Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he began to reign; and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and he did evil in the sight of Jehovah his God.
Chronicles gives Jehoiakim's eleven years a single line, and its verdict is one word: evil. His father was one of Judah's best kings, yet these eleven years carried Judah to the edge of ruin.
Jehoiakim's father had left him every advantage.
Josiah, the father of Jehoiakim, was one of the best kings who ever sat on the throne of David. He did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and when he died the prophet Jeremiah and the people mourned him deeply. Sadly, Jehoiakim did not follow in his godly father's steps, for "he did what was evil in the sight of the LORD his God." Had the king paid attention to the word of God, he would have understood this. God in His patience had postponed the judgment decreed against Judah for its idolatry, to give an opportunity for repentance. And He had done so because men like Hezekiah and Josiah had sought the Lord.
One writer weighs which way round such a family line is more surprising.
How remarkable! Not, sadly, that a godly king should have an ungodly son, but that an ungodly father should have a godly son. That indeed was grace.
The king named here was not born with this name. Pharaoh Necho of Egypt gave it to him when he deposed his brother and put him on the throne.
When Pharaoh deposed Jehoahaz, he put his elder brother Eliakim on the throne and changed his name to Jehoiakim. The first name means "God is setting up," the second "Jah sets up." The king did not live up to either name. It was not the Lord who had set him on his throne; it was the king of Egypt, and Jehoiakim was his subject.
The renaming itself carried a message about who now held real power.
Josiah was the last king worthy of the title. Three sons and a grandson followed him, mere puppets of their foreign masters… The giving of names is a mark of lordship. So Nebuchadnezzar gave new names to Daniel and his three friends when he took them into his service. He also changed Mattaniah's name to Zedekiah when he set him on Judah's shaky throne. How low the chosen people had now fallen, the result of centuries of persistent sin against the Lord.
Elsewhere Scripture fills in what that evil looked like.
Jehoiakim's character was thoroughly unpleasant — treacherous, vengeful, and bloodthirsty… He taxed the land to raise the money Pharaoh demanded. He collected silver and gold from the people of the land, from each one according to his assessment, to give to Pharaoh Necho. The people had passed him over and chosen his younger half-brother instead, so he made no effort to ease their burdens. He increased them.
The clearest single act of this reign was his response to a written message from God, read aloud in the fifth year.
Jehoiakim was quickly hardening himself past all feeling, and no twinge of conscience is visible over his sacrilegious act.
Destroying the document did nothing to the message.
The foolish and irreverent king might cut the roll, but he could not set aside the divine judgments written on it. He never imagined what would follow. Thousands of years after his death, millions of people around the world would read the very words of that roll — and read of his wicked action too.
The reign did not end quietly.
Three years after Nebuchadnezzar restored him to his kingdom, Jehoiakim rebelled against him… As Jeremiah had prophesied, Jehoiakim died a violent death. His body was dragged and thrown out beyond the walls of Jerusalem, left in the heat by day and the frost by night. He was "buried with the burial of a donkey."
The turning point had been Josiah's death.
With the death of Josiah the patience of God ceased, and judgment soon came upon the city. Until then God had held it back, for the disasters that fell on the kingdom of Judah were a form of discipline. The reformation Josiah carried out was the last act of mercy from God while Judah remained a nation.
- Inherited — Jehoiakim had a godly father and a name meaning God sets up; neither made him godly. Grace is not passed down like property.
- Borrowed — His throne was Egypt's gift, and his name was Egypt's choice. A crown held from the world's hand is not the same as one held from God's.
- Ruthless — He squeezed the people who had passed him over, and took a knife to the word of God.
- Powerless — He could cut up the roll, not the judgment. Millions read the words he destroyed; his own body ended up outside the city walls.
- Postponed, not cancelled — God delayed judgment on Judah because Hezekiah and Josiah sought the Lord. Patience was the window for repentance, and Jehoiakim spent it refusing.
Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and bound him with chains of brass to carry him to Babylon.
