Following Josiah’s death, Josiah’s second son—Jehoahaz—ascended to the throne. The eldest son—Eliakim—was overlooked. Jehoahaz reigned three months until Necho II (having authority over Judah because he defeated King Josiah in battle) replaced him with Eliakim (whose name had been changed to Jehoiakim). Why the change? Perhaps Necho II figured Jehoiakim would cooperate with him better than Jehoahaz would. Jehoahaz was taken to Egypt as a prisoner, where he died (Jeremiah predicted his death in Egypt).
Jehoiakim ruled when the Babylonians first came into Judah. He was an evil, insufficient ruler. He submitted to pagan Egypt as a puppet and supported Egypt by paying tributes to her. He taxed his own people into poverty, bringing about an economic collapse (he even went so far as to enslave his own people!). He killed Uriah the prophet and encouraged Baal worship throughout the land (completely ignorant of his father Josiah’s reforms). He squandered state funds to build himself a majestic palace; because of this, the prophet Jeremiah (a contemporary of Habakkuk) gave him this message: ‘You will be buried like an animal!’ So Jehoiakim’s relations with Jeremiah did not get off to a good start. In fact, Jehoiakim even went so far so as to burn up one of Jeremiah’s scrolls with written prophecies in an attempt to thwart their fulfillment (a common practice in the ancient Near East).
In 605 B.C., Babylon finally achieved superiority in the Middle East. At the Battle of Carchemish, Babylon’s #1 opposition—Egypt—was defeated. Nebuchadnezzar was the leader of the army, though at the time he was only the crown prince and not the king (his father Nabopolassar still ruled). He made his way down into Palestine and subjugated all of its cities, including Jerusalem in Judah. Since he had defeated Egypt, he received all of Egypt’s territory, and that included Judah. He forced the submission of the cities and kings (including Jehoiakim) and ordered the procurement of able young men for relocation to Babylon for governmental work. Among those taken to Babylon in this forced exodus were Daniel and his three friends (Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah; they were given Babylonian names upon arrival, and it is these by which they are largely known). While in Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar received urgent news: his ill father had died! He quickly returned to Babylon to wear the crown as her king.
While Jeremiah experienced relative comfort in the days of King Josiah, in the reign of King Jehoiakim, he began experiencing his first tastes of discomfort. In 609 B.C., Jeremiah made a dramatic reappearance when he preached one of his most famous and most offensive messages in his entire career, deemed by scholars as ‘The Temple Oracle.’ The Jews in Jeremiah’s day held to a common problem with religion that is even embraced today: ‘I am justified by my worship.’ The Jews thought that as long as they went through the rituals and sacrifices, they were okay in God’s eyes (how many Christians do the same thing today, holding to a belief that if they go to church and pray and read their Bibles, they’ll be okay in God’s eyes?). In the Temple oracle, Jeremiah condemns this view and does it in their sacred place of worship. Although he was an inviolate, the people wanted to kill him. In Jeremiah’s view, worship is the aftermath of salvation, not the cause of it. Indeed, Jeremiah’s Temple Oracle is one of the most caustic sermons in the Old Testament.
Jeremiah used the first Babylonian invasion to point to the coming terrors of the total destruction of Judah under Babylon: ‘Repent, or you will submit to the same fate as the Israelites!’ Around this time, Jeremiah began writing down his prophecies (probably our chapters 1-25). He had been banned from the Temple because of his Temple Oracle. The scroll he wrote his prophecies on was around twenty-two feet long, and it was made of connected leather strips. ‘Did Jeremiah actually write down these prophecies?’ No, for he had a secretary/scribe (Jer 36) who did much of his writing for him. The scribe’s name was Baruch, and his seal has been found. The written scroll was taken to King Jehoiakim, and the prophecies against the king and against Judah were shown to him. As he was reading the prophecies, he began burning the scroll in a firepot. Jehoiakim was acting according to an ancient Near Eastern custom. In the ancient Near East, fire was assumed to having a magical quality. It had the capacity to render the unholy holy and to render the holy unholy. In this sense, Jehoiakim was taking the holy and, by burning it, hoping to render it unholy (or ineffective). Such practices were common among the Israelites, but they were done to the prophecies of foreign gods. Here Jehoiakim was making Jeremiah out to be a pagan! Jeremiah felt defeated, but God told him, ‘Rewrite the scroll and give My judgments to the king!’ Many more curses were added to the scroll. Also added to the scroll is a passage regarding 70 years of prophetic future events revolving around Judean and Babylonian relations. Since this prophecy would be fulfilled, it revealed that Jeremiah really was from God. Interestingly, a Babylonian prophet also prophesied that Babylon would be destroyed for seventy years; Jeremiah countered him with his own seventy-year prophecy, except Jeremiah’s would be accurate. Seventy years after Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon would fall; this was fulfilled in 539 BC when Cyrus of Persia (spoken of by the prophet Isaiah) took the city of Babylon.
