47. § 9. From Manasseh to the Captivity

§ 9. From Manasseh to the Captivity

Hezekiah was succeeded by his very dissimilar son Manasseh, who was twelve years of age when he ascended the throne, and reigned altogether fifty-five years. He abandoned himself to every kind of idolatry, and his example exercised a most injurious influence on the nation. He instituted bloody persecutions against the prophets, who were loud in their censure of the apostasy and announced the punishment of the impending captivity. The history of Manasseh in the books of the kings closes with these accounts. Chronicles here contains additions which are of special importance. Manasseh was taken prisoner without the walls of Jerusalem by the Assyrian king Asarhaddon, and carried away to Babylon, which was then still under Assyrian rule. This probably happened in the same campaign in which Asarhaddon drove out the remnant of the Israelites and placed new colonists in the kingdom of the ten tribes. The misfortune of the king had no further influence upon the state. In accordance with the prophecy of Nahum, of which the danger then threatening from Asshur formed the starting-point, the city and temple remained uninjured. Misfortune had a good effect on the king. He repented, and became truly changed. After a time he was set at liberty, and again came to the throne. The nearer circumstances connected with this release are unknown to us.

Manasseh was succeeded by his son Anion, who resembled his father in his earlier period, when he was addicted to idolatry. After having reigned only two years, he was slain by conspirators, who again met with the destruction they deserved at the hands of the people. The kingly dignity now passed to Josiah, his son, who was only eight years of age, of whom we read in 2 Kings 23:25, “And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses.” Prominence is given in Scripture to the eighth, twelfth, and eighteenth years of Josiah’s reign as important for his development and activity. In the eighth year of his reign, and therefore in the sixteenth year of his age, he began to seek the God of his father David; comp. 2 Chronicles 34:3. In the twelfth year he began his reformation. In the eighteenth year the finding of the temple copy of the law gave new impulse to his zeal. Ewald very unjustly reproaches him for being no friend to religious freedom in a modern sense. His proceedings against idolatry rested altogether upon the law of God. The reformation of Josiah, however, was the less able to restrain the course of divine judgment for any length of time, since the nation had for the most part only submitted to it reluctantly and from fear, not having experienced any fundamental internal reformation. The beginning of these judgments, a presage of their full approach, was the early death of Josiah himself. Humanly speaking, it was caused by the expedition of Pharaoh-nechoh, the mighty Egyptian king, against Nabopolassar, the king of the Chaldees. Ewald’s view, incautiously adopted by Niebuhr, that the expedition was at first directed against the Assyrians, and that it was only during it that the new power of the Babylonians rose up, is based merely on a false interpretation of the passage 2 Kings 23:29, where the king of Babylon is called the king of Assyria, because he ruled over the same district. The Chaldees were the original inhabitants of Babylon, and were not transplanted thither at a later period by the Assyrians. Against the latter view compare Delitzsch on Habakkuk, p. 21; it rests only on a misunderstanding of the passage Isaiah 23:13. These Chaldees, after having destroyed Nineveh in conjunction with the Medes, under Josiah (compare the discussions in Delitzsch, p. 18, on the period of these events), had taken the place of the Assyrians in the Asiatic supremacy, and had likewise inherited from them the enmity against Egypt. The Egyptian king believed he could stifle in its infancy the power which threatened danger to his supremacy. First of all he marched towards Charchemish or Circesium, on the Euphrates. It was not his intention to make war on the kingdom of Judah. It even appears that, in order to avoid touching it, he had not taken the nearest route from Egypt to Syria by land, but had transported his army in ships to Akko or Ptolemais, which must have been an easy matter, judging from Herodotus’ account of the size of his fleet. Only on this assumption can we understand how the battle between the Egyptians and Judaites should have occurred at Megiddon, a town situated farther north than the kingdom of Judah, in the vicinity of Mount Carmel and the Bay of Akko. In all probability Josiah had hastened thither with his army on hearing of the intended landing of the Egyptians. Not trusting their assurances, he feared that instead of going to Syria they would first of all proceed to Jerusalem, and that their only object was to make sure of it. This suspicion, which was probably unfounded, proved the cause of his fall. He was slain in battle. Herodotus also mentions this engagement from Egyptian sources, betraying no knowledge of the fact that it was the Chaldees against whom the expedition of Pharaoh-nechoh was properly directed, and that he was soon afterwards conquered by them in the great battle at Circesium,—an omission due to the circumstance that his informants were Egyptian priests, who were silent respecting