Commentary - 2 Kings 23:34-37

Bird's-eye view

This short, grim passage records the unraveling of Josiah’s reformation and the acceleration of Judah’s covenantal collapse. The death of the great reformer Josiah at Megiddo was a national trauma, and what follows here is the political and spiritual fallout. We see the absolute sovereignty of God on display as He uses a pagan king, Pharaoh Neco of Egypt, to arrange the affairs of His covenant people. Judah, having turned from the Lord, now finds her king is a puppet, installed and named by a foreign power. The independence and blessing that came with covenant faithfulness are gone, replaced by vassalage and heavy taxation. Jehoiakim, the man placed on the throne, is not a reformer like his father but a throwback to the wicked kings of old. His reign is characterized by two things: subservience to a foreign master and evil in the sight of Yahweh. This passage serves as a stark illustration of the principle that when God's people reject His easy yoke, He subjects them to a much heavier one from the hands of their enemies. The path to exile is being paved, and Jehoiakim is laying the stones.

The narrative is stark and factual, but the theological implications are massive. God is not absent; He is actively judging His people. The political maneuvering of Egypt is simply the tool in His hand. The economic hardship of the taxation is the direct consequence of spiritual adultery. And the character of the new king demonstrates that a nation's leadership is a reflection of its heart. Josiah had reformed the land, but he could not regenerate the people. Now, with Josiah gone, the true character of the nation reasserts itself in the person of their new king, who promptly returns to doing "evil in the sight of Yahweh."

Outline

Context In 2 Kings

This passage marks a decisive turning point. The entire book of 2 Kings has traced the parallel decline of Israel and Judah, a story punctuated by occasional revivals. The reign of Josiah, detailed just prior to this, was the most glorious and thorough of these revivals. He rediscovered the Book of the Law, purged the land of idolatry, and reinstituted the Passover. It was a high point. But the prophetess Huldah had already warned that the judgment for the sins of Manasseh was irreversible; it was only being delayed (2 Kings 22:15-20). Josiah's death in battle against Pharaoh Neco (2 Kings 23:29-30) was the event that triggered the end of that delay. The people had initially chosen Jehoahaz, another son of Josiah, as king, but his reign lasted only three months before Neco deposed him. Our passage picks up at that moment, with Egypt now fully in control of Judah's political destiny. What follows this section is the final, sad sequence of Judah's last kings, the rise of Babylon, and the ultimate destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. This is the beginning of the end.

Key Issues

The King is Dead, Long Live the Vassal

The death of a righteous king is a severe judgment on a nation. Josiah was the last bulwark against the tide of apostasy that had been rising for generations. With him gone, the dam breaks. What we see here is the political reality of what it means for God to hand a people over. He doesn't need to send fire from heaven; He simply needs to withdraw His hand of protection and let the political realities of the ancient Near East take their course. Egypt, and soon Babylon, are not independent actors in this drama. They are God's rod of correction. Pharaoh Neco thinks he is securing his northern flank and expanding his sphere of influence. In reality, he is an errand boy for the God of Israel, sent to install a wicked king over a wicked people as a prelude to their final destruction. This is how the sovereignty of God works. He accomplishes His perfect will through the free, and often sinful, actions of men. Neco is acting out of geopolitical self-interest, but Yahweh is working all things after the counsel of His own will, bringing to pass the curses of the covenant that His people had earned for themselves.

Verse by Verse Commentary

34 Then Pharaoh Neco made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the place of Josiah his father and changed his name to Jehoiakim. But he took Jehoahaz and brought him to Egypt, and he died there.

The humiliation of Judah is immediate and total. The throne of David is no longer determined by God's law or the will of the people, but by the whim of an Egyptian potentate. Pharaoh Neco doesn't just pick the king; he renames him. Eliakim ("God will establish") is given the name Jehoiakim ("Yahweh will establish"). This is an act of supreme dominance. It's as if Neco is saying, "You think your God establishes things? I establish things here. I will even co-opt the name of your God to do it." Changing a person's name was an assertion of ownership and authority, as we see when Pharaoh renamed Joseph, or when the Babylonian official renamed Daniel and his friends. Jehoiakim is now Neco's man. Meanwhile, the people's choice, Jehoahaz, is hauled off to Egypt to die in exile, a precursor of what would soon happen to the entire nation. The prophet Jeremiah had already pronounced this doom on him: "He shall return here no more, but in the place where they have carried him captive, there shall he die" (Jer. 22:11-12). The word of the Lord stands, even when the nation is falling apart.

