Thread by @JamesBejon

THREAD: Judah’s Last Days

SUB-TITLE: What Jehoiachin and Aššur-etel-ilāni-mukīn-apli have in common

The Moral of the story: Never mix up your Jehoiakims and Jehoiachins!

#TheBigQuestionsOfTheDay

The text of 1 Chronicles 3.1–16 lists the kings of Judah from David through to the time of the exile.

Like many Biblical lists, it has some nice numerical features.

In 1 Chronicles 1, a list of ten descendants takes us from Adam down to Noah,

and then a second list of ten descendants takes us from Shem down to Abraham (1.1–4, 24–27).

Here in chapter 3, we begin with a pool of twenty descendants (David plus his six Hebron-born sons, plus his nine Jerusalem-born sons, plus his four other sons: 3.1–4),

and then a list of twenty kings takes us down from Solomon (שְׁלֹמֹה) to Shallum (שַׁלּוּם),

which has a nice symmetry about it.

All well and good, one might say.

But Judah’s last days were a messy period in history,

Consequently, the Bible’s accounts of them embody a number of complexities.

Below, I’ll outline a few of the more notable ones.

The text of 3.15 enumerates four sons of Josiah:

first we have Johanan,

then Jehoiakim,

then Zedekiah, and

finally Shallum.

Each of these individuals presumably occupied the throne at some point.

In the book of 2 Kings, however, a different king list is implied.

After the death of Josiah, we read (in order) about the appointments of:

Jehoahaz (cp. 23.31ff.),

Eliakim (cp. 23.34ff.),

Jehoiachin (Eliakim’s son) (cp. 24.6ff.), and

Mattaniah (Jehoiachin’s uncle) (cp. 24.17ff.).

Then, at the end of Mattaniah’s reign, Jerusalem falls.

The details of 1 Chronicles 3 thus seem very different to those of 2 Kings 23–34, as shown below:

Why? What’s happened?

Well, part of the answer is revealed to us explicitly.

When Pharaoh installed Eliakim on the throne, he changed his name to Jehoiakim (23.34)—that is to say, he gave him a ‘throne name’—,

and, later, when Nebuchadnezzar instated Mattaniah, he changed his name to Zedekiah (24.17).

We can thus resolve at least some of the discrepancies between Kings and Chronicles without too much difficulty:

the Jehoiakim of 1 Chronicles 3 is the Eliakim of 2 Kings,

and the Zedekiah of 1 Chronicles 3 is the Mattaniah of 2 Kings,

as shown below.

Meanwhile, since 1 Chronicles 3 describes Johanan as Josiah’s ‘firstborn’ (בְּכוֹר), it seems reasonable to identify him with the king who succeeded Josiah in 2 Kings 23, namely Jehoahaz (a point we’ll pick up later).

So far, then, the picture is as follows:

But a number of questions remain.

First of all, where does Shallum fit in? His name doesn’t appear anywhere in 2 Kings 23–24, yet he clearly reigned over Judah at some point (cp. Jer. 22.11).

Other questions are also raised by the text.

🔹 How come the book of Kings has Jehoiachin start to reign at the age of eighteen when the book of Chronicles has him start to reign at the age of eight (cp. 2 Kgs. 24.8 w. 2 Chr. 36.9)?

🔹 Why does 2 Chronicles refer to Mattaniah as Jehoiachin’s ‘brother’ when Kings refers to him as Jehoiachin’s ‘uncle’ (2 Chr. 36.10 w. 2 Kgs. 24.17)?

🔹 And how come Zedekiah is listed third in 1 Chronicles 3 yet is the *fourth* king to reign in Josiah’s place in 2 Kings 23–24’s version of events?

Granted a relatively simple hypothesis (for which we already have evidence), all of the questions can be answered at a stroke.

The hypothesis is as follows:

Jehoiachin was Shallum’s throne name; in the first year of his eleven-year reign, Jehoiakim made his son, Shallum, the crown prince, and gave him the throne name ⟨Jehoiachin⟩ (יְהוֹיָכִין) = ‘YHWH has established (him)’.

(Kings were able to exercise a certain amount of discretion in such matters: 2 Chr. 11.22.)

The name Jehoiakim can thus be compared to various Mesopotamian throne names.

One is Sargon’s. Sargon was in all probability not the natural successor to the throne of Uruk:

he claimed it by force and subsequently proclaimed himself Šarru-kēn—i.e., ‘the true/established king’—in announcement/legitimation of his actions.

Another involves the names of King Aššur-etel-ilāni-mukīn-apli.

The king’s given name—Aššūr-aḫu-iddina = ‘Aššūr has provided a brother’—was hardly a name fit for a king;

indeed, it cast aspersions on his claim to the throne since it suggested he wasn’t actually a firstborn son, but had a brother somewhere in the realm.

