Melakhim B 24-25: The Decline Towards Churban
SEFER MELAKHIM BET: THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS
By Rav Alex Israel
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Dedicated in memory of Gertrude Spiegel a"h
by Patti and Michael Steinmetz and Family
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Shiur #28: Chapter 24-25
The Decline towards Churban
In many ways, the reign of Yoshiyahu functions
as the climax of Melakhim Bet. His
zealous eradication of idolatry, the covenantal ceremony that he enacts at the
Temple and his efforts to achieve national reunification are all representative
of the ideal model of the Judean king.
However, in the wake of Yoshiyahus unexpected
death, events plunge downwards in a succinctly described but exhausting descent
towards national disintegration. The
last four kings of Yehuda struggle under the crippling hegemony first of Egypt
and then of Babylon, suffering military defeat, vassalage, humiliation,
deportation, siege and torture. The sun is setting on the First Temple period
and it will swiftly end in the conquest of Jerusalem and the exile of its
people.
These tragic years may be represented as two
rather parallel sequences of equal duration, the first under Egyptian domination
and the second under Babylon:
Yehoachaz 23:31-35 |
3 months |
23:31 Yehoachaz reigns for 3 months.
23:33 Yehoachaz is imprisoned by Pharaoh. The kingdom is taxed.
23:34 Pharaoh replaces Yehoachaz with Elyakim, And renames him
Yehoyakim. Yehoachaz is deported to
Egypt. |
Yehoyakim
23:36-24:6 |
11 years |
23:36 Yehoyakim reigns for 11 years.
24:1 Yehoyakim rebels against Babylon.
24:2-4 Yehuda endures military invasion, reflecting God's
decree. |
24:7 Transition: Babylon rises as the regional power |
||
Yehoyakhin
24:8-25:7 |
3 months |
24:8 Yehoyakhin reigns for 3 months.
24:12 Yehoyakhin is imprisoned by Nevukhadnetzar.
24:13 Nevukhadnetzar seizes the Temple and royal treasuries
24:17 Pharaoh replaces Yehoyakhin with Matanya and renames him
Tzidkiyahu.
24:15 Yehoyakhin is deported to Babylon. |
Tzidkiyahu
24:18-25:7 |
11 years |
24:18 Tzidkiyahu reigns for 11 years.
24:20 Tzidkiyahu rebels against Babylon.
Ch. 25 Babylon attacks Jerusalem, and the Temple is destroyed. |
YEHOACHAZ
Yehoachaz[1] is crowned king
by the Am Ha-aretz, the powerful group affiliated with royalty.
Yehoachaz is not the oldest of Yoshiyahu's children; as such, there must have
been a good reason for his selection. Some speculate that he held political
views that were pro-Babylonian and anti-Egyptian. This would explain his
selection by the Am Ha-aretz group who were politically aligned with
Yoshiyahu. Yoshiyahu had confronted Nekho in battle on his way northwards to
Karkemish in a move to limit Egyptian control of the region, but had severely
underestimated Nekho's power. Now, as
Nekho returns to the region from war, he dominates Yehuda, replacing the new
king Yehoachaz with his older brother Yehoyakim. Yehoachaz had been on the
throne for a mere three months. Pharaoh
Nekho evidently perceived his brother Yehoyakim as more favorably inclined
towards Egypt.[2]
Pharaoh's domination of Israel is expressed in
three ways:
·
He removes Yehoachaz and exiles him to Egypt.
·
He appoints a new monarch and changes his name, a sign of his control of
Judean national policy.
·
He imposes a crushing tribute upon the new king.
YEHOYAKIM
Yehoyakim ascends the throne burdened with a
huge Egyptian-imposed tax tribute. How does he finance it? His direct source of
income is the upper classes of society:
Yehoyakim gave
Pharaoh the silver and the gold, and he made an assessment of the land to pay
the money demanded by Pharaoh. He exacted the silver and gold from the Am
Ha-aretz according to the assessment to pay Pharaoh Nekho. (23:35)
Although the landed upper classes are directly
responsible for funding the national tribute, it is the lowest social stratum of
society that pays the real price, as the aristocracy reduces the pay of manual
laborers in order to insulate their own fortunes. This situation results in
widespread exploitation of the poor; a societal disgrace that is roundly
condemned by the prophet.[3] When the king
embarks on an ambitious building project and it is the peasantry that pays the
price, Yirmiyahu pays the sovereign a visit:
Thus said the
Lord: Go down to the palace of the king of Judah, where you shall utter this
word
Woe! He who
builds his house with unfairness and his upper chambers with injustice, who
makes his fellow man work without pay, and does not give him his wages. Who
thinks: I will build me a vast palace with spacious upper chambers, provided
with windows paneled in cedar, painted with vermilion!
