown, apart altogether from the reasons which have been already brought forward in support of it, by the fact that our register has only eleven generations from Zadok, the contemporary of Solomon, to Seraiah, who was slain at the destruction of Jerusalem; while the royal house of David shows seventeen generations, viz., the twenty kings of Judah, omitting Athaliah, and Jehoahaz and Zedekiah, the last two as being brothers of Jehoiakim (1Ch 3: 10-24) . ”

“ No king before him nor after him was like him, that turned again to God in all his heart, and in all his soul, and in all his virtue, [344] by all the law of Moses. Nevertheless for the horrible sins of Judah God didn't turn away from his strong vengeance, but said, that he would take away Judah from his face, as he did away Israel, and that he would cast away the city Jerusalem which he chose. Therefore Pharaoh Necho, king of Egypt, killed Josiah in Megiddo, and Jehoahaz his son was made king for his father ”

“ Thou wilt become to them a sword of God; thou wilt set their fortresses on fire; thou wilt slaughter their youths; thou wilt dash their little ones to pieces against the stones; thou wilt rip up their women with child." That he actually inflicted these savageries of warfare on the miserable Israelites we are not told, but we are told that he smote them in all their coasts; that Jehovah delivered them into his hands; that he oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz. ”

“ On the defeat of Josiah at Megiddo his younger brother Jehoahaz (or Shallum) was chosen by the Judaeans, but the Egyptian conquerer Necho summoned him to his headquarters at Riblah (south of Hamath on the Orontes) and removed him to Egypt, appointing in his stead Eliakim, whose name (“El [God] raiseth up”) was changed to its better-known synonym, Jehoiakim. For a time Jehoiakim remained under the protection of Necho and paid heavy tribute ”

“ The first hundred years, which comprised the reigns of Jehu and his descendants, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, and Jeroboam u., were the last day of grace for the rebellious ten tribes, at the expira-tion of which the judgment began to burst upon them. As the anointing of Jehu by Elisha was performed by the command of God, so also was the religious reform, which Jehu vigorously commenced with the extermination of the Baal-worship, a fruit of the labours of the prophets Elijah and Elisha within the sinful kingdom ”

“ The question “why then?” when taken with what follows, involves the reproof that Israel has struck out a course opposed to its divine calling,
Page:05.BCOT.KD.PropheticalBooks.A.vol.5.GreaterProphets.djvu/2273 and will now have to taste the bitter fruits of this assumption of heathen ways. The heathen nations have taken captive its king, and led him away into heathen lands. ישׁמעוּ אליו, they heard of him (אליו for עליו) . The fate of Jehoahaz, to which Eze 19:4 refers, is related in 2Ki 23:31. - Eze 19:5-7 refer to Jehoiachin, the son of Jehoiakim, and not to Zedekiah, as Hitzig imagines. ”

“ The king perished in a conspiracy, the origin of which is not clear; it may have been for his attack upon the priests, it was scarcely for the course he took to save Jerusalem. He was succeeded by his son Amaziah, whose moderation in avenging his father’s death receives special mention. After defeating the Edomites, Amaziah turned his attention to Israel.
2. Son of Jehoahaz and king of Israel. Like his grandfather Jehu, he enjoyed the favour of the prophet Elisha, who promised him a triple defeat of the Aramaeans at Aphek (2 Kings xiii. 14 sqq. 22-25) . ”

“ He was taken in their pit - Here is an allusion to those trap-pits digged in forests, into which the wild beasts fall, when the huntsmen, surrounding a given portion of the forest, drive the beasts in; by degrees narrowing the inclosure, till the animals come to the place where the pits are, which, being lightly covered over with branches and turf, are not perceived, and the beasts tread on them and fall in. Jehoahaz reigned only three months before he was dethroned by the king of Egypt, against whom it is apparent some craft was used, here signified by the pit, into which he fell. ”

“ It was long before the Armenians recovered from the blow, and for the next century they ceased to be formidable to Assyria. Tiglath-Pileser's northern frontier was now secure, and he therefore gladly seized the opportunity of interfering in the affairs of the west which was offered him by Ahaz, the Jewish king. Ahaz, whom the Assyrian inscriptions call Jehoahaz, had been hard pressed by Rezon of Damascus and Pekah of Israel, who had combined to overthrow the Davidic dynasty and place a vassal prince, 'the son of Tabeal,' on the throne of Jerusalem. ”

“ It is a swift and sudden destruction; it comes upon Judah and Jerusalem ere they are aware, and pours in so fast upon them that they have not the east breathing time. They have no time to recollect their thoughts, much less to recruit or recover their strength: Destruction upon destruction is cried (v. 20) , breach upon breach, one sad calamity, like Job's messengers, treading upon the heels of another. The death of Josiah breaks the ice, and plucks up the flood-gates; within three months after that his son and successor Jehoahaz is deposed by the king of Egypt ”

“ Jacob, personal ornaments as charms to, 211; marriage of, 266. Jah, the Hebrew, Ea as, 31; Dagon as, 31; as dragon slayer, 157; monotheism, 160. Japan, the Hades of, 206. Jastrow, Professor, on Ea, 29, 30, 435; on culture and racial fusion, 42; on fire and water ceremonies, 51; on moon names, 52; on female conservatism, 107, 179, 180; on burial customs, 208; on Nebo, 303, 435; on Greek and Babylonian astrology and astronomy, 319 et seq.; on Anshar, Ashir, and Ashur, 354. Jehoahaz (je-hō ́a-haz) , King of Judah, 414; Necho deposes, 489. Jehoash (je-hō ́ash) , King of Israel, 448, 449. ”