* 2 Kings xxiv. 1-4.  The passage is not easy to be understood as it stands, and it has been differently interpreted by historians.  Some have supposed that it refers to events immediately following the battle of Carchemish, and that Jehoiakim defended Jerusalem against Nebuchadrezzar in 605.  Others think that, after the battle of Carchemish, Jehoiakim took advantage of Nebuchadrezzar’s being obliged to return at once to Babylon, and would not recognise the authority of the Chaldaeans; that Nebuchadrezzar returned later, towards 601, and took Jerusalem, and that it is to this second war that allusion is made in the Book of Kings.  It is more simple to consider that which occurred about 600 as a first attempt at rebellion which was punished lightly by the Chaldaeans.

Jehoiakim, left to himself, resisted with such determination that Nebuchadrezzar was obliged to bring up his Chaldaean forces to assist in the attack.  Judah trembled with fear at the mere description which her prophet Habakkuk gave of this fierce and sturdy people, “which march through the breadth of the earth to possess dwelling-places which are not theirs.  They are terrible and dreadful:  their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves.  Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves; and their horsemen spread themselves; yea, their horsemen come from far; they fly as an eagle that hasteneth to devour.  They come all of them for violence; their faces are set eagerly as the east wind, and they gather captives as the sand.  Yea, he scoffeth at kings, and princes are a derision unto him:  he derideth every stronghold:  for he heapeth up dust and taketh it.  Then shall he sweep by as a wind, and shall pass over the guilty, even he whose might is his god.”  Nebuchadrezzar’s army must have presented a spectacle as strange as did that of Necho.  It contained, besides its nucleus of Chaldaen and Babylonian infantry, squadrons of Scythian and Median cavalry, whose cruelty it was, no doubt, that had alarmed the prophet, and certainly bands of Greek hoplites, for the poet Alcasus had had a brother, Antimenidas by name, in the Chaldaean monarch’s service.  Jehoiakim died before the enemy appeared beneath the walls of Jerusalem, and was at once succeeded by his son Jeconiah,* a youth of eighteen years, who assumed the name of Jehoiachin.**

     * [Jehoiachin is called Coniah in Jer. xxii. 24 and xxiv. 1,
     and Jeconiah in 1 Chron. iii. 16.—­Tr.]

     ** 2 Kings xxiv. 5-10; cf. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 6-9, where the
     writer says that Nebuchadrezzar bound Jehoiakim “in
     fetters, to carry him to Babylon.”