Sermon preached on 2 Kings 23:31-24:20 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 12/13/2020 in Novato, CA.
Due to technical difficulties, the audio for this sermon is unavailable.
Sermon Manuscript
Here we have arrived at the final section of the book of 1 and 2 Kings. The long announced and anticipated day of the LORD was falling upon Judah and Jerusalem. God’s hand of judgment using Babylon begins to fall in this passage. And we’ll see the completion of that in the next and final chapter of this book. But before we get there, we see first here of the trouble that God’s people had with Egypt. In fact, today’s passage is about two bondages. Israel is found to be under bondage here to Egypt. And Israel then is found to be under bondage to Babylon. Let us examine all this bondage today and also consider what lies beyond it.
We begin with the Egyptian bondage looking at verses 31-37 of chapter 23. While that section references two different Judean kings, let us remind ourselves of the context of this reaching back to the previous king Josiah. Remember we saw that after all the reforms that he did, including a glorious celebration of Passover, he ironically is killed by the Egyptian Pharaoh. Josiah, a firstborn, is put to death by the Egyptians after Josiah had led the people so wonderfully to commemorate how God had put to death so many Egyptian firstborns. I briefly pointed out last time how that is a rather ironic reversal of the Exodus. Yet that reversal continues in this section today. All the more Judah and Jerusalem fall back under Egyptian bondage. Their covenant relationship with God had been so intimately tied up with the fact that their Lord was the God that brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. But now after generation and after generation of covenant breaking by the people, God is allowing them to fall back into Egyptian bondage.
So then, starting in verse 31, we are introduced to Josiah’s successor and son, King Jehoahaz. Sadly, he did not take after Josiah in terms of his relationship with the LORD. Rather, verse 32 tells us that he did evil in the sight of the LORD, like so many of his forefathers had done, and in all the ways they had forsaken God. But his reign is put to a swift end after only 3 months when the Egyptian Pharaoh Neco captures him, as we read about in verse 33. There we see King Jehoahaz is bound by Pharaoh Neco and drug off to Egypt. He is held there in bondage and prison for the rest of his life. He dies in Egyptian bondage. This was one of God’s threatened covenant curses. In Deut. 28:68, God threatened to bring the people back to Egypt, a journey that he promised that they’d never have to make again. This was one of the covenant curses that would fall upon them if they forsook the LORD. We see King Jehoahaz himself having to undergo this explicit curse. Back into Egyptian bondage.
But while the rest of the people themselves aren’t exiled back to Egypt, they too come under Egyptian bondage again. We see in verse 34 that the Pharaoh places Jehoahaz’s brother on the throne over Judah and Jerusalem. He even renames him from Eliakim to Jehoakim. That renaming would signal Pharaoh’s claim of sovereignty over Jehoiakim. He’s become a vassal puppet king of Egypt. He basically becomes the Egyptian taskmaster of Judah on behalf of Egypt. For what do we see? Egypt imposes a heavy financial burden upon the land. In verse 33, we see them demanding a large tribute of one hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold. And in verse 35, we see that puppet-king Jehoiakim extracted that tribute from the people of Judah through some form of tax assessment. Once again, the people of God are spending their days to labor to make Egypt rich. Before it was to make bricks, now they make it seem easier – just write us a check. But we know where that money comes from. It comes from all their hard daily labors just trying to survive. That can be hard, in general. It’s even harder when you have the heavy yoke of Egyptian bondage back upon you again.
We should note that this Jehoiakim was a very wicked king. We see that in verse 37’s summary. His wickedness is also recounted in rather great detail in the book of Jeremiah. His name change is interesting and even a bit ironic here. This pagan Egyptian Pharaoh only slightly changes his name. The last part of his name stays the same – it means “to rise”. Only the beginning is changed. The “el” in El-iakim is the generic word for God. The “Jeho” in Jeho-iakim is short for Yahweh or Jehovah. So, the Pharaoh changed his name from “God rises” to “Yahweh rises”. The Pharoah gives Jehoiakim a much more explicitly Jewish name. It goes from a generically religious name to a name that very much names the LORD God of Judah. You could imagine this is Egypt trying to strengthen their puppet king by encouraging the people that they could keep worshipping their God as long as the tribute kept coming. But the irony here, according to picture painted in the book of Jeremiah is that Jehoiakim would have hated this name. He seemed so greatly opposed to everything of true religion.
While 2 Kings spares us from going into too much detail, the book of Jeremiah paints Jehoiakim as one of the most wicked kings in Judah’s history. He greatly persecuted and tried to kill the faithful prophets of the LORD. He rejected Jeremiah’s prophecies, even at one point burning the prophecies page by page as he read it. And while here we see how Jehoiakim had to extract this wealth from Judah to pay off Egypt, Jeremiah paints Jehoiakim as living a life of luxury while exploiting the poor and neglecting the needy.