Your father ate and
drank and dispensed justice and equity then all went well with him. He upheld
the rights of the poor and needy then all was well. That is truly heeding Me
declares the Lord.[4] (Yirmiyahu
22:13-16)
Yirmiyahu informs the king that his rule would
endure only if he desisted from the corruption that prevailed in his kingdom.
NATIONAL INDIFFERENCE
In the fourth year of Yehoyakim's reign, 605
BCE, Nevukhadnetzar succeeds his father Nebopolassar and takes the reins of his
kingdom. He immediately wages war against Egypt at their advance base in
Karkemish and roundly defeats the Egyptian forces. He sweeps southwards to the
Mediterranean coast, capturing Ashkelon a year later. The tide has changed
direction, and now Babylon, not Egypt, is the dominant regional force. This is
expressed by Sefer Melakhim:
The King of Egypt did not come again out of his land, for
the King of Babylon had taken all that belonged to the King of Egypt from the
Brook of Egypt to the river Euphrates. (24:7)
We don't know quite when Yehuda came under
Babylonian control, but it seems that notwithstanding Yirmiyahu's repeated
warnings of exile and destruction, the people remained complacent. Why?
The word that
came to Yirmiyahu from God: Stand at the gate of the House of God and there
proclaim this word:
All you of Judah who enter these gates to worship God
mend your ways and your actions, and I will let you dwell in this place. Don't
put your trust in illusions and say, The Temple of God, the Temple of God, the
Temple of God!
You are relying on illusions that are of no avail. Will you
steal and murder and commit adultery and swear falsely and sacrifice to Baal
and follow other gods[5] ... and then come
stand before Me in this House that bears My name and say, We are safe!
Do
you consider this House that bears My name to be a den of thieves? (Yirmiyahu
7:4-11)
Yirmiyahu preaches at the Temple gates. He accuses
the nation of transgressing the Ten Commandments, a grievous array of sins. He
suggests that the Temple ritual cannot remedy or mask the corruption that
characterizes Jerusalem's society. And yet the people remain dispassionate and
unworried, saying We are safe! Why are people unalarmed by the advancing
Babylonians and Yirmiyahu's harsh predictions? Because they believe that The
Temple of God is invincible, that God will never destroy His own house. This is
a perspective that became entrenched in the wake of the last major invasion
that of Sancheriv of Assyria during Chizkiyahu's reign. Then, the towns and
countryside of Yehuda was ravaged, but Jerusalem was miraculously spared. The
powerful event evidently led to a popular belief that God would never wreak ruin
and destruction upon his Temple, and as a result the people regarded any threat
thereafter with a spirit of nonchalance. Yirmiyahu looks to shake them from
their apathy by reminding them of a different historical precedent:
Just go to My
place at Shilo, where I had established My name originally, and see what I did
to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel. And now, because you do all
these things
I will do to the House that bears My name, on which you rely
just
what I did to Shilo. And I will cast you out of My presence as I cast out your
brothers, the whole offspring of Ephraim. (7:13-16)
Shilo was the original site of the Mishkan,
and yet God destroyed it due to the wickedness of Israel. God promises that the
Temple will suffer the same fate if Israel continues its reprehensible way of
living.
BURNING THE WORDS OF THE PROPHET
This prophecy offers some insight on the
complacency of the nation in this period. At a later date, events precipitate a
greater degree of concern and tension. Yirmiyahu 36 records a national
fast day in Yehoyakim's fifth year in the same month as Ashkelons capture by
the Babylonians.[6]
For the kingdom, the proximity of Nevukhadnetzar was viewed with considerable
anxiety, and a fast day was pronounced to appeal to God. People now started to
become more receptive to Yirmiyahus warnings of an impending national tragedy
and to his call for repentance. Senior government figures receive a scroll
documenting Yirmiyahus prophecies of devastation. It alarms them, and they
present the scroll to King Yehoyakim:
It was the ninth month and the king was sitting in the winter palace, with
a fire burning in front of him. Whenever Yehudi[7]
read three or four columns of the scroll, the
king cut them off with a scribes knife and threw them into the firepot, until
the entire scroll was burned in the fire.[8] (Yirmiyahu 36:22-23)
In other words, the king is impervious to the divine
warnings and the messages sent via prophecy. The kingdom is destined for
disaster.
RESISTING BABYLON
Yehoyakim was loyal to Babylon for three
years, but then rebelled (24:1). Most scholars see his revolt as a response to
Egypt's defeat of the Babylonian forces in 601 BCE. Yehoyakim seized the
opportunity of Babylon's regional vulnerability and rebelled. However, Babylon
strikes back immediately. The next year, Nevukhadnetzar instigated a military response, directing his
allies and mercenaries, the
bands of the
Chaldeans and bands of the Syrians
and bands of the Moabites and bands of the Ammonites, and sent them against
Judah to destroy it (24:2). At this point, Nevukhadnetzar himself was
preoccupied in other regions. Babylonian records show that Nevukhadnetzar
returned to the region only in 598 BCE, Yehoyakim's 11th year.
