God’s Word for You

2 Chronicles 36:1-4 Three months of Jehoahaz

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, June 22, 2025

36:1 The people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah and made him king in Jerusalem in place of his father. 2 Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he became king, and he reigned as king in Jerusalem for three months. 3 Then the king of Egypt deposed him in Jerusalem and imposed a tribute of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold upon the land. 4 Then the king of Egypt made Eliakim his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. Then Neco took Jehoahaz his brother and carried him off to Egypt.

Our prophet does not say that Jehoahaz did good or evil; but the account in 2 Kings 23 is that “he did evil in the eyes of the LORD, just as his fathers had done’ (2 Kings 23:32). Pharaoh Neco came through Israel after the Battle of Haran (we are still in 609 BC) and we can imply from the few facts that we have that Jehoahaz went up to meet him on the northern border. It was in northeastern Galilee “in Riblah in the land of Hamath” (2 Kings 23:33) that Neco captured Jehoahaz, put him in chains, and handed the throne of Judah over to Eliakim, who was older than Jehoahaz by two years. Whatever Jehoahaz did, it was enough to anger Neco and bring him into the role of king maker. It’s interesting to notice that Neco (who had received a message from God) changed the new king’s name from Eliakim (“My God raises up”) to Jehoiakim (“The LORD raises up”). We will save comments about Jehoiakim’s faith for the next passage.

Jehoahaz had very little time on the throne to do anything at all. Since we know the date of the Battle of Haran, we know that this was the summer or fall of 609. Today we might say that the grass had not even begun to grow on his father’s grave. But a couple of months is, sometimes, all we have.

There is a couple I know—they are good friends of mine, close friends who share many things with me and whom I share many things with—who lost a baby to miscarriage a while ago. I’m not sure that they had quite three months with their little delicate charge. What could they do or not do in that time? They could do what they did. They thanked God for that blessing. They made plans to rearrange some things in their home, a wonderful, loving home, that is filled with joy, learning, play, and more. They pray out loud at home (I know; I’ve been their happy guest at meals). At this time, they had one or two older children and they would read to them some Bible stories every night or almost every night. And they brought their kids to their church every Sunday, and sometimes more often than that.

What does a baby understand? What does a baby know? Every single one of us knows whether we live among people who love us, or who hate us, or who perhaps tolerate us but nothing else. We are affected by those feelings. And we come to know that we worship a God who hates sin but who loves us so much that he sent his own child into the world to rescue us from our sinfulness. That Son took on human flesh so that he was at the same time truly human and fully God, and after his atoning death and firstfruits resurrection, he retained—retains—that full humanity and complete divinity. Perhaps I do not completely comprehend all of that. I who teach it still need to take care how I say it so that I do not overstate or understate the details. I did not know all of that as a toddler, but I already knew who my Jesus was before I had ever gone to Sunday school. I knew that God loves me before I was big enough to pass the plate when it came through our pew (I remember my mother making me practice at home so that I wouldn’t spill the “monies”).

It is not for me, nor for anyone, to say what an infant in the womb knows or does not know. It is not for me, nor for anyone on earth, to judge whether that fetus knows or does not know that his or her sins are forgiven. But he or she knows that they’re loved.

And consider this, on this hot June day. Just a few days ago it was Juneteenth, the anniversary of the day in 1865 when the last group of slaves in Texas were told about Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. They were already free; they just hadn’t been told about it yet. But they were free.

So the baby in the womb is covered by the blood of Christ just the same as were Pontius Pilate, and “even those who pierced him” (Revelation 1:7). But where the first tiny seeds of faith have been sown, there is faith. And so the parents who lose a child before anything like baptism has happened, or learning very much at all, or little Jesus stories can be read and told apart from while baby is listening in the womb—it isn’t for any of us to say, “Not possible,” or “not saved.” Our God is forgiving, and our God is gracious. And where the grace of God is at work, there his love and forgiveness are at work, most assuredly through a little unborn baby’s mom and dad.

Far be it from anyone, then, to say that Jehoahaz didn’t have time to do anything or accomplish anything while he was on the throne. On the up side, he was brave enough to face an enemy—his father’s killers—on the border, rather than waiting in his palace with his knees knocking in fear. On the down side, he was sinful, and sinful enough that his judgment in Kings is that he did evil in the eyes of the Lord. Yet even a man who makes mistakes and who does evil can also be a man, like the ancestor of Jehoahaz, like David the son of Jesse, who can also admit his sins and repent. And in Egypt as a prisoner, and later with the companionship of one of the Lord’s prophets, he had time to repent.

Bless the Lord who grants us time to repent, and time, whatever time we have, to bring our children to the cross, to faith, and to eternal life. What a wonderful joy waits for parents who, brand new to their own death, may enter into heaven to see running feet and outstretched arms and to hear a voice that they have never heard before calling out, “Mama’s home! Mama’s home!”

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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