35 So Jehoiakim gave the silver and gold to Pharaoh, but he taxed the land in order to give the money at the command of Pharaoh. He exacted the silver and gold from the people of the land, each according to his valuation, to give it to Pharaoh Neco.

Spiritual rebellion always has economic consequences. When Israel served Yahweh, the tithes and offerings they brought were a source of national blessing. Now that they have been handed over to a foreign master, they find themselves under a new and much more burdensome tithing system. The tribute demanded by Neco is enormous, and Jehoiakim doesn't pay it out of his own treasury. He imposes a national tax. The text says he "exacted" the money from the "people of the land." This is the language of coercion. The very land that was supposed to flow with milk and honey under God's blessing is now being squeezed dry to pay off a pagan overlord. This is the heavy yoke Jesus warned about. When you reject the light burden of faithfulness to God, you don't get no burden; you get the crushing burden of slavery to men. Their sin has found them out, not just in their souls, but in their pocketbooks. This is a fundamental principle: statism and godless government are always expensive.

36 Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Zebidah the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah.

The biblical historian dutifully records the standard information for a new king: his age at accession and the length of his reign. He would reign for eleven years, a tumultuous period that would see the decline of Egyptian power and the rise of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon. These eleven years would be filled with the prophetic ministry of Jeremiah, who repeatedly confronted Jehoiakim for his wickedness, idolatry, and oppression. This king is infamous in Jeremiah's account for taking the scroll of God's word, cutting it up with a penknife, and burning it in the fire (Jer. 36:21-23). He was a man who had nothing but contempt for the law his father Josiah had so cherished. The mention of his mother is standard, but it reminds us that these kings were real men, born into a covenant history that they were now actively dismantling.

37 And he did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh, according to all that his fathers had done.

This is the final, damning verdict. It is the epitaph for his entire reign, written before it has even been described. He did evil. The standard is not the opinion of the people or the judgment of history, but the "sight of Yahweh." And his evil was not novel; it was a return to the old ways. He did "according to all that his fathers had done." This phrase is crucial. It deliberately skips over his immediate father, the righteous Josiah, and connects him back to the apostate kings before him, like Manasseh and Amon. This is the principle of covenant succession in the negative. The deep-seated, generational sin of the nation, which had been suppressed but not eradicated by Josiah's reforms, now comes roaring back to the surface. Jehoiakim is the embodiment of a people who had outwardly complied with the reformation but whose hearts were far from God. A nation gets the leaders it deserves, and Judah, having tired of Josiah's godliness, now gets a king perfectly suited to their apostate hearts.

Application

This passage is a potent reminder that there is no neutrality. A people, a nation, will either be ruled by God or by tyrants. When we reject the authority of God's Word, we place ourselves under the authority of men who will not be nearly as benevolent. The story of Jehoiakim is the story of a compromised leader over a compromised people. He was a puppet, and his strings were pulled from Egypt. But the ultimate puppeteer was God Almighty, who was using the Egyptians to discipline His disobedient children.

We must see the parallels. When a nation abandons its Christian foundations, it will find itself in bondage. This bondage may not come in the form of an invading army, but it will come. It will come as economic bondage, with the government exacting more and more from the people to fund its godless projects. It will come as cultural bondage, with foreign and hostile ideologies renaming our institutions and dictating our values. It will come as spiritual bondage, where the leaders, like Jehoiakim, not only do evil but do so in accordance with the sins of previous generations, digging up old heresies and calling them progress.

The only way out is the way of Josiah, which is the way of repentance. It is the recovery of the Word of God as our only standard for faith and life. It is the humble submission to everything written in it. Josiah's reformation ultimately failed because it did not capture the hearts of the people. Our task is not simply to seek political solutions, but to preach a gospel that changes hearts. Only when the people are truly reformed, from the inside out, will we be delivered from the puppet kings and the foreign masters who hold us in contempt.