ToES Diary September 2017

Chapters 1 and 2 were finalised for distribution on Monday and then distributed after various difficulties.

After distribution, all references to serial must be updated. Subscriptions are now closed. Found that various items on the website that should be on permanent special were not including Terror on Every Side Volumes 1 and 2 eBooks. Frustrating and careless of me.

Jeremiah wrote a lament for Josiah (2 Chronicles 35:25). We don’t know at all what he wrote, so I tried to put together something which may or may not be similar, based on Jeremiah 8:18-22; 22:15-16; Lamentations 1:16; Zephaniah 1:14 and other snippets. Not satisfied with it. Have some more tries to improve it later.

Put the finishing touches to my attempt to reproduce a lamentation such as Jeremiah might have written.

Some connection with David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan also.

Included attempt to explain how Josiah could have died in battle when he had been promised by God through Huldah that he would die in peace (2 Kings 22:20; 2 Chronicles 34:28).

Simply put, the explanation is that Josiah should not have sought battle when he had been promised peace to the end of his life. He had had peace from that time in the 18th year of his reign until the 31st year of his reign. It seems likely that he should have just accepted what Neco said or at least left him alone, even if he couldn’t believe that God had sent him to fight in the north.

In the time of Joshua, the elders had to make up their minds (or so they thought) and did not ask God (Joshua 9:14-15). Josiah was in the same sort of situation and he did not ask either.

As Isaiah put it “should not a people inquire of their God?” (Isaiah 8:19).

It is a common failing for us all and we all need to learn not to keep doing it. God does not mind us constantly asking him for help. He does mind if we don’t!

1. Neco sets up camp in Riblah after defeating Josiah and begins his campaign against Media/Babylon.
2. When he hears that Jehoahaz is king in Judah (I have no idea how, but possibly by sending an enquiry to Jerusalem), he sends for him.
3. Jehoahaz goes to Riblah.
4. Neco puts him in chains.
5. When campaign is finished, returns to Jerusalem with Jehoahaz.
6. Neco tells Jerusalem/Judah that Jehoahaz has been deposed.
7. Neco demands 100 talents (122,000 ounces) of silver and 1 talent of gold (1,220 ounces) as tribute.
8. Neco appoints Eliakim as king and renames him Jehoiakim.
9. Jehoiakim pays tribute.
10. Neco takes Jehoahaz to Egypt.  Neither of them ever returns.

Went over the parts of Jeremiah I believe to be in the time of Jehoiakim one more time to try to confirm the chronological order I have chosen.  Some small changes again.  I conclude that some are just guesswork where I am putting them in an order that suits me or that I think fits with the way God works.  I really have no confidence in some of them at all.

Here are the events in the order I have chosen based on logic and guesswork:

• Jeremiah 22:1-12 (parts) Go to the king’s house and speak to him.
• Jeremiah 11:18-23  Plot to kill Jeremiah in Anathoth.
• Jeremiah 26:20-23 Jehoiakim kills Uriah the prophet.
• Jeremiah 18:1-23 Go to potter’s house.
• Jeremiah 26:1-24 Prophesied in temple.  People tried to have him killed, but Ahikam supported him.
• Jeremiah 5:1-6:30 know Nebuchadnezzar is coming.  Discussion with God.
• Jeremiah 19:1 – 20:18 Buy potter’s either jar.  Break it.  Went to house of Lord and spoke.  Pashhur son of Immer chief officer of the temple beats Jeremiah and puts in stocks.  Freed next day.
• Jeremiah 27:1-11 Make yoke and wear it to give messages for foreign kings come for discussions about Nebuchadnezzar.
• Jeremiah 25:1-38 Cup of God’s wrath for nations.  70 years of banishment, then punishment of Babylon.
• Jeremiah 46:1-12 message about Egypt as they are being beaten at Carchemish.
• Jeremiah 36:1-8 Jeremiah dictated all the words God had said and Baruch wrote them on a scroll.
• Jeremiah 45:1-5 After/while  Baruch wrote all of Jeremiah’s words from God on a scroll.  Baruch told he would escape the destruction of Judah with his life.
• Jeremiah 4:5-31 Invaders have set off and are coming.  Vision of destruction.
• Jeremiah 35:1-19 Rechabites.
• Not covered explicitly in Jeremiah: Invasion, first captivity (taking Daniel, etc.).
• Jeremiah 14:1-22 About  the drought.
• Jeremiah 36:9-26 All the people of Jerusalem and all the people who came in from the cities of Judah proclaimed a fast before the Lord.  Baruch read Jeremiah’s scroll first to the people, then to some rulers who were concerned by its contents, and then the king who cut it up and burned it.
• Jeremiah 36:27-32 Write it out again and give a message to Jehoiakim that he would have no one to continue to reign in Jerusalem and that his corpse would be thrown out.  The scroll was written again and lots added to it.
• Jeremiah 13:1-5 Buy wear and hide a loincloth beside the Euphrates.
• Jeremiah 22:13-23 Jehoiakim die death of a donkey, dragged and thrown out of gates of Jerusalem.

When Jeremiah spoke to Jehoiakim the first time after he was made king, how did he feel? Until then, although many would have opposed his words, Josiah would have been generally sympathetic to Jeremiah’s words.

That comfortable protection was now gone. Of course, he still had God’s promise that he would be protected as long as he remained immovable in the face of all opposition.