all that was offensive to their national vanity. When he calls the place of battle Magdalon, this is probably a perversion of Megiddon, where, according to Zechariah 12:11 also, the battle occurred, and may have arisen by confounding the true place with Magdolon, an Egyptian town on the Arabian Gulf. A place called Megdel, not far from Akko, which Ewald suggests, is too obscure. Cadytis is undoubtedly Jerusalem, called by the Jews קרושה, the holy city, a name which it still bears among the Arabs. This view has, however, been contested by Hitzig in a special treatise and in his Early History of the Philistines, as well as by Ewald and others, but has been proved by Niebuhr in his treatise on the Armenian Chronicle of Eusebius, by Bahr on Herodotus, and others. Gaza never appears under this name. The death of the king caused great sorrow in Jerusalem. The mourning for Josiah was employed as a designation of the deepest grief even after the time of the captivity, as appears from Zechariah. Jeremiah, the first half of whose activity falls in the reign of Josiah, composed a lament on him. From this time Judah advanced with rapid strides to its destruction, which was accelerated by the ever-increasing corruption of the people, who were deaf to all exhortation and blind to all threatening signs. Pharaoh-nechoh, after having taken Jerusalem, either himself or by a detachment of his army, continued his way to the Euphrates. He seems at first not to have troubled himself as to which of the sons of Josiah should succeed to their father’s throne. Two sons of Josiah contended for supremacy,—Eliakim, the eldest in years, and Jehoahaz, who laid claim to the right of the first-born because he was the eldest son of that wife of Josiah who had held the first rank. The latter was raised to the throne by the nation. Eliakim now turned to the king of Egypt, whom he brought over to his side, probably by the promise of a large tribute. Necho summoned Jehoahaz to his camp at Riblah in the land of Hamath, and there put him in chains, afterwards carrying him away into Egypt. He raised Eliakim to the throne, after having changed his former name into Jehoiakim, which has the same meaning. This was very generally done by oriental conquerors, as a sign of their supremacy. For the first three years of his reign the ungodly Jehoiakim remained under Egyptian dominion. Towards the end of the third year, according to Daniel 1:1, with which Berosus fully coincides, the great expedition of Nebuchadnezzar against the Egyptians began. He had been taken as co-regent by his father Nabopolassar, who had become weak from old age. The decisive battle at Circesium, in which Pharaoh-nechoh was totally defeated, occurred in the fourth year. The Chaldee conqueror now pursued his way unchecked. After subduing Syria and Phenicia, both under Egyptian supremacy, he advanced to Jerusalem and took the city. Nebuchadnezzar’s first intention was to carry Jehoiakim away into Babylon, but he spared him, and contented himself with carrying away a number of prisoners, most of whom were of high rank, and among whom were Daniel and his companions. He also carried away many of the vessels of the temple. He then continued his march to Egypt; but on reaching its borders, received news of the death of his father, and returned home in haste. This was the first of the many deportations to Babylon. For three years Jehoiakim paid the tribute imposed upon him. In his seventh year, or the beginning of his eighth, he rebelled, trusting to Egyptian power. Nebuchadnezzar deferred his revenge until a more convenient time, which only presented itself in the eleventh year of Jehoiakim. Jerusalem was then taken by a Chaldee army, and the king slain, as a just judgment for his neglect of all the warnings and rebukes of the prophets who had been raised up by the Lord, especially of Jeremiah, who is the main prophetic figure of this whole period.

Jehoiachin, or Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, now succeeded to the throne. He soon, however, made himself suspicious to the Chaldees; probably they thought that he had a leaning to the Egyptian side. Three months after his accession to the throne, a new Chaldean army appeared before Jerusalem. The king voluntarily surrendered, and was carried captive to Babylon, where he was set at liberty, after thirty-seven years, by Evil-merodach, the son of Nebuchadnezzar. With Jehoiachin the germ of the nation was led away captive. This is the first great deportation, in which, among others, Ezekiel was carried away captive, and from which he dates his chronology. As Jehoiachin’s successor, Nebuchadnezzar appointed Zedekiah, his father’s brother, the third son of Josiah. From the prophecies of Jeremiah, we infer that he was not so bad as Jehoiakim, but excessively weak, and therefore under the influence of evil counsellors, who at last succeeded in leading him, in violation of his oath, to revolt against the Chaldees, disregarding the urgent warnings of Jeremiah, and foolishly trusting in Egypt. This led to the city being besieged by the Chaldees; and, after an obstinate defence, it was conquered and laid waste, together with the temple, the national independence of the nation being utterly destroyed. With the exception of a few unimportant individuals, the whole nation was carried away captive to Babylon, 390 years after the separation of the kingdom.