By the time Nevukhadnetzar began his siege of Jerusalem, Yehoyakim had died.[9]
As we have observed, Yehoyakim's ignominious
reign was characterized by deep corruption and thorough deafness to God's word.
Even a cursory reading of the book of Yirmiyahu demonstrates the degree
to which God sounded the alarm of foreboding catastrophe. In this critical
period, both nation and king were tragically impervious to God's warnings and
unable to conceive of the grim events to come.
YEHOYAKHIN AND THE FIRST WAVE OF EXILE
Yehoyakhin reigned for only three months.[10] A child king, he
came to power at the age of eight, and immediately found himself besieged by the
mighty Babylonian forces. Initially, the text indicates (24:10) the arrival of
Babylonian forces. But at the next stage, Nevukhadnetzar arrives at the city
and his servants were besieging it (24:11) the emperor himself arrives.
Jerusalem hardly resists; Babylonian historical records chronicle the arrival of
the military forces in Kislev and the surrender of Yehoyakhin on the 2nd
of Adar, matching the chronology of Sefer Melakhim perfectly. As we know,
Jerusalem was capable of withstanding a siege for far longer than three months,
and no battle or conquest is mentioned in Melakhim. As such, it is
reasonable to assume that Yehoyakhin, or his advisors, made a worthwhile
tradeoff, to surrender the king in order to save the city.
Pointedly, this surrender and the humiliating
and devastating exile that followed is dated to the eighth year of
Nevukhadnetzar's reign. Since Melakhim hardly ever dates an event by the
regnal years of a foreign ruler, this merely demonstrates the nations
helplessness in the face of foreign domination. Nevukhadnetzar, however, was not
satisfied with the mere removal of the national figurehead, nor with their
appointment of Yehoyakhin's brother Matanya, a monarch sympathetic to Babylon.
He stripped the Temple of its golden vessels and emptied it and the royal
treasury of their wealth. He also exiled the leaders of society; Melakhim
offers a detailed register of the deportees royalty, the aristocracy, the
military, skilled craftsmen, industrialists all in all, ten thousand exiles.
He carried away Yehoyachin to Babylon. The king's mother, the king's wives, his
officials, and the chief men of the land he took into captivity from Jerusalem
to Babylon. And
the king of Babylon brought captive to Babylon all the men of valor
and the
craftsmen and the metal workers
war.
Among the exiles are personalities that we meet
elsewhere in Tanakh:
There was a certain Jew in Shushan
whose name was Mordekhai, son of
Yair, son of Shimei, son of Kish, a Benjamite, who[11] had
been carried away from Jerusalem with the captives that had been carried away
with Yekhoniya[12] king of Judah, whom
Nevukhadnetzar the king of Babylon had carried away. (Esther 2:5-6)
Yet another character exiled at this time is a
priest the prophet Yechezkel. The baseline of the dating system used to mark
his prophecy is the year of Yehoyakhins exile.[13] Yechezkels
prophetic role was to offering God's perspective to the exiles of Yehuda, on
the tumultuous events befalling
Jerusalem.
GOOD FIGS AND BAD FIGS
With the exile of Yehoyakhin, Jerusalem has
reached a new low point. Only the poorest people in the land were left
(24:14). Now, for the first time in Jewish history, we have a situation in which
there are two centers of Jewish life (each with a Judean king[14]): one in exile
and the other in Jerusalem. Which one shall prosper? Yirmiyahu's prophecy is
frightening and ominous:
After Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had taken
Yechoniah
into exile from Jerusalem
God
showed me this vision: Behold, two
baskets of figs were placed before the Temple of God
One
basket had very good figs, like first-ripe figs, but the other basket had very bad
figs, so bad that they could not be eaten
. Then the word of God came to
me:
Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the exiles from Yehuda whom I
have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans. I will
set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will
build them up, and not tear them down; I will
plant them, and not pluck them up. I will give them a heart to know that I am
the Lord, and they
shall be my people and I will be their God, for they
shall return to me with their whole heart.
Like
the bad figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten, so will I treat
Tzidkiyahu the king of Yehuda, his officials, the remnant of Jerusalem who
remain in this land, and those who
dwell in the land of Egypt. I will make
them
a horror
to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be
a reproach,
a byword,
a taunt and
a curse in all the places where I shall
drive them.