All the same, I can imagine that he would have felt some trepidation.

I believe the most likely message to be God’s first words to Jehoiakim as king are Jeremiah 22:1-12. They start with a command of obedience to the weightier matters of the law with a heavy warning that if there is no obedience, destruction will follow.

Jeremiah 22:10 seems to refer to Josiah as “him who is dead”, and Shallum/Jehoahaz as “him who goes away” who would not return. Their times for choice were over, but Jehoiakim still had a chance to make a choice. God is patient and his prophets must deliver his warnings despite knowing the danger they face.

If a king ends up being given the burial of a donkey and none of his subjects is sad at his death, how quickly would that show up and in what way?

Jehoiakim was promised such a death (Jeremiah 22:18-19) and reigned 11 years. When did his nation start disliking him or wishing him gone?

I have assumed that it started right at the beginning of his reign, but hardened as he proved himself utterly unpleasant. Zephaniah 1:8-9 suggests that Jehoiakim dressed in foreign clothes, worshipped foreign gods and helped fill the palace with violence and fraud even during the time of Josiah.

The people already knew what they were getting as king.

Some time before the 4th year of Jehoiakim, he killed Uriah the prophet (Jeremiah 26:20-23). He seems to have been an arbitrary and violent man as well as being more interested in his palace than in ruling over the nation (Jeremiah 22:13-15).

The descriptions of Jehoiakim suggest he was one of the most unpopular kings Judah ever had and that this would have show out right from the start.

Today I was looking at the Rechabites.

Rechab

Rechab is not a very common name in the OT.  References to a person named Rechab or Rechabites:

• 2 Sam 4:2, 5, 6, 9 Ishbosheth’s captain who helped murder him
• 2 Kings 10:15, 23 Jehonadab the son of Rechab a friend of king Jehu’s
• 1 Chronicles 2:55 House of the Rechabites
• Nehemiah 3:14 Malchijah the son of Rechab, ruler of district of Beth-Haccherem, rebuilt the Dung Gate
• Jeremiah 35:6, 8, 14, 16, 19 Jonadab the son of Rechab
• Jeremiah 35:2, 3, 5, 18 House of the Rechabites

It seems that there are at least 3 people called Rechab.

If the house of Rechab in 1 Chronicles 2:55 is the same family as in Jeremiah 35, then the Rechabites were Kenites and scribes.  There is no way to tell what time period this passage refers to.  Judges 1:16 refers to a location in Judah for the Kenites, not the area that later became the northern kingdom of Israel.

Jehonadab is a variation of Jonadab.  Probably the same person.

One objection to having the Rechabites working as scribes and living in a town is that Jonadab the son of Rechab forbade his descendants from living in houses, so they lived in tents.  However, he also forbade them from sowing seed and having vineyards, so the job of a scribe would be one of the jobs they could have had when farming was excluded.

Jonadab lived in the time of King Jehu in the northern kingdom.  If it is the same person, his descendants moved into Jerusalem only in the time of Jehoiakim.

Were they Israelites?

1 Chronicles 2:55 55 The clans also of the scribes who lived at Jabez: the Tirathites, the Shimeathites and the Sucathites. These are the Kenites who came from Hammath, the father of the house of Rechab.

Where is Jabez?  Not mentioned anywhere else as a place.  (Could have been named after the Jabez mentioned in 1 Chronicles 4:9-10.)

Hammath only occurs in one other place and there it is a place, not a person.

Kenites

Kenites were not Israelites.  Or at least some weren’t.

• Gen 15:19 Abraham was promised land of the Kenites.
• Num 24:21-22 Kenites were cursed by Balaam and would be taken away by the Assyrians.  If the Rechabites were Kenites, they were not taken away.
• Judges 1:16 Moses’ father in law was a Kenite and his descendants went up into the wilderness of Judah in the Negev near Arad.
• Judges 4:11 Moses’ father in law Hobab was a Kenite.  Heber had separated from the rest of the Kenites and was living in the north near Kedesh.

I wonder if there is more than one group called Kenites.  The land promised to Abraham included the land of the Kenites.  It didn’t include the land of Midian and the Kenites seem to have entered with the Israelites and gone to live in the south of Judah.

Conclusions

I think the most likely conclusion is that the Rechabites referred to in 1 Chronicles 2:55 is probably not the same Rechabites referred to in Jeremiah 35.  This cannot be proved and the strength of my conviction in this is not great.

I have not been distributing the diary for the last few days because it would have been revealing some details of the plot that I thought it was better not to reveal.  That section is now finished and I can get on with other parts of the story.

Uriah was a prophet who was killed by Jehoiakim early in his reign (Jeremiah 26:20-23).  Jehoiakim heard his message and tried to kill him but Uriah ran away to Egypt.  Jehoiakim sent Elnathan the son of Achbor and others to bring him back from Egypt and then killed him.

Were Elnathan and the others aware of Jehoiakim’s plans?  I would guess that they probably were not.  Elnathan is mentioned in only one other place (Jeremiah 36:12) and in that situation he was with a group of officials who listened to Jeremiah’s message in fear (Jeremiah 36:16).  Not only that, but he was one of three leaders who urged the king not to destroy the scroll Baruch had written (Jeremiah 36:25).

As a result, I would guess that they brought Uriah back expecting that he would be locked up or punished in some way, but not expecting him to be killed.  It seems to me that Jehoiakim may well have killed Uriah himself.