EVIL-MERODACII (7.11fin Sept. EtitaX accpc,25eic, 00Xatp.abcixap), son and successor of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who, on his accession to the throne (B.c. 562), released the captive king of Judah, Jehoiachin, from prison, treated him with kindness and distinction, and set his throne above the thrones of the other conquered kings who were detained at Babylon (2 Kings xxv. 2 7 Jer. 1ii. 31-34). [BABYLON; DARIUS.] A Jew ish tradition (noticed by Jerome on Is. xiv. 29) ascribes this kindness to a personal friendship which Evil-merodach had contracted with the Jewish king, when he was himself consigned to prison by Nebuchadnezzar, who, on recovering from his seven years' monomania, took offence at some part of the conduct of his son, by whom the government had in the meantime been administered. This story was probably invented to account for the fact. Evil-merodach is doubtless the same as the Ilvaro dam of Ptolemy's Canon. The duration of his reign is made out variously by chronologers, some extending it to twenty-four years, others reducing it to two or three. Hales, who adopts the last number, identifies him with the king of Babylon who formed a powerful confederacy against the Mcdes, which was broken up, and the king slain by Cyrus, then acting for his uncle Cyaxares. But
this rests on the authority of Xenophon's Cyropedia, the historical value of which he estimates far too highly. [Cvxus.] The latter half of the name Evil-merodach is that of a Babylonian god. [MERoDAcx.] Two modes of explaining the former part of it have been attempted. Since sIt'4, as a Hebrew word, means `foolish,' Simonis proposes to consider it the derivative of 51N, in the Arabic signification of ' to be first,' affording the sense of `prince of Me rodach.' This rests on the assumption that the Babylonian language was of Syro-Arabian origin. Gescnius, on the other hand, who does not admit that origin, believes that some Indo-Germanic word, of similar sound, hut reputahle sense, is concealed under evil, and that the Hebrews made some slight perversion in its form to produce a word of contemptuous signification in Hebrew. [First suggests Scr. abhila, terrible, as the etymon.]