Chapter 22
This starts message 9: "Thus says the Lord: "Go down to the house of the king of Judah..." So a specific location is ordered, one of the criteria for classifying this as a new message.
The message is that if Zedekiah will turn back to God's ways, then the throne of David will be preserved, and Kings will sit on it. There seems to be a clear implication that if he does not do this, the line of David is in danger. But this cannot be a right interpretation since we know the Messiah comes from this royal line...MSB is no help here. 2020-After Babylon, no king has ever sat on the throne of David literally. In Nehemiah's time there was a high priest, but no king. After Jesus, there was neither priest nor king. Maybe that is what this is about. This was the choice that ended the Kings of Judah until the time of Messiah.
2021 - Is this strictly correct? Surely there was a head of civil government after the return from Babylon wasn't there? So maybe there wasn't technically a king, but there was still a person. Does the genealogy of Jesus give us a clue of who was "king" through all those intervening years - in heritage if not in title? Maybe that's the key phrase. No one had the title of King, there was no recognized monarch as there had always been before. But the line continued, just as God had promised. That's the key. There are no kings in Israel today, nothing even much like a king. But we don't need one anymore because the last king is on his heavenly throne and will assume an earthly throne at his coming. The Davidic line was preserved and documented all the way to Jesus, and is not needed after that.
vss 6, 7 indicate that this "threat" is about the physical throne, about the city itself, and NOT AT ALL about the descendants of David.
vs 11 starts a prophesy about Shallum, another son of Josiah, who was carried away. There is much to look back at here, in Kings and Chronicles, if one wants to understand the details of each prophecy. I will leave it to another time. Five chapters of Jeremiah is a lot of chapters! I think there is even more here. Look at what this says about Judah:
6 For thus says the LORD concerning the house of the king of Judah: "'You are like Gilead to me, like the summit of Lebanon, yet surely I will make you a desert, an uninhabited city. 7 I will prepare destroyers against you, each with his weapons, and they shall cut down your choicest cedars and cast them into the fire. 8 "'And many nations will pass by this city, and every man will say to his neighbor, "Why has the LORD dealt thus with this great city?" [Jer 22:6-8 ESV]
These verses contain the history of Israel from 70 AD until and beyond 1948. A desert, an uninhabited city. NOT in any way a country. The Palestinians had no country there, Israel had no country there, this whole area was just a "blemish" that didn't amount to anything. The place was abused by first one nation and then another all the way up to 1948. It was all foretold here, in three verses.
vss 13-17 tell the fate of Shallum (or Jehoahaz), and make a negative comparison of Shallum to his father Josiah.
vss 18-23 are about Jehoiakim, yet another son of Josiah. He will be buried as a donkey, not as a king. Dragged outside the city and dumped by the gate. God then speaks of the flaws in Jehoiakim's character, and of his refusal to follow God's ways.
2023 - It seems to me that this makes better sense if we understand that Jeremiah is now talking about things that happened after the "first fall" of Jerusalem...or is it prophecy that Jehoahaz will be taken away later? I really think I could get a lot more out of this if I understood whether Jeremiah is talking about history or prophecy here? Found this note in 2Kgs 23: "Josiah is killed by Pharoah Neco, when Josiah goes out to meet Neco as he approaches Assyria. He kills Josiah at Megiddo as soon as he sees him. No talk, no questions, just kills him. Josiah's body is taken by chariot to Jerusalem, where he is buried. MSB says we don't know why Josiah went to talk to Neco, or why he didn't want Neco's army to join the Assyrian army against Babylon. Says there will be more detail in 2 Chron 35. Jehoahaz, Josiah's son, reigns in his place." So this goes way back. It is history, not prophecy. This helps a little, but I still don't get how Jehoahaz "...shall return here no more, but in the place where they have carried him captive, there shall he die..." This implies that Jehoahaz was still alive, living in captivity, when Jeremiah wrote this.
2023 - Could have just kept reading. Next, in 2Kgs 23, Jehoahaz is captured, after only three months of being the King, and is taken away to Egypt So this pretty well nails down where we are. I note also that in the Chronological Bible, 2Kgs 23 comes BEFORE this chapter of Jeremiah.
Then we hear about Coniah, a short form of Jeconiah, who was also called Jehoiachin. Per MSB. vss 28-30 say that no heir of this man will sit on the throne of David. I seem to recall that an invading king deposed his brother, and put this man on the throne as a vassal king. He wasn't much of a king. A coward most likely. Again, a lot to look back at here if one wants to do so.