JEHOIAKIM (OT''Ir14, established by yehavah ; Sept. 'Iwaxiii), originally ELIAKIM, second son of Josiah, and eighteenth king of Judah. On the death of his father the people raised to the throne his younger brother Jehoahaz ; but three months after, when the Egyptian king returned from the Euphrates, he removed Jehoahaz, and gave the crown to the rightful heir, Eliakim, whose name he changed to Jehoiakim. This change of name often took place in similar circumstances ; and the altered name was in fact the badge of a tributary prince. Jehoiakim began to reign in B. C. 608, and reigned eleven years. He of course occupied the position of a vassal of the Egyptian empire, and in that capacity had to lay upon the people heavy imposts to pay the appointed tribute, in addition to the ordinary expenses of government. But, as if this were not enough, it would seem from various passages in Jeremiah (Jer. xxii. 13, etc.) that Jelaoiakim aggravated the public charges, and con sequently tbe public calamities, by a degree of luxury and magnificence in his establishments and structures very ill-suited to the condition of his kingdom and tbe position which he occupied. Hence much extortion and wrong-doing, much privation and deceit ; and when we add to this a general forgetfulness of God and proneness to idolatry, we have the outlines of that picture which the prophet Jeremiah has drawn in the most sombre hues.
IIowever heavy may have been the Egyptian yoke, Jehoiakim was destined to pass under one heavier still. In his time the empire of Western Asia was disputed between the kings of Egypt and Babylon ; and the kingdom of Judah, pressed be tween these mighty rivals, and necessarily either the tributary or very feeble enemy of the one or the other, could not but suffer nearly equally, whichever proved the conqueror. The kings of Judah were therefore placed in a position of peculiar difficulty, out of which they could only escape with safety by the exercise of great discretion, and through the special mercies of the God of Israel, who bad by his high covenant engaged to protect them so long as they walked uprightly. This they
did not, and were in consequence abandoned to their doom.
In the third year of his reign Jehoiakim, being besieged in Jerusalem, was forced to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, and was by his order laden with chains, with the intention of sending him captive to Babylon (2 Chron. xxxvi. 6) ; but evontually the conqueror changed his mind and restored the crown to him. Many persons, however, of high family, and some even of the royal blood, were sent away to Babylon. Among these was Daniel, then a mere youth. A large proportion of the treasures and sacred vessels of the temple were also taken away and deposited in the idol-temple at Babylon (Dan. i. r, 2). The year following the Euptians were defeated upon the Euphrates (Jer. xlvi. 2), and Jehoiakim, when he saw the remains of the defeated army pass by his territory, could not but perceive how vain had been that reliance upon Egypt against which he had been constantly cautioned by Jeremiah (Jer. xxxi. I ; I). In the same year the prophet caused a collection o! his prophecies to be written out by his faithful Baruch, and to be read publicly by him in the court of the .temple. This coming to the know ledge of the king, he sent for it and had it read before him. But he heard not much of the bitter denunciations with which it was charged, before he took the roll from the reader, and after cutting it in pieces threw it into the brasier which, it being winter, was burning before him in the hall. The counsel of God against him, however, stood sure ; a fresh roll was written, with the addition of a further and most awful denunciation against the king, occasioned by this foolish and sacrilegious act. He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David : and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat and in the night to the frost ' (Jer. xxxvi.) All this, however, appears to have made little impression upon Jehoiakim, who still walked in his old paths.