Jeremiah 22:10-12 - Exposition

There is a fate worse than that of the dead Josiah. Weep not , in comparison, for him, but weep sore for him that goeth away (or rather, that is gone away ). The king referred to is probably Jehoahaz, who, though two years younger than Jehoiakim, was preferred to him by the people on the death of Josiah. The counsel to "weep sore" for this royal exile was carried out, as Mr. Samuel Cox observes (and we have, perhaps, a specimen of the popular elegies upon him in Ezekiel 19:1-4 ): "A young lion of royal strain, caught untimely, and chained and carried away captive,—this was how the people of Israel conceived of Shallum". The conjecture is incapable of proof; and Ezekiel, we know, was fond of imaginative elegies. But probably enough he was in harmony with popular feeling on this occasion. The identification of Shallum with Jehoahaz is confirmed by 1 Chronicles 3:15 (Shallum, the youngest son of Josiah); the name appears to have been changed on his accession to the throne, just as Eliakim was changed to Jehoiakim ( 2 Chronicles 36:4 ). There is, therefore, no occasion to suppose an ironical allusion to the short reign of Jehoahaz, which might be compared to that of the Israelitish king Shallum (somewhat as Jezebel addresses Jehu as "O Zimri, murderer of his lord," 2 Kings 9:31 ). This view has the support of F. Junius, of Graf, and Rowland Williams; but why should not the Chronicler, though writing in the Persian period, have drawn here, as well as elsewhere in the genealogies, from ancient traditional sources? There is nothing in 1 Chronicles 3:11 to suggest an allusion to the fate of the earlier Shallum.