2 Kings 23:29-30

23:29 During Josiah’s reign Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt marched toward ¹  the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to fight him, but Necho ²  killed him at Megiddo ³  when he saw him. 23:30 His servants transported his dead body ⁴  from Megiddo in a chariot and brought it to Jerusalem, where they buried him in his tomb. The people of the land took Josiah’s son Jehoahaz, poured olive oil on his head, ⁵  and made him king in his father’s place.

2 Kings 23:34

23:34 Pharaoh Necho made Josiah’s son Eliakim king in Josiah’s place, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. He took Jehoahaz to Egypt, where he died. ⁶ 

2 Kings 24:6

24:6 He passed away ⁷  and his son Jehoiachin replaced him as king.

2 Kings 24:12

24:12 King Jehoiachin of Judah, along with his mother, his servants, his officials, and his eunuchs surrendered ⁸  to the king of Babylon. The king of Babylon, in the eighth year of his reign, ⁹  took Jehoiachin ¹⁰  prisoner.

2 Kings 25:5-7

25:5 But the Babylonian army chased after the king. They caught up with him in the plains of Jericho, ¹¹  and his entire army deserted him. 25:6 They captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, ¹²  where he ¹³  passed sentence on him. 25:7 Zedekiah’s sons were executed while Zedekiah was forced to watch. ¹⁴  The king of Babylon ¹⁵  then had Zedekiah’s eyes put out, bound him in bronze chains, and carried him off to Babylon.

2 Kings 25:2

25:2 The city remained under siege until King Zedekiah’s eleventh year.

2 Kings 1:1

Elijah Confronts the King and His Commanders

1:1 After Ahab died, Moab rebelled against Israel. ¹⁶ 

2 Kings 1:3

1:3 But the Lord’s angelic messenger told Elijah the Tishbite, “Get up, go to meet the messengers from the king of Samaria. Say this to them: ‘You must think there is no God in Israel! That explains why you are on your way to seek an oracle from Baal Zebub the god of Ekron. ¹⁷ 

2 Kings 1:6

1:6 They replied, ¹⁸  “A man came up to meet us. He told us, “Go back to the king who sent you and tell him, ‘This is what the Lord says: “You must think there is no God in Israel! That explains why you are sending for an oracle from Baal Zebub, the god of Ekron. ¹⁹  Therefore you will not leave the bed you lie on, for you will certainly die.”’”

2 Kings 1:10

1:10 Elijah replied to the captain, ²⁰  “If I am indeed a prophet, may fire come down from the sky and consume you and your fifty soldiers!” Fire then came down ²¹  from the sky and consumed him and his fifty soldiers.

Jeremiah 22:10-12

Judgment on Jehoahaz

22:10 “‘Do not weep for the king who was killed.

Do not grieve for him.

But weep mournfully for the king who has gone into exile.

For he will never return to see his native land again. ²² 

22:11 “‘For the Lord has spoken about Shallum son of Josiah, who succeeded his father as king of Judah but was carried off into exile. He has said, “He will never return to this land. ²³  22:12 For he will die in the country where they took him as a captive. He will never see this land again.” ²⁴ 

Jeremiah 22:18-19

22:18 So ²⁵  the Lord has this to say about Josiah’s son, King Jehoiakim of Judah:

People will not mourn for him, saying,

“This makes me sad, my brother!

This makes me sad, my sister!”

They will not mourn for him, saying,

“Poor, poor lord! Poor, poor majesty!” ²⁶ 

22:19 He will be left unburied just like a dead donkey.

His body will be dragged off and thrown outside the gates of Jerusalem.’” ²⁷ 

Jeremiah 22:28

22:28 This man, Jeconiah, will be like a broken pot someone threw away.

He will be like a clay vessel ²⁸  that no one wants. ²⁹ 

Why will he and his children be forced into exile?

Why will they be thrown out into a country they know nothing about? ³⁰ 

Jeremiah 22:30

22:30 The Lord says,

“Enroll this man in the register as though he were childless. ³¹ 

Enroll him as a man who will not enjoy success during his lifetime.

For none of his sons will succeed in occupying the throne of David

or ever succeed in ruling over Judah.”

Jeremiah 24:1

Good Figs and Bad Figs

24:1 The Lord showed me two baskets of figs sitting before his temple. This happened after King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon deported Jehoiakim’s son, King Jeconiah of Judah. He deported him and the leaders of Judah, along with the craftsmen and metal workers, and took them to Babylon. ³² 

Jeremiah 24:8

24:8 “I, the Lord, also solemnly assert: ‘King Zedekiah of Judah, his officials, and the people who remain in Jerusalem ³³  or who have gone to live in Egypt are like those bad figs. I consider them to be just like those bad figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten. ³⁴ 

Jeremiah 52:10-11

52:10 The king of Babylon had Zedekiah’s sons put to death while Zedekiah was forced to watch. He also had all the nobles of Judah put to death there at Riblah. 52:11 He had Zedekiah’s eyes put out and had him bound in chains. ³⁵  Then the king of Babylon had him led off to Babylon and he was imprisoned there until the day he died.

