[CHAPTER XXXIV]
JEHOIAKIM
b.c. 608-597
2 Kings xxiii. 36-xxiv. 7
"But those things that are recorded of him, and of his uncleanness and impiety, are written in the Chronicles of the Kings."—1 Esdras i. 42.
"When Jehoiakim succeeded to the throne, he said, 'My predecessors knew not how to provoke God.'"—Sanhedrin, f. 103, 2.
"There is no strange handwriting on the wall,
Through all the midnight hum no threatening call,
Nor on the marble floor the stealthy fall
Of fatal footsteps. All is safe.—Thou fool,
The avenging deities are shod with wool!"
W. Allen Butler.
Eliakim succeeded to the throne at the age of twenty-five under very unenviable circumstances—as a nominal king, a helpless nominee and tributary of the Pharaoh. He seems to have been thoroughly distasteful to the people; and if we may judge from the fact that Ezekiel frankly ignores him and passes from Jehoahaz to Jehoachin, he was regarded as a tax-gathering usurper nominated by an alien tyrant. For after speaking of Jehoahaz, Ezekiel says,—
"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]