VIII. “WEEP FOR HIM THAT GOETH AWAY”

Jeremiah 22:10–12, furnishes us with another instance of coincidence without design, calculated to establish our belief in that prophet. We there read, “Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep for him that goeth away; for he shall return no more, nor see his native country. For thus saith the Lord touching Shallum the son of Josiah, king of Judah, which reigned instead of Josiah his father, which went forth out of this place; He shall not return thither any more: but he shall die in the place whither they have led him captive, and shall see this land no more.”

Now this passage evidently relates to several events familiar to the minds of those whom the prophet was addressing. It is a series of allusions to circumstances known to them, but by no means sufficiently developed to put us in possession of the tale without some further key. It should appear that there had been a great public mourning in Jerusalem: but it is not distinctly said for whom; it might be supposed for Josiah, whose name occurs in the paragraph;—that another calamity had come upon its heels very shortly afterwards, calling, as the prophet thought, for expressions of national sorrow which might even supersede the other; a prince, the son of Josiah, led away captive into a foreign land; but whither he was thus led, or by whom, is not declared. The whole is evidently the discourse of a man living amongst the scenes he touches upon, and conscious that he has no need to do more than touch upon them to make himself understood by his hearers.

Now let us turn to the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth chapters of the second Book of Chronicles, where certain historical details of the events of those times are preserved, and the key will be supplied. In the former chapter I find that the death of Josiah, a king who had been a blessing to his kingdom, and who was slain by an arrow, as he fought against the Egyptians, was in fact an event that filled all Jerusalem with consternation and grief: “he died, and was buried in one of the sepulchres of his fathers. And all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah. And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah: and all the singing men and the singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations unto this day, and made them an ordinance in Israel: and, behold, they are written in the lamentations.” [2 Chron. 35:24, 25.] Here we have the first feature in Jeremiah’s very transient sketch completed.

I look at the continuation of the history in the next chapter, and I there find that the son of Josiah, Jehoahaz by name (and not called Shallum in the Chronicles), “began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem; and the king of Egypt put him down at Jerusalem, and condemned the land in a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold. And the king of Egypt made Eliakim his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem, and turned his name to Jehoiakim. And Necho took Jehoahaz his brother, and carried him to Egypt.” Here we have the other outlines of Jeremiah’s picture filled up. The second calamity did come, it appears, on the heels of the first, for it was only after an interval of three months. The King of Egypt, we now find, was the conqueror who carried the prince away, and Egypt was the country to which he was conducted. And though the victim is called Jehoahaz in the history, and Shallum in the prophet, the facts concerning him tally so exactly, that there can be no doubt of the identity of the man; whilst the absence of all attempt on either side to explain or reconcile this difficulty about the name, is a clear proof that neither passage was written in reference to the other: though it may be conjectured, that as Necho gave a new name to Eliakim [2 Kings 23:34.] , the one brother, so he might have done the like by the other, and called him Shallum instead of Jehoahaz.

But there is a further hint. “Weep ye not,” says Jeremiah, “for the dead: but weep for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more.” This should imply that the prince of whom Jerusalem was thus bereft, was acceptable to his people; more acceptable than he who was to supply his place. The thing to be lamented was that he would return no more. It is true that for the little time Jehoahaz reigned, he did evil in the sight of the Lord [2 Kings 23:32.] ; but so did Jehoiakim [2 Chron. 36:5.] ; so that in this respect there was nothing to choose; and in the condition of the Jews at that time, an irreligious prince (for that would be the meaning of the term) would not necessarily be an unpopular one. I repeat, therefore, that the words of Jeremiah seem to indicate that the prince who had been carried away was more acceptable than the one who was left in his stead. I now turn, once again, to the thirty-sixth chapter of the second Book of Chronicles (v. 1), or to the twenty-third chapter of the second Book of Kings (v. 30), and I there discover (for the incident is not obvious) a particular with regard to this prince who was carried away captive by Necho, and to his brother who was appointed to reign in his stead, very remarkably coinciding with these inuendos of Jeremiah. For in the former reference it is said, that on the death of Josiah, “the people of the land took Jehoahaz,” (the Shallum of the Prophet) “the son of Josiah, and made him king in his father’s stead at Jerusalem. Jehoahaz,” it continues, “was twenty and three years old when he began to reign.” Then comes the history of his deposal, abduction, and of the substitution of his brother Eliakim to reign in Jerusalem in his place, under the name of Jehoiakim: “and Jehoiakim,” it is added, “was twenty and five years old when he began to reign.” Now inasmuch as Jehoahaz had reigned only three months, Jehoahaz must have been younger than Jehoiakim by nearly two years: how then came the younger son to succeed his father on the throne in the first instance? “The people of the land took him,” we have read: i.e., he was the more popular character, and therefore they set him on the throne in spite of the superior claims of the firstborn. And a phrase which occurs in the latter of the two references confirms this view; for the people are there said not only to have taken him, but to have “anointed him”—a ceremonial, which, whether invariably observed or not in cases of ordinary descent of the crown, never seems to have been omitted in cases of doubtful succession [See 2 Kings 9:3, and Patrick in loc. and also on 2 Kings 23:30.] .

This history, it will be seen, supplies with great success the particulars which are incidentally omitted in the prophecy, though clearly constructed with no such intention; and fixes the date of Jeremiah to a period long before several of the events which he foretels.