Jeremiah 52:25-27

52:25 From the city he took an official who was in charge of the soldiers, seven of the king’s advisers who were discovered in the city, an official army secretary who drafted citizens ³⁶  for military service, and sixty citizens who were discovered in the middle of the city. 52:26 Nebuzaradan, the captain of the royal guard, took them and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. 52:27 The king of Babylon ordered them to be executed ³⁷  at Riblah in the territory of Hamath.

So Judah was taken into exile away from its land.

Lamentations 4:20

ר (Resh)

4:20 Our very life breath – the Lord’s anointed king ³⁸  –

was caught in their traps, ³⁹ 

of whom we thought, ⁴⁰ 

“Under his protection ⁴¹  we will survive among the nations.”

Lamentations 5:12

5:12 Princes were hung by their hands;

elders were mistreated. ⁴² 

[23:29]  ¹ tn Heb “went up to.” The idiom עַל…עָלָה (’alah …’al) can sometimes mean “go up against,” but here it refers to Necho’s attempt to aid the Assyrians in their struggle with the Babylonians.

[23:29]  ² tn Heb “he”; the referent (Necho) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[23:29]  ³ map For location see Map1 D4; Map2 C1; Map4 C2; Map5 F2; Map7 B1.

[23:30]  ⁴ tn Heb “him, dead.”

[23:30]  ⁵ tn Or “anointed him.”

[23:34]  ⁶ tn Heb “and he took Jehoahaz, and he came to Egypt and he died there.”

[24:6]  ⁷ tn Heb “lay down with his fathers.”

[24:12]  ⁸ tn Heb “came out.”

[24:12]  ⁹ sn That is, the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, 597 b.c.

[24:12]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “him”; the referent (Jehoiachin) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[25:5]  ¹¹ map For location see Map5 B2; Map6 E1; Map7 E1; Map8 E3; Map10 A2; Map11 A1.

[25:6]  ¹² sn Riblah was a strategic town on the Orontes River in Syria. It was at a crossing of the major roads between Egypt and Mesopotamia. Pharaoh Necho had earlier received Jehoahaz there and put him in chains (2 Kgs 23:33) prior to taking him captive to Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar had set up his base camp for conducting his campaigns against the Palestinian states there and was now sitting in judgment on prisoners brought to him.

[25:6]  ¹³ tn The Hebrew text has the plural form of the verb, but the parallel passage in Jer 52:9 has the singular.

[25:7]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “were killed before his eyes.”

[25:7]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king of Babylon) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:1]  ¹⁶ sn This statement may fit better with the final paragraph of 1 Kgs 22.

[1:3]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Is it because there is no God in Israel [that] you are going to inquire of Baal Zebub, the god of Ekron?” The translation seeks to bring out the sarcastic tone of the rhetorical question.

[1:6]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “said to him.”

[1:6]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Is it because there is no God in Israel [that] you are sending to inquire of Baal Zebub, the god of Ekron?” The translation seeks to bring out the sarcastic tone of the rhetorical question. In v. 3 the messengers are addressed (in the phrase “you are on your way” the second person plural pronoun is used in Hebrew), but here the king is addressed (in the phrase “you are sending” the second person singular pronoun is used).

[1:10]  ²⁰ tn Heb “answered and said to the officer of fifty.”

[1:10]  ²¹ tn Wordplay contributes to the irony here. The king tells Elijah to “come down” (Hebrew יָרַד, yarad), but Elijah calls fire down (יָרַד) on the arrogant king’s officer.

[22:10]  ²² tn The word “king” is not in the original text of either the first or the third line. It is implicit in the connection and is supplied in the translation for clarity.

[22:11]  ²³ tn Heb “For thus said the Lord concerning Shallum son of Josiah, king of Judah, who reigned instead of his father who went away from this place: He will not return there again.”

[22:12]  ²⁴ sn This prophecy was fulfilled according to 2 Kgs 23:34.

[22:18]  ²⁵ sn This is the regular way of introducing the announcement of judgment after an indictment of crimes. See, e.g., Isa 5:13, 14; Jer 23:2.

[22:18]  ²⁶ tn The translation follows the majority of scholars who think that the address of brother and sister are the address of the mourners to one another, lamenting their loss. Some scholars feel that all four terms are parallel and represent the relation that the king had metaphorically to his subjects; i.e., he was not only Lord and Majesty to them but like a sister or a brother. In that case something like: “How sad it is for the one who was like a brother to us! How sad it is for the one who was like a sister to us.” This makes for poor poetry and is not very likely. The lover can call his bride sister in Song of Solomon (Song 4:9, 10) but there are no documented examples of a subject ever speaking of a king in this way in Israel or the ancient Near East.