So then, between Jehoahaz being drug off in chains to die in Egypt to Judah under their puppet king being forced to work to make Egypt wealthy, they find themselves in a familiar story. They find themselves back again under the bondage of the house of Egypt. Neither of these two sons of David are able to redeem them from such bondage. And we are not surprised when we see them to be the wicked and faithless men that they were.
Let us turn now in our second point to consider the Babylonian bondage that they find themselves in. In chapter 24, verse 1, we see that the King of Babylon, King Nebuchadnezzar, rises up against them. He comes down and subjugates Judah and Jerusalem. Babylon becomes their new master now. We might note that what is going on in the world around this time is that Egypt had tried to help Assyria stand against Babylon. But by this time Assyria was all but wiped out by Babylon and Babylon had become the new growing superpower. It was the battle of Carchemish just before this when Babylon defeated the Egyptian-Assyrian coalition, sending Egypt back into their own land. We see their weakening in verse 7. Egypt was greatly defeated and not going to be able to ever put up any new fight against Babylon again.
Now at first, Egypt’s defeat by Babylon might have sounded great for Judah and Jerusalem. But then we see that Babylon then proceeds to become their new master. Judah had fallen into great bondage to Egypt, but now there is one greater than Egypt on the rise. And they will become the new taskmasters of Judah. Indeed, from a scriptural redemptive-historical perspective, there is a sort of transfer going on here. Long had Egypt been the sort of proverbial wicked enslaver of God’s people. But now Scripture is going to turn to put our focus on Babylon. Going forward it will be Babylon who becomes the sort of proverbial wicked enslaver. That is clearest when we find repeated references to Babylon’s fall in the book of Revelation, even though this Babylon here would fall to the Medes and the Persians in 539 BC. Here in our passage Babylon becomes the new Egypt in relationship to God’s people. And that idea of Babylon in that regard would continue even to today. We can think of the sinful world around us that increasingly hates and afflicts Christ’s church as the continued expression of Babylon of today.
We should note that at verse 1 something noteworthy happens that we are not told about. Not only does King Nebuchadnezzar subjugate King Jehoiakim and Judah, but it is at this time that the first major deportation to Babylon occurs. We find this recorded, for example, in Daniel 1. There we find that during this time under Jehoiakim that King Nebuchadnezzar besieges Jerusalem and ends up taking some of the treasures from Jerusalem and the temple. But he also captures and brings back some of the people of Israel, it seems mainly of the young nobility. That is where we see Daniel, Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego exiled to Babylon. So, while this passage in 2 Kings describes Babylonian bondage, it is not only that they began to extract tribute from them and be subservient to them. It also involved already some of the people of Judah being carried off to physical Babylonian captivity and bondage.
Well, eventually Jehoiakim revolts from Babylon and tries to throw off their yoke of bondage. That is referenced in verse 1. Ultimately this causes Babylon to come back down against Jerusalem. 2 Kings here spares us from recording how Jehoiakim dies, but Jeremiah describes Jehoiakim’s violent death in Jeremiah 22 – a death that no one would lament. That’s in contrast to how Jeremiah greatly lamented the death of righteous King Josiah. Later the Jewish historian Josephus would fill in some of the historical details for us that when King Nebuchadnezzar came back down against Jerusalem, that somehow he captured Jehoiakim and slew him and his officials outside of Jerusalem and threw their bodies against the wall without any burial.
So then, that’s when we see his son Jehoiachin become king and only reign for 3 months, verse 8. By the way, Jehoiachin is also referred to elsewhere as Jeconiah – same person. Sadly, Jehoiachin also did what was evil in God’s sight. He then is captured and himself taken prisoner back to Babylon and thrown into prison, verse 12. The events here closely mirror what had just happened with Egypt. Egypt had killed King Josiah, captured and deported King Jehoahaz, and then setup their own puppet king, King Jehoiakim. So then here, the Babylonians killed Jehoiakim, capture and deport King Jehoiachin, and then setup their own puppet king, King Zedekiah, verse 17. Zedekiah is also a son of Josiah. And notice that also like the Egyptians, the Babylonians gave a new name to their puppet king: Zedekiah was originally named Mattaniah. Mattaniah meant “the gift of Yahweh”, whereas Zedekiah means “the righteous one of Yahweh”. So then, the Babylonian bondage here mirrors in many ways the Egyptian bondage.
