Jeremiah 22c. God Has a Mission. Are you in?
In last week’s lesson, we learned what God expects from national leaders, and it should scare some people. Specifically, God sent a message to Josiah’s sons, beginning with Shallum, aka Jehoahaz. Jehoahaz was enthroned by the people of Judah, but after a couple of months when Pharaoh Neco stopped in Jerusalem on his retreat to Egypt, he captured Jehoahaz and took him along in exile, never to be seen in Judah again.
In this week’s lesson, still in Chapter 22, Pharaoh Neco has replaced him with another one of Josiah’s sons, Eliakim aka Jehoiakim. This king butted heads with the prophet Jeremiah during the king’s entire reign. Jehoiakim thought more of himself than anyone else did. He wasted time and money remodeling the palace when the nation was under stress. Worse yet, he pointedly ignored the word of God (wait til you see what this king does in Chapter 36!). Twelve years into Jehoiakim’s reign, the Babylonian showed up outside the gates of Jerusalem. About that time, Jehoiakim up and died.
Jeremiah 22:18-23.
Therefore, thus says the LORD concerning King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah:
They shall not lament for him, saying,
“Alas, my brother!” or “Alas, sister!”
They shall not lament for him, saying,
“Alas, lord!” or “Alas, his majesty!”
With the burial of a donkey, he shall be buried:
dragged off and thrown out beyond the gates of Jerusalem.
(Instead,) Go up to Lebanon and cry out,
and lift up your voice in Bashan;
cry out from Abarim,
for all your lovers are crushed.
I spoke to you in your prosperity,
but you said, “I will not listen.”
This has been your way from your youth,
for you have not obeyed my voice.
The wind shall shepherd all your shepherds,
and your lovers shall go into captivity;
then you will be ashamed and dismayed
because of all your wickedness.
O inhabitant of Lebanon,
nested among the cedars,
how you will groan when pangs come upon you,
pain as of a woman in labor!
God explains the way that he expects a national leader to act. Now God adds: “And therefore….” And you know what that means. Jeremiah writes that Jehoiakim was such an oppressive king that no one would notice once he is gone. In fact, the last dishonor is that they will simply dig a hole and throw his dead body in.
Do you remember when Jesus was carrying the cross, then he turned to “the daughters of Jerusalem” as they were wailing and beating their breasts in grief over Jesus’ condition (Luke 23)? He told them they were weeping for the wrong reason. Given the fact that they had just been involved in the injustice of his trial and conviction, they should be weeping instead because of their own complicity in Jerusalem’s condemnation. They should be weeping in confession and begging for forgiveness. As it was, all Jerusalem, including them, was judged together in 70 AD.
God is saying something similar through Jeremiah. In effect, God says that they should not weep for this dead king. Instead, they should cry out for a different reason. God suggests that they go to the mountains in the north, any of these places will do, and then cry out loud so everyone can hear them. Why should they cry? Because “your lovers have been crushed,” that is, the allies that Judah has depended on have already been eliminated by Babylon and Judah stands condemned for not trusting God.
Then God reminds the people that he was faithful to send his word to Judah through Jeremiah during a time of peace, that is, years ago when Assyria was on the decline and Judah could relax in prosperity. God sent a message, but they did not listen. God was not surprised; they have always been that way.
So now, the winds of war are blowing away their ‘shepherds’, that is, their national leaders who are called ‘kings’ and ‘generals’. Judah’s political allies will also suffer the same fate; that is, they will be carried away to Babylon into captivity. They are of no use to Judah now anyway.
When all this happens and the people act surprised as if they had done nothing to deserve this kind of treatment, then the realization of their unfaithfulness will suddenly shock them like the contractions of a pregnant woman. Their era of independence is over; they willingly gave it up.
“Jehoakim died (or perhaps was murdered) as Nebuchadnezzar bore down on Jerusalem in his punitive raid in 598. His son Coniah became king with the throne name Jehoiachin. Promptly (and wisely) he surrendered the chit to Nebuchadnezzar. It bought time for the city but brought no joy to its king. Along with a contingent of ten thousand prominent people, Jehoachin was taken into exile in the First Deportation of 597 BC (a deportation that included twenty-five-year-old Ezekiel: II Kings 24:1-17)” (Christopher J. H. Wright, The Message of Jeremiah, page 239).
Jeremiah 22:24-30. ”As I live, says the LORD, even if King Coniah son of Jehoiakim of Judah were the signet ring on my right hand, even from there I would tear you off and give you into the hands of those who seek your life, into the hands of those whom you fear, even into the hands of King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon and into the hands of the Chaldeans. I will hurl you and the mother who bore you into another country, where you were not born, and there you shall die. But they shall not return to the land to which they long to return.
Is this man Coniah a despised broken pot,
a vessel no one wants?
Why are he and his offspring hurled out
and cast away in a land that they do not know?
O land, land, land,
hear the word of the LORD!
Thus says the LORD:
Record this man as childless,
a man who shall not succeed in his days,
for none of his offspring shall succeed
in sitting on the throne of David
and ruling again in Judah.
Jehoiakim’s son, Jehoiachin or Coniah, succeeded him. Was it a fresh start? No, it was another step toward the final disaster.
The ‘signet ring’ of a king was used to make an imprint in soft wax or unfired clay so that when it dried it would show that this scroll or merchandise belonged to the king. If King Coniah, Jehoiachin, is supposed to represent God, as he would if he were God’s signet ring, God would quickly take the ring off of his finger. Clearly, Jehoiachin no longer represented him.
Not only would God take him off as one takes off a ring, but God would hurl him and his mother into another country. Sounds like the old threat I heard as a kid: ‘I’ll hit you so hard you’ll wake up in the next county’.
Jehoiachin had sons, but they went into exile with him. They all died in Babylon. None of them succeeded Jehoiachin or sat on the throne of Judah.
Interestingly, as Goldingay notes, I Chronicles 3:17-18 “...lists seven (sons), one of whom was the ancestor of Jesus (Matt 1:12)” (Goldingay, The Book of Jeremiah, 2021, page 498).
Let’s take a closer look at this, starting with I Chronicles, verse 15.
“The sons of Josiah: Johanan the firstborn, the second Jehoiakim, the third Zedekiah, the fourth Shallum. The descendants of Jehoiakim: Jeconiah his son, … and the sons of Jeconiah the captive: Shealtiel his son, Malchiram, Pedaiah, Shenazzar, Jekamiah, Hoshama, and Nedabiah” (I Chronicles 3:15-18).
In a footnote, Keener and Walton tell us this.
“The presence of Jehoiachin and five of his sons … in Babylon was established beyond doubt by the discovery of four ration lists, one of which dates from the 13th year of Nebuchadnezzar (i.e., the 6th year of Jehoiachin’s captivity. … The importance of David’s line continues into the postexilic period”
(Craig Keener and John Walton, editors, The NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture, 2019, Page 687.)
Many years after the exile, Matthew constructed a genealogy to show Jesus’ ancestry; it creates the link with our story in Jeremiah.
”...and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon. And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Salathiel, and Salathiel the father of Zerubbabel, … and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, who bore Jesus, who is called the Messiah” (Matthew 1:11-16).
God has a mission and God will work out that plan whether you and I cooperate or not. Wouldn’t it be better to listen to the whole word of God, including Jeremiah, in order to faithfully imitate God’s behavior and thus be transformed to be more like Jesus in our character and daily life? After all, we are saved for a reason, and that reason is not to go our own way, but to serve our purpose in God’s mission.