Hence, when he acceded to the throne (or perhaps shortly beforehand), he assumed the throne name Aššur-etel-ilāni-mukīn-apli,

which sent out a far more appropriate message: ‘Aššur, supreme among the gods, has established an heir’.

Apparently, then, Shallum’s change of name to Jehoiachin (יְהוֹיָכִין) —‘YHWH has established him’—was motivated by a similar intention.

It even involves the same verb as the names Šarru-kēn and Aššur-etel-ilāni-mukīn-apli (cp. Hebrew ⟨KWN⟩ with Assyrian ⟨kuānu⟩).

We can thus provide answers to the questions posed above.

🔹 The name Shallum doesn’t appear in 2 Kings 23–24 because the text of 2 Kings refers to Jehoiachin by his throne name.

🔹 The book of Chronicles has Jehoiachin start to reign at the age of eight because that’s when he was appointed as the crown prince.

He didn’t begin his sole reign until ten years later, when he was eighteen—a notion also proffered by the Geneva Bible and the Radak.

🔹 2 Chronicles refers to Mattaniah as Jehoiachin’s ‘brother’ (as opposed to his ‘uncle’) because of Jehoiachin’s promotion.

Just as the patriarch Joseph’s sons became co-heirs with Jacob’s biological sons (cp. 1 Chr. 5.1), so Jehoiachin became a co-heir with Josiah’s biological sons (and can hence be referred to as a ‘son’ of Josiah in 1 Chronicles 3).

🔹 And, for the same reason, Zedekiah wasn’t the third king to reign after Josiah’s death but the fourth. The promotion of Shallum moved him back a notch.

In addition, our hypothesis is consistent with (and/or helps to explain) a number of other features of the Biblical text.

First, it sheds light on the name of Johanan-aka-Jehoahaz.

Johanan’s accession was unexpected: he was 23 years old when he began to reign, reigned for three months, and was succeeded by a 25-year-old Jehoiakim (2 Kgs. 23.31, 36).

Johanan was not, therefore, Josiah’s firstborn son, yet he was instated as king anyway (by popular demand: 23.30).

As a result, Johanan needed a good throne name. (His given name Johanan [יוֹחָנָן] simply alluded to YHWH’s provision of a child: cp. חנ׳׳ן in Gen. 33.5.)

Hence, when Johanan acceded to the throne, he assumed the throne name Jehoahaz (יְהוֹאָחָז) which sent out an authoritative statement, viz. ‘YHWH has selected [אח׳׳ז] (me)!’.

Cp. אח׳׳ז in Num. 31.30, 47, 1 Chr. 24.6 and by analogy לכ׳׳ד [‘to choose’] in Josh. 7.14.

Second, it makes sense of the flow of 1 Chronicles 3.15ff. and its reference to Josiah as the father of four sons.

Shallum-aka-Jehoiachin appears twice in 3.15–17.

Initially he appears in 3.15 under the name Shallum as an adopted son of Josiah, where he and his brothers are listed in the order in which they would have been expected to reign (after the appointment of Jehoahaz).

And, afterwards, he appears under the throne name Jehoiachin as the biological son of Jehoiakim who did in fact acquire the throne (3.16ff.).

Third, it helps to explain some of Jeremiah 22’s more unusual features.

At first blush, Jeremiah’s references to a king named Shallum looks as if it has Jehoahaz in mind (Jer. 22.11–12).

But, as we’ve seen, Jehoiachin can also (in a sense) be said to have reigned in place of his father Josiah,

and Jeremiah never mentions Jehoahaz-aka-Johanan by name in his prophecies,

which makes ‘Shallum’ an unlikely reference to him;

indeed, 1.1–2 tells us Jeremiah prophesied: a] in the days of Josiah and b] from the days of Jehoiakim until the time of the exile, which overlooks the reign of Jehoahaz completely.

Jeremiah’s use of the name Shallum may also be significant for another reason:

Jeremiah doesn’t recognise Jehoiachin (יְהוֹיָכִין) as a man whom God has established (כו׳׳ן).

Hence, while the false prophets refer to him as Jehoiachin (28.4), Jeremiah chooses other names,

such as the more hopeful (rather than declarative) Jeconiah/Coniah (יְכָנְיָה/כָּנְיָה) = ‘*May* YHWH establish (him)’.

Of course, the text of Jeremiah 22 still has its interpretative challenges, which I might tackle some other time. (God hasn’t made things easy for us.)

But I hope some of the above has been an encouragement to dig into the details of Scripture and to persevere with our remarkable divinely-ordained text.

THE END.

P.S. Tidier version:

jamesbejon.substack.com/p/judahs-last-…