Yet, the Babylonian bondage is in fact yet worse than the Egyptian bondage. For we see starting in verse 14 that the second deportation of the people to Babylon happens. And this is not a small deportation. This is a major deportation. All the officials; all the mighty men; all the skilled craftsmen; virtually everyone with perceived “value” to the empire. They only left the poorest and weakest of the people. Elsewhere, we learn that this deportation also included the prophet Ezekiel. We also read in verse 13 that they greatly pillage the temple and palace, taking whatever remained of value. I had mentioned that Daniel 1 recorded that in the first deportation they took a bunch of such treasurers, but here they take whatever is left of value in this second deportation.
So then, our passage today records two parallel experiences of bondage by God’s people. First, in a sort of historic reprise, they find themselves in bondage to Egypt. Then, they find themselves in an even worse bondage to Babylon. This brings us to our final point for today to ask why did this all happen and what hope was there for them at this point.
Why did it happen? Our text tells us some of the reasoning in verses 3 and 4 and then in verse 20. In verses 3 and 4 it points to the many sins of Manasseh. We noted this in some previous sermons, that despite his late in life repentance, he had accumulated so much guilt and punishment upon Judah, that God’s wrath remained on them. But we also saw when we studied Manasseh that while his reign reached the heights of wickedness by a Judean king, his wickedness was just at the end of a long line of generation after generation that had forsaken the LORD. So, while on the one hand it can point to the heights of wickedness under Manasseh, his reference also reminds us of the long-standing patterns of wickedness for the whole course of Judah’s kingdom.
Elsewhere, we can see other reasons given for why Judah fell to Babylon like this. For example, it mentions in 2 Chronicles 36:21 how the people didn’t follow the laws regarding the letting the land rest every seven years, and that impacted how long they would have to be in exile in Babylon. But the overarching reason is found all the way back in Deuteronomy 29:25 that predicted this would happen when the abandoned the covenant with their God and turn and worship other gods. That is ultimately what this was about. Great and terrible apostasy. They so sadly forgot the LORD as their master and God and so he removed from the land he had given them and gave them into the hands of a new earthly master to rule them.
Realize then two complementary perspectives about this. On the one hand, exile to Babylon represents God’s sobering judgment on his people. On the other hand, it represents hope for redemption. You see, the people exiled are the survivors of the judgment. They are the remnant. While King Jehoahaz is captured and kept in prison to die in Egypt; we will find later that King Jehoiachin is captured and imprisoned in Babylon only to be later freed and treated well. In other words, while exile in Babylon is God’s judgment on the one hand, it is also part of his plans to save a remnant. Exile in Babylon actually ends up as a sort of lifeboat for God’s people from which he will ultimately deliver them in a new exodus out of bondage and into freedom.
That new exodus would begin in the events recorded in the historical books of Ezra and Nehemiah when God’s people begin to return to the Promised Land after Babylonian exile. But ultimately that return from exile and exodus from Babylonian bondage was only a type of a greatest exodus and redemption that would come in Jesus Christ. You know, it is so fitting that Matthew’s gospel records baby Jesus being brought to Egypt to save his life from worldly oppressors. As it goes on to say, that this was because God said, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” Jesus, as the true Israel, experiences a flight to Egypt and then a return from Egypt. From there, he ultimately went to the cross where he confronted the Strong Man Satan and bound him in order to redeem us the elect (c.f. Mark 3:27). In Christ Jesus we have been redeemed from our greatest bondage – from our sin. In Christ Jesus we then have victory over Satan and the world.
And yet while that is true, we recognize that the idea of Babylon still exists, as we see in the book of Revelation. And the thought that we are still exiles in this world is very much true, as 1 Peter 1:1 tells us. While we’ve been set free from sin and death in principle, there is yet this enemy of Babylon which is the unbelieving world that is hostile to the Christian. But as Revelation 18 prophesies and predicts, Babylon will yet fall. And yet while their final fall is yet in the future, I think in many ways they’ve become like Egypt had become in today’s passage. Yes, Egypt still technically existed in this passage, but they had become so diminished in power, they didn’t really pose any threat any longer to Babylon. So too today with Babylon, after the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Babylon might think they are yet strong and mighty. They might yet rage against the church. They might try to cut us off from society. They might even put some of us to death. But really, in the grand scheme of things, such is weakness before the firm foundation that is ours in Christ Jesus. Babylon today may seem frightening to our flesh, but our faith knows that they really don’t pose any real threat to the Christian any more.
Let us then press on in faith during this time that in one sense is still a time of exile. For we know and believe that we have been ultimately redeemed and are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus our Lord. What all the Davidic kings failed to do in today’s passage – Jesus has accomplished and even far more! Amen.
Copyright © 2020 Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.
All Rights Reserved.