[22:19]  ²⁷ sn A similar judgment against this ungodly king is pronounced by Jeremiah in 36:30. According to 2 Chr 36:6 he was bound over to be taken captive to Babylon but apparently died before he got there. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, Nebuchadnezzar ordered his body thrown outside the wall in fulfillment of this judgment. The Bible itself, however, does not tell us that.

[22:28]  ²⁸ tn The word translated “clay vessel” occurs only here. Its meaning, however, is assured on the basis of the parallelism and on the basis of the verb root which is used for shaping or fashioning in Job 10:8. The KJV renders it as “idol,” but that word, while having the same consonants, never appears in the singular. The word is missing in the Greek version but is translated “vessel” in the Latin version. The word “clay” is supplied in the translation to clarify what sort of vessel is meant; its inclusion is justified based on the context and the use of the same verb root in Job 10:8 to refer to shaping or fashioning, which would imply clay pots or vessels.

[22:28]  ²⁹ tn Heb “Is this man, Coniah, a despised, broken vessel or a vessel that no one wants?” The question is rhetorical expecting a positive answer in agreement with the preceding oracle.

[22:28]  ³⁰ sn The question “Why?” is a common rhetorical feature in the book of Jeremiah. See Jer 2:14, 31; 8:5, 19, 22; 12:1; 13:22; 14:19. In several cases like this one no answer is given, leaving a sense of exasperation and hopelessness with the sinfulness of the nation that calls forth such punishment from God.

[22:30]  ³¹ tn Heb “Write this man childless.” For the explanation see the study note. The word translated “childless” has spawned some debate because Jeconiah was in fact not childless. There is record from both the Bible and ancient Near Eastern texts that he had children (see, e.g., 1 Chr 3:17). G. R. Driver, “Linguistic and Textual Problems: Jeremiah,” JQR 28 (1937-38): 115, has suggested that the word both here and in Lev 20:20-21 should be translated “stripped of honor.” While that would relieve some of the difficulties here, the word definitely means “childless” in Gen 15:2 and also in Sir 16:3 where it is contrasted with having godless children. The issue is not one of childlessness but of having “one of his sons” succeed to the Davidic throne. The term for “one of his sons” is literally “from his seed a man” and the word “seed” is the same one that is used to refer to his “children” who were forced into exile with him (v. 28).

[24:1]  ³² sn See 2 Kgs 24:10-17 (especially vv. 14-16). Nebuchadnezzar left behind the poorest people of the land under the puppet king Zedekiah. Jeconiah has already been referred to earlier in 13:18; 22:25-26. The deportation referred to here occurred in 597 b.c. and included the priest Ezekiel.

[24:8]  ³³ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[24:8]  ³⁴ tn Heb “Like the bad figs which cannot be eaten from badness [= because they are so bad] surely [emphatic כִּי, ki] so I regard Zedekiah, king of Judah, and his officials and the remnant of Jerusalem which remains in this land and those who are living in Egypt.” The sentence has been restructured in the translation to conform more to contemporary English style. For the use of נָתַן (natan) meaning “regard” or “treat like” see BDB 681 s.v. נָתַן 3.c and compare the usage in Ezek 28:6;Gen 42:30.

[52:11]  ³⁵ tn Heb “fetters of bronze.” The more generic “chains” is used in the translation because “fetters” is a word unfamiliar to most modern readers.

[52:25]  ³⁶ tn Heb “men, from the people of the land” (also later in this verse).

[52:27]  ³⁷ tn Heb “struck them down and killed them.”

[4:20]  ³⁸ tn Heb “the anointed one of the Lord.” The term “king” is added in the translation to clarify the referent of the phrase “the Lord’s anointed.”

[4:20]  ³⁹ tn Heb “was captured in their pits.”

[4:20]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “of whom we had said.”

[4:20]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “under his shadow.” The term צֵל (tsel, “shadow”) is used figuratively here to refer the source of protection from military enemies. In the same way that the shade of a tree gives physical relief and protection from the heat of the sun (e.g., Judg 9:15; Job 40:22; Ps 80:11; Song 2:3; Ezek 17:23; 31:6, 12, 17; Hos 4:13; 14:8; Jon 4:5, 6), a faithful and powerful king can provide “shade” (= protection) from enemies and military attack (Num 14:19; Ps 91:1; Isa 30:2, 3; 49:2; 51:16; Jer 48:45; Lam 4:20).

[5:12]  ⁴² tn Heb “elders were shown no respect.” The phrase “shown no respect” is an example of tapeinosis, a figurative expression of understatement: to show no respect to elders = to terribly mistreat elders.