First Party:
>: >NO !! One says Jehoachim began his reign at the age of 8 another 18, and
there
>: >are hundreds of contradictions just like this.
>: >
Second Party
>Show me from the Bible these two verses... I don't think they exist, and
>I think you made them up or misread something...
>Here is what I found...
>2 Ki 23:36 Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to
>reign; and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name
>was Zebudah, the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah.
>2 Chr 36:5 Jehoiakim was
>twenty and five years old when he began to
>reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem: and he did that which
>was evil in the sight of the LORD his God.
The problem of the second party in this exchange, who appears to be an inerrantist, is that he cites passages that give the age of Jehoiakim in order to prove that no biblical error was made in giving the age of Jehoiachin. Apparently, this person doesn't know that there was a Jehoiakim and a Jehoiachin. They were two different persons. Jehoiachin was the son and successor of Jehoiakim (2 Kings 24:6).
The age of Jehoiachin when he succeeded his father was 18, according to 2 Kings 24:8); however, 2 Chronicles 36:9 says that Jehoiachin was 8 years old when he became king. So there is a discrepancy in the two accounts, just as party one in the above dispute indicated. Party two has not explained it.
Since I will send copies of this posting to the parties involved in the dispute (as best I can determine from the e-mail addresses given at the heading), I will include an additional problem that party one may want to consider. First, I must establish that Jehoiachin, who was king when Nebuchadnezzar first took captives to Babylon (2 Kings 24:10-12), was also known as Jeconiah, and is so listed in verse 16 of the genalogy of David given in 1 Chronicles 3. He is also so called in Esther 2:6, and Jeremiah who was in Jerusalem at the time of its capture also called this king by the name Jeconiah rather than Jehoiachin (24:1). In the verse cited, Jeremiah even identified Jeconiah as the son of Jehoiakim, so there can be no doubt that Jeconiah was another name for Jehoiachin.
With that established, let's notice that a prophetic mistake was made by Jeremiah in pronouncing a curse upon Jeconiah: "'As I live,' says Yahweh, 'though Coniah [Jeconiah] the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were the signet of my right hand, yet I would pluck you off; and I will give you into the hand of those who seek your life, and into the hand of those whose face you fear--the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the hand of the chaldenas. So I will cast you out, and your mother who bore you, into another country where you were not born; and there you shall die. But to the land to which they desire to return, there they shall not return" (Jere. 22:24-27).
We will see later how that this prophecy conflicts with details in another of Jeremiah's prophecies about Jeconiah [Jehoiachin], but first let's notice the rest of the prophecy partly quoted above: "Is this man Coniah a despised, broken idol--a vessel in which is no pleasure? Why are they cast out, he and his descendants, and cast into a land which they do not know? O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of Yahweh! Thus says Yahweh, 'Write this man down as childless, a man who shall not prosper in his days; *for none of his descendants* shall prosper sitting on the throne of David and ruling anymore in Judah'" (vs:28-30). If, however, we are to accept other biblical passages as inspired, inerrant truth, Jeremiah made a big boo-boo here, because this Jeconiah (Coniah, Jehoiachin) was a direct descendant of Jesus and is so listed in Matthew 1:11. A cardinal doctrine of Christianity is that Jesus sits on the throne of David and rules in his kingdom, yet Jeremiah said that no descendant of Jeconiah would ever prosper sitting on David's throne. Inerrantists quibble about the expression "ruling anymore in Judah," which was a part of Jeremiah's prophecy about Jeconiah's descendants; however, David's throne was in Judah and never anywhere else, so this "explanation" amounts to no more than a quibble.
Let's further notice that Jeremiah said in the prophecy quoted above that Jeconiah would be cast out into another country and die there, "but to the land to which they [Jeconiah and his mother] desire to return, there they shall not return" (vs:26-27). Inerrantists may want to claim prophecy fulfillment here, because the Bible states that Jeconiah was taken to Babylon and died there (2 Kings 25:27-30) after having been imprisoned 30 years. Since he "ate bread before the king all the days of his life" (v:29), this would mean that he did not return to the land of Judah. Hence, this is an apparent fulfillment of what Jeremiah predicted above.
However, it is in direct conflict with what Jeremiah predicted about Jeconiah in 28:2-4, "Thus speaks Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, saying: 'I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two full years I will bring back to this place all the vessels of Yahweh's house, that Nebuchadnezzare king of Babylon took away from this place and carried to Babylon. And I will bring back to this place Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, with all the captives of Judah who went to Babylon,' says Yahweh, 'for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.'" As just noted, however, this conflicts with the earlier prophecy that said that Jeconiah would never return to his land, and 2 Kings 26:29 indicates that Jeconiah (Jehoiachin) died in Babylon. At any rate, both prophecies couldn't have been fulfilled, because it would not have been possible for Jeconiah to return and yet never return.
Furthermore, Jeremiah's prophecy in 28:2-4 predicted that the vessels from the house of Yahweh that Nebuchadnezzar carried away to Babylon (2 Kings 24:13) would be brought back to "this place" (Jerusalem) within "two full years" (v:3). This did not happen or else errors were made in the book of Daniel. These vessels are mentioned in Daniel 1:2 while Nebuchadnezzar was still king of Babylon, yet during the reign of Belshazzar, who wasn't even an immediate successor to Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar gave a command for the vessels from the temple in Jerusalem to be brought to him so that the people who had been invited to his feast could drink from them (5:2). Jeremiah made his prophecy about the return of the vessels in the fourth year of Zedekiah's reign (28:1), whose reign ended in 586 B.C., but Babylonian records establish that Belshazzar reigned from 553 to 539 B.C., so it is hard to see how Jeremiah's prophecy about the vessels of Yahweh could have been fulfilled.
These are just a few of the many discrepancies in the Bible. If party two in the dispute about Jehoiachin wishes to respond to this, I will post it on this list... with my response, of course.
Farrell Till, Editor The Skeptical Review