Jeremiah’s relations with King Jehoiakim were anything but delectable, and in 604 B.C. his physical persecution began. King Jehoiakim had Jeremiah put in the stocks, and the priests and false prophets tried (unsuccessfully) to devise a way to have him put to death. While he was in the stocks, even little children would come and run around him, mocking him and spitting on him. Jeremiah’s scribe Baruch even began to catch a little flak. In what is called ‘The Confessions of Baruch’ (Ch 45), Baruch laments to God, ‘I’m so weary of all this! No one is listening! We’re mocked and humiliated and treated like foreigners!’ Some scholars think that Baruch may have been a man dreaming of greatness, so he attached himself to Jeremiah during the reign of King Josiah in order to attain such status (unaware of the persecution that would come following Josiah’s death). He became burned-out and bummed when persecution and rejection really began to intensify. God says to Baruch, ‘Don’t seek great things! And here’s your reward: when the Babylonians finally do take over Judah completely, you will be safe.’ This doesn’t seem like such a great thing to Baruch at the time, but when he sees the slaughter that will fill the streets of Jerusalem, suddenly all of the suffering would be worth it! He escapes the brutality of the Babylonians, and he remains in Palestine even after a later exodus to Egypt (in which Jeremiah took a part).
From 601-597 B.C., a great shift in Judean history took place. Following taking the throne in 605 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar had stayed in Babylon for a few weeks before heading west to continue his campaign. Eventually the entire eastern Mediterranean coast acknowledged him as their ruler. In 601 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar set his eyes on conquering Egypt, a great task, for the Egyptians were ferocious warriors. Pharaoh Necho met him at the borders of his kingdom, and the two great armies clashed. No one won, and both sides received heavy losses. Necho limped back to Egypt and Nebuchadnezzar limped back to Babylon. As Nebuchadnezzar rested in Babylon, King Jehoiakim rebelled against the Babylonian forces in Judah. Nebuchadnezzar sent a contingent of his own army, with some Aramaean, Moabite, and Ammonite troops to try and squelch the uprising. Unsuccessful, he led his own army into Judah to take care of the problem. In December of 598 B.C., King Jehoiakim was killed in battle, probably by marauding bands of soldiers under Nebuchadnezzar’s control. This fulfilled one of Jeremiah’s prophecies regarding Jehoiakim’s shameful death (Jer 22.18-19, 37.27-32). As prophesied, the people of Judah did not lament over Jehoiakim’s fall (no one really liked him).
Jehoiakim’s eighteen-year-old son Jehoiachin took the throne, and he ruled Judah when the great blow from the Babylonians smashed against Jerusalem. He had been relying on Egyptian support, but the Egyptians had failed to materialize. Jehoiachin was taken captive to Babylon, along with the queen mother, Ezekiel, and 10,000 leading citizens of Judah. This second deportation (the first being in 605 B.C.) took place as a psychological play by the Babylonians: ‘Don’t screw with us!’ This deportation helped keep the Jews in submission to Babylon. Jehoiachin would die in Babylon, on the anniversary of his father’s burning of Jeremiah’s scroll! A great tributary pay was enacted by Nebuchadnezzar, and the Babylonian king put a new man ‘in charge’ of Judah: Mattaniah, whom Nebuchadnezzar renamed to Zedekiah. During this time, Jeremiah was silent. It would be during the reign of King Zedekiah that he would again appear on the scene for his third ‘rebirth.’
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