We’re now beginning to see the dominos fall in Judah. But this isn’t random. It’s God’s hand of judgment.
With Josiah “buried…in his own tomb…the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, anointed him, and made him king” (2 Ki 23:30). At age 23, Jehoahaz should have known better, but “he did evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done” (v 32)—all, that is, except his actual father! But king Josiah, after all the good he did, had stirred up a hornet’s nest when he picked a fight with Pharaoh Necho. He not only died in a senseless battle with the Egyptians who were just passing through, but Pharaoh Necho took advantage of Josiah’s death by putting his son Jehoahaz “in prison at Riblah…that he might not reign in Jerusalem; and he imposed on the land a tribute of one hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold” (v 33). Pharaoh Necho then took Josiah’s younger son, Eliakim, and made him a puppet king, changing his name to Jehoiakim to show his authority. Jehoahaz, only reigning for three months, was then transported to Egypt, where he died. Jehoiakim simply became a tax collector for the Egyptians (v 35). But being a weak ruler in the midst of the Middle East maelstrom was hazardous. The Assyrians in Mesopotamia were collapsing before the rise of the Babylonians, the new bully on the block. And the Babylonians wanted to wrestle control of the Levant—the land bridge connecting Asia, Europe, and Africa—from the Egyptians. Little Israel sat right at Ground Zero. So “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim became his vassal for three years” (24:1). During that time, the Lord allowed local marauders to weaken Judah further, anticipating their collapse and captivity. The wicked kings of Judah had sowed the wind; they were soon to reap the whirlwind.