I will send sword, famine and pestilence upon them, until they shall be
utterly destroyed from the land that I gave to them and their fathers. (Yirmiyahu 24:1-10)
[1]
See Yirmiyahu 22:11 and Divrei Ha-yamim I 3:15 in which he is
called Shalum. It seems that Yehoachaz was a name he adopted when he ascended
the throne.
[2]
See Olam Ha-Tanakh and Daat Mikra. Both commentaries also suggest
the possibility that inner palace politics relating to the relative influence of
Chamutal (Yehoachaz's mother) and Zevuda (Yehoyakims mother) may have affected
the decision.
[3]
Yirmiyahu specifies a
series of crimes: "Thus said the Lord: Do what is just and right; rescue from
the defrauder him who is robbed; do not oppress the stranger, the fatherless,
and the widow; commit no violent act and do not shed the blood of the innocent
in this place." (Yirmiyahu 22:13-14). In connection with bloodshed, see Melakhim
24:4 the pasuk is somewhat ambiguous; possibly the ambiguity intends to
equate Yehoyakim's murderous regime with that of Menashe. For an instance in
which he hunts down and kills an innocent prophet, see Jeremiah 26:22-23.
[4]
Some see the Ramat
Rachel archeological site, dated by Yochanan Aharoni to the period of Yehoyakim,
as a possible candidate for this very palace. Aharoni writes:
"We did not expect a ruler of the Kingdom of Judah to
have built a royal palace and fort outside the borders of ancient Jerusalem, on
the road between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Above ground level, we found massive
hewn stones of a type not usually used in that period, except in palaces and
luxury buildings. In the stratum from the period of the destruction of the
Temple, we found the handle of a pitcher that had been sealed with a Hebrew
inscription: "[belonging] to Eliyakim, lad of Yokhan?' Albright identified the
"Yokhan" of the inscription with Yokhinu, mentioned in Assyrian writings - none
other than Yehoiakim's son Yekhoniah, who ruled only three months before he was
exiled to Babylonia. It is unusual in itself for a king to build a palace
outside the city. It is evident from the few remains that were preserved that
this was without a doubt a most magnificent palace, built with the most advanced
architectural and artistic techniques of the period. In this context, it is
fitting to cite the verses from Jer. 36:22 which describe how Baruch son of
Neriah brought the scroll of Jeremiah's prophecy to Yehoyakim, who flung it upon
the blazing brazier. It states there that "the king sat in the winter house.'
"Winter house" implies that he also had a summer house ...It makes sense that
Yehoyakim's summer home would be located among the vineyards outside the city,
next to Ramat Rachel. What a unique case in the history of biblical archaeology:
The cedar window panes displayed in the Israel Museum are the very panes that
Jeremiah faced as he prophesied." (Y. Aharoni, "Woe to Him who builds His house
with unfairness," in Luria, Studies in Jeremiah ii, 53-67) [Hebrew].
[5]
Yirmiyahu's reference to murder, adultery,
stealing, false oaths and idolatry express the violation of the Ten Commandments.
[6]
See Daat Mikra,
which connects this fast day with the capture of Ashkelon.
[7] A courtier
[8]
See the rabbinic reading of this episode in Moed Katan 26a.
[9]
See Divrei Ha-yamim II 36:6-7: Nevukhadnetzar incarcerates Yehoyakim and
brings him to Babylon in chains. See Rashi (on Melakhim II 24:6) whose
commentary seeks to bridge the contradiction between the two sources, and also
to accommodate Yirmiyahus prediction that Yehoyakim will be buried like a
donkey (Yirmiyahu 22:19). The midrash in Vayikra Rabba 19:6
offers a range of opinions, all of which suggest that the Sanhedrin
surrendered Yehoyakim to Nevukhadnetzar rather than allowing Jerusalem to be
destroyed.
[10]
Divrei Ha-yamim
II 36:9 records Yehoyakhins reign as three months and ten days.
[11]
It is likely that
Kish was the one who was exiled, not Mordekhai.
[12]
This is an alternate
name for Yehoyakhin.
[13]
See Yechezkel 1:2.
[14]
Clearly
Nevukhadnetzar wants to keep a Judean king on the throne in Jerusalem. Why does
he deport one ruler, merely to
appoint another in his stead? Interestingly, Babylonian official records
continue to address Yehiyachin as king, even after his exile. Rav Yaakov Medan
has suggested that the imprisonment of a Judean king in Babylon Yehoyachin is
released after 37 years! was a tool to humiliate and intimidate the population
of Jerusalem as they knew that a reigning king of Yehuda was held by the king of
Babylon. In this vein, King Saul fears to be taken alive as a prisoner lest the
Phillistines torment and torture him, (Shmuel II 31:4) a fate that befell
Samson. One could suggest that Yehoyachin was similarly used as a psychological
weapon against his people.
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