Cedar Cannot Make a King Righteous

The palace stood below the temple on the southern slope of the ridge, so one went “down” from the one to the other, as the scribes do in 36:12. Jeremiah is sent to deliver the word on the king’s own ground rather than waiting to be summoned.

The king is addressed by his seat, “that sittest upon the throne of David”, and not by his name. No king is named in the chapter until verse 11, so the standard is laid down before any particular man is measured against it.

“Do no wrong” is yanah, to maltreat, the verb of Exodus 22:21, “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him”. Stranger, fatherless and widow are the three the law singles out for protection (Deuteronomy 24:17–21); the same list stood in the temple sermon of 7:6.

The Hebrew doubles the verb, “if doing ye do this thing”. The throne of David had always carried a condition: Psalm 132:12 promised that the sons would sit on it “if thy children will keep my covenant”. Chariots and horses mark a royal house still riding out in state.

“I swear by myself” is the oath God swore to Abraham after the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22:16), an oath with no higher name to invoke. “This house” carries both senses of bayit, the palace and the dynasty, the double meaning on which Nathan’s promise to David turned (2 Samuel 7:11–16).

Gilead, the wooded highland east of the Jordan, was famous for its balm (8:22), and the head of Lebanon is its high snowy crown. God calls the palace both, lush and lofty, in the same breath as he promises to make it a wilderness.

“Prepare” is qiddash, to consecrate, the verb of 6:4, “prepare ye war”, literally sanctify war. The destroyers are set apart as for a holy campaign. Isaiah 13:3 calls the army mustered against Babylon “my sanctified ones”.

The scene is foretold almost word for word to Solomon at the dedication of the temple: passers-by will be astonished and ask, “Why hath the LORD done thus unto this land, and to this house?” (1 Kings 9:8). The foreign traveller asks the question Judah never asked.

The reply echoes Deuteronomy 29:25, “Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers”. The foreigners supply the answer themselves, as if the logic of the covenant were plain to everyone except those inside it.

“The dead” is Josiah, killed by Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo in 609 BC (2 Kings 23:29) and mourned by Jeremiah in a lament that became a custom in Israel (2 Chronicles 35:25). “Him that goeth away” is his son, taken to Egypt three months later.

Shallum is the personal name of the king called Jehoahaz in 2 Kings 23:30–34; 1 Chronicles 3:15 lists Shallum among Josiah’s sons. He reigned three months before Necho put him in chains at Riblah and carried him off to Egypt.

2 Kings 23:34 records the end: “he came to Egypt, and died there”. He is the first of David’s line recorded as dying in foreign captivity. The verse makes sight the measure of the loss: he will never see this land again.

“Woe” is hoy, the cry of a funeral lament, so the builder is mourned while still alive. The law required a hired man’s wages to be paid before nightfall (Leviticus 19:13; Deuteronomy 24:14–15). Jehoiakim was also taxing the land to pay Egypt’s tribute (2 Kings 23:35).

Large windows were a luxury in a hot country. “Cieled” is the 1611 spelling of ceiled, meaning lined or panelled; the ceiling was the inner covering of walls as well as roof. “Vermilion” is shashar, a red pigment Ezekiel 23:14 mentions on Chaldean wall paintings.

“Closest thyself in cedar” is literally “compete in cedar”, the verb of 12:5, “how canst thou contend with horses?” Jehoiakim is vying with other kings by the square foot of panelling. “Then it was well with him” is the promise Deuteronomy attaches to obedience (Deuteronomy 6:18).

“Judged the cause” is a doubled word, din din, pleading a case to its end. The advice of King Lemuel’s mother is the same: “plead the cause of the poor and needy” (Proverbs 31:9). The sentence repeats “then it was well with him” from the verse before, as if underlining it.

“Covetousness” is betsa’, gain cut out of someone else, profit taken by force. The innocent blood is specific: in 26:20–23 Jehoiakim had the prophet Urijah extradited from Egypt, killed with the sword, and his body thrown among the graves of the common people.

Four cries of mourning are denied him, each beginning with hoy: my brother, sister, lord, his glory. “Alas, my brother!” is the cry over the old prophet’s grave in 1 Kings 13:30. The first two were probably mourners calling to one another, the last two cries over the king himself.

An ass was not buried; its carcass was dragged out and left. The threat is repeated in 36:30, where his body is to lie in the heat by day and the frost by night. 2 Kings 24:6 says only that Jehoiakim “slept with his fathers”, and records no burial.

The three heights ring the land: Lebanon to the north, Bashan to the north-east across the Jordan, and the “passages”, Abarim, the Moabite range from which Moses viewed Canaan (Numbers 27:12). The city is told to climb and shout from each.

“Prosperity” is shalvah, ease, the calm of a people who feel secure. The book once remembered Israel’s youth as a honeymoon, “the kindness of thy youth” (2:2); here youth is where the habit of not listening began, as the people confessed in 3:25.

The Hebrew is a pun: “the wind shall shepherd all thy shepherds”, ro’ayikh tir’eh, the rulers themselves herded off by the east wind. “Pastors”, as in 17:16, is the 1611 word for shepherds, here meaning the kings and officials.

“How gracious shalt thou be” follows one derivation of the Hebrew. Most modern versions read it from a verb for groaning: “how you will groan”. The inhabitant of Lebanon is the king in his cedar palace, whose timber came from Lebanon.

A signet was a seal ring, pressed into clay to sign with the owner’s authority. Haggai 2:23 reverses this sentence for Coniah’s grandson Zerubbabel: “I will make thee as a signet: for I have chosen thee.” Coniah is a shortened form of Jeconiah (24:1), the king called Jehoiachin in Kings.

“Into the hand” comes four times. Jehoiachin reigned three months before surrendering to Nebuchadrezzar in 597 BC (2 Kings 24:8–12). “Them whose face thou fearest” names the dread that decided his surrender: he went out to the king of Babylon himself.

The queen mother was Nehushta, daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem (2 Kings 24:8). An Elnathan son of Achbor is the officer sent to fetch Urijah back from Egypt in 26:22, perhaps the same man, which would make the king’s grandfather an agent of Jehoiakim’s violence. That link is an inference.

“Desire” is literally lift up their soul, a longing with the whole self. Jehoiachin lived thirty-seven years in Babylon; the book ends with his release from prison and a seat at Evil-merodach’s table (52:31–34), but never with a road home.

The “idol” is etsev, a thing shaped from clay, and the “vessel wherein is no pleasure” is a phrase Hosea used of Israel among the nations (Hosea 8:8). The questions are asked with something like pity. The verse moves from he to they, drawing his children into the fall.

Erets can mean the earth or the land, so either the whole world or Judah’s own soil is summoned as a witness. A word said three times is the Hebrew way of saying it absolutely, as in Ezekiel 21:27, “I will overturn, overturn, overturn it”.

“Write ye” is the language of a civic register, the roll of citizens (Ezekiel 13:9). “Childless” is ariri, the word Abram used, “I go childless” (Genesis 15:2). Babylonian ration tablets list oil for “Yaukin, king of the land of Yahud” and his five sons, so the sentence is about the throne, not about heirs.