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ToES Diary December 2017
By Admin | ToESWriting
NaNoWriMo took a heavy toll on my available time. The novel was finally finished, but since then there have been few things to catch up on.
A few minor points from during the last month of writing follow.
Who went into captivity after the first attack by Nebuchadnezzar during the 3rd/4th year of Jehoiakim? Isaiah showed that it included nobles (Isaiah 39:5-8). Daniel showed that it included young men who were from noble families, particularly in Jerusalem (Daniel 1:3).
What about Pashhur the son of Immer who had put Jeremiah in the stocks? Jeremiah 20:6 tells us that he and his household would go into captivity to Babylon and die there. In which captivity would he have been taken away? We cannot tell for certain when that event happened, but I think it is likely to have been before the first captivity (since there is a reference in Jeremiah 19:3 to “kings” which is not really appropriate after the reign of Jehoiakim).
Ahikam the son of Shaphan is not mentioned after sometime early in the reign of Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 26:24)
Jeremiah 36:30 says of Jehoiakim that he would have no-one to sit (or “no-one sitting”) on the throne of David.
Other verses which give some extra information about this subject are:
The facts of what happened are that Jehoiakim died and his son Jehoiachin/Jeconiah/Coniah became king (2 Kings 24:6, 8; 2 Chronicles 36:8-9). He reigned for 3 months and 10 days and, as far as we can tell, he spent all of that time under siege in Jerusalem. The following (and last) king was Zedekiah who was Jehoiakim’s brother (2 Kings 24:17), a son of Josiah (1 Chronicles 3:15; Jeremiah 1:1; 27:1; 37:1). Note that there is one passage – 2 Chronicles 36:10 – which describes Zedekiah as Jehoachin’s brother rather than his uncle.
So how do we fit these details together?
One credible suggestion is that it refers to the fact that Jehoiakim died without any replacement having been appointed and ruling with him or ready to rule after him. For example Solomon and Jotham (and probably others based on the matching of lengths of reigns between Kings and Chronicles) each began to rule while their fathers were still alive. Some translations (eg. Young’s Literal Translation) use “none sitting on the throne…” which supports this idea. The prophecy would then be suggesting that Jehoiakim would not have a peaceful death or organised succession – which seems to have been the case.
The prophecy of Jeremiah 22:29 would then be the one that terminated Jehoiakim’s ruling dynasty after Jehoiachin.
Volume 4 – The Darkness Deepens will now start with the reign of Jehoiakim, but with a retelling of the death of Jehoiakim. The first 8 chapters will contain the following material:
Chapter 1 Beyond the Gate – the death of Jehoiakim.
Chapter 2 Replaced by Jehoiachin/Jeconiah/Coniah.
• Deliver message re loincloth to king and queen mother
• King not to succeed, no sons to rule.
Chapter 3 King Jehoiachin surrenders.
• He did best of the later kings because he followed God’s commands in giving up.
• Ezekiel taken into captivity with various others (3,023 total).
Chapter 4 Replacement with Zedekiah/Mattaniah aged 21.
• Jeremiah 24:1-10 good or bad figs.
Chapter 5 Jeremiah 29:1-32 Jeremiah sent letter to exiles by his brother Gemariah and Elasah the son of Shaphan. 70 years captivity.
• Jeremiah 30:1-31:40? Write all in a book. Good things to come.
Chapter 6 Jeremiah 51:59-64 Scroll sent to Babylon via Baruch’s brother Seraiah.
• Jeremiah 27:12-22 same as in Jehoiakim’s reign, given to Zedekiah
Chapter 7 Jeremiah 28:1-17 False prophet Hananiah
Chapter 8 Jeremiah 12:1-15 Brothers and house of father. Worse attacks
I have earlier explained that I suspect that Jeremiah was not in Jerusalem when the Babylonians besieged the city at the end of the reign of Jehoiakim, and I have written Terror on Every Side! on that basis, but there is no certainty about it.
When Jeremiah collected the damaged loincloth from the Euphrates, God gave him a message which included a reference to “the king and the queen mother” (Jeremiah 13:18). We are not told who this refers to, but Jeremiah 22:26 talks about how God would punish Jehoiachin and his mother by sending them both into captivity, and then 2 Kings 24:12 reports that Jehoiachin and his mother surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar and were taken into captivity. Jeremiah 29:2 also refers to both of them being taken away.
It seems most likely to me that the king and his mother referred to in Jeremiah 13:18 are Jehoiachin and Nehushta the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem.
The details of events around the death of Jehoiakim are not completely clear, but it seems most likely that the Babylonians attacked and somehow Jehoiakim ended up dead with his body being thrown outside the gate of Jerusalem (based on Jeremiah 22:19 and Jeremiah 36:30). Jehoiachin then took over as king and the city was under siege (2 Kings 24:10). Nebuchadnezzar was not there at that time, but later came and then Jehioachin surrendered.
If Jeremiah was absent when the Babylonians attacked and the loincloth message refers to King Jehoiachin, then must not Jeremiah have gone to Jerusalem to deliver the message some time during Jehoiachin’s reign of only 3 months and 10 days? If so, would he have left again before Jehoiachin surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar? And how would he have got into the city if the Babylonian army had it surrounded?
On a subject relevant to the story of Joseph (for Joseph, Rachel’s son), not Jeremiah…
Jacob said to Esau that he could not hurry the flocks too much (Genesis 33:13) and yet he had just travelled from Paddan Aram to the borders of Canaan in just ten days, a distance of about 400-600 kilometres. It is unlikely that Esau would have been wanting to travel too much faster than that.
Jacob may have been exaggerating the problem because he didn’t want to go with Esau to Seir, or the situation may have changed since he had been travelling so quickly. If so, the most likely change would be related to lambing, and Jacob does refer to “nursing flocks”. We are not told how long the time was between Laban going home and Jacob meeting Esau, but the impression given is that there was little delay. Mention is made of sending a message to Esau and him coming, but there are no other indications of time.
When is lambing season? The gestation period for sheep is about 5 months (144-152 days, average 147) (see http://aces.nmsu.edu/sheep/sheep_reproduction/breeding_habits.html). The natural breeding cycle for sheep begins as the length of day decreases from maximum. Thus ewes will ordinarily be most fertile (in the northern hemisphere) in August-November. Some say that the lambing season in Israel begins in mid-December but it seems to depend on climate also, and it is hard to know exactly what the climate in Israel was like in Bible times.