Jehoiakim's reign ends with Babylon's king at his gates and chains on him — the first of Babylon's blows on Judah. Two questions follow: why did God give him up, and what did that begin?
One incident shows the kind of king Jehoiakim was. He met Jeremiah's written warnings with a knife and a fire:
In the fifth year of his reign, Baruch, Jeremiah's assistant, read the message of God from a book to all the people. Eager informers reported it to the king, and he ordered the book brought and read before him. "It was the ninth month, and the king was sitting in the winter house, and there was a fire burning in the fire pot before him. As Jehudi read three or four columns, the king would cut them off with a knife and throw them into the fire in the fire pot, until the entire scroll was consumed in the fire." It was a daring act of irreverence. A Jew above all learned to treat every sacred writing with the deepest respect. But Jehoiakim was fast hardening himself past all feeling, and no twinge of conscience shows over his sacrilegious act.
The chains did not come without warning. One writer sets them beside the sentence Jeremiah had already spoken over this king:
Jehoiakim had changed masters. He could hardly wait to rebel against Nebuchadnezzar. His land had already become prey in part for all his neighbours. Then Nebuchadnezzar went up against him and bound him with chains of bronze to take him away to Babylon. We learn through Jeremiah what word the Lord had pronounced concerning him: "Therefore thus says the LORD concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah: He shall have none to sit on the throne of David, and his dead body shall be cast out to the heat by day and the frost by night."
The chains were meant to take him to Babylon. Commentators differ over whether the journey ever happened. One writer weighs the silence:
As to his end, Scripture gives no history. 2 Chronicles 36:6 states that Nebuchadnezzar "bound him in chains to take him to Babylon." It does not say he was taken there. He may have been released after promising to submit to his conqueror. But suppose he was carried to Babylon. Even that would not contradict 2 Kings 24:6 ("So Jehoiakim slept with his fathers"). He might easily have returned to Jerusalem, as other Jewish captives did later. Scripture gives no record of his death. That silence is no proof that Jeremiah's prophecies about his end were not fulfilled to the letter.
Another writer sees the chains as a humiliation that stopped short of removal, and the start of something far larger:
The king of Egypt took possession of the land and made Jehoiakim king in Jerusalem. Jehoiakim's wickedness was far from leading to any restoration on God's part. Then came one more powerful than the king of Egypt, a king through whom God would begin the rule of the Gentiles. He comes up against Jerusalem and binds Jehoiakim in chains, yet after all leaves him to end his reign and his life at Jerusalem. Three years later he carried away his son to Babylon.
Why does this early raid matter more than the invasions that followed?
This matter of the vessels is extremely important. There had been three deportations: one under king Jehoiakim, then under his son Jehoiachin, and finally under Zedekiah. The last of the three did by far the most damage. The temple was burnt, and huge numbers went into captivity. But the 70 years of captivity count from the first deportation, the one we would call minor. Why was this first one the important one in God's eyes? It is because of the vessels. Nebuchadnezzar had taken the vessels of the temple to Babylon, and even put them into the house of his idols. Such a thing had never happened before.
Nebuchadnezzar could have emptied the temple at once. One writer sees purpose in the fact that he did not:
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came against him and took Jehoiakim captive to Babylon. He also took some of the articles from the temple and put them in his own temple at Babylon. The Lord allowed this as a warning to Judah. Nebuchadnezzar might have taken all the treasures of the house, but he did not. If Judah had turned back to the Lord, this might have preserved them from the later damage.
- Cause — Jehoiakim cut up and burned the scroll of God's warnings and felt nothing. The chains came after.
- Word — Jeremiah had said none of his line would sit on David's throne and his dead body would be cast out. The chains begin the fulfilment.
- Chains — The verse says he was bound for Babylon. It never says he arrived, and commentators differ on what followed.
- Vessels — Babylon put the temple vessels among its idols. That had never happened before, and the seventy years count from it.
- Warning — Nebuchadnezzar took only part, leaving Judah room to turn back. They did not, and the heavier blows came later.