Jeremiah Chapter 22 verse 10 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerses 10-12. - 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 (2 Kings 23:31; comp. 36), 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" ('Biblical Expositions,' p. 120). 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 (professor at Leyden, 1592), 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 ver. 11 to suggest an allusion to the fate of the earlier Shallum.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(10) Weep ye not for the dead.--With this verse begins the detailed review of the three previous reigns, the prophecies being reproduced as they were actually delivered. The "dead" for whom men are not to weep is Josiah, for whom Jeremiah had himself composed a solemn dirge, which seems from 2Chronicles 35:25 to have been repeated on the anniversary of his death.For him that goeth away.--This is obviously Jehoahaz, the son and successor of Josiah, who was deposed by Pharaoh-nechoh, and carried into Egypt (2Kings 23:31-34; 2Chronicles 36:2-4). The latter passage shows that he was younger than his successor, Jehoiakim, by two years. The doom of the exile who was to return no more was a fitter subject for lamentation than the death of the righteous king who died a warrior's death (2Kings 23:29), and was thus "taken away from the evil to come."