Judah Under Jehoiakim

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 7, 1886

Judah Under Jehoiakim

The date of the events connected with this lesson is about 607 B. C. Jehoikim was king of Judah, having been made king by Pharaoh-Necho, king of Egypt. About 610 Necho had gone out against the king of Assyria; but he went no farther than the River Euphrates, being delayed there by the siege of Carchemish. As he was on his way toward the Euphrates, Josiah, king of Judah, went out to stay him. Necho tried to persuade him to let him pass unmolested, as he was not the one against whom Necho was going. Josiah would not listen, but persisted in his resistance to Necho, and a battle was brought on, in which Josiah was killed, and thus perished the last good king, and the last stay, of the nation of Judah. “And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah.” By the death of Josiah, the nation of Judah fell into the power of Pharaoh-Necho, and when the people of the land made Josiah’s son, Jehoahaz, king in his father’s stead, he was suffered to reign only three months, when Necho “put him in bands at Riblah,” and made Eliakim, another son of Josiah’s king, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. Shortly after he began to reign, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Carchemish, and defeated Pharaoh-Necho’s army, and drove him back to his own country. “And the king of Egypt came not again any more out of his land; for the king of Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt unto the River Euphrates, all that pertained to the king of Egypt.”