Isaiah 31:1-3; Jer. 36:1-8, Are You Angry at God? (3)

We begin today with Isaiah 31:1-3 where the prophet warned the people in the days of Hezekiah not to seek help from the Egyptians.  Hezekiah had actually tried to buy off the Assyrians (2 Kings 18:13-16), who received his riches but still came and surrounded Jerusalem.  After being assured by Isaiah that God would deliver Judah if they trusted in Him Hezekiah humbled himself before the Lord. 

All this occurred some one hundred years before the Babylonians came to take Jerusalem.  Isaiah’s words were a warning of what God would do to those who did not trust Him but sought help from Egypt: Both he who helps will fall (Egypt), and he who is helped will fall down (Judah under Jehoiakim); they all will perish together (31:3).

After Pharaoh killed Josiah at Megiddo, he then came to Jerusalem and removed from the throne Josiah’s replacement, his son Jehoahaz (2 Ki. 23:31-34).  He replaced him with Jehoiakim who, after paying Pharaoh what had been assessed as a penalty, then submitted himself to the Babylonians for three years (2 Kings 24:1).  But then, in the important fourth year of Jehoiakim, Judah rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar.  Why would they do that?  Did they think they could stand up against the reigning power in the region?  The answer is that Jehoiakim put his trust in the Egyptians.  He believed they would be able to come to his aid.

How do we know this?  Jeremiah tells us in his “Lamentations.”  Still our eyes failed us, watching vainly for our help; in our watching we watched for a nation that could not save us (Lam. 4:17).  We have given our hand to the Egyptians and the Assyrians to be satisfied with bread (Lam. 5:6).  And as we have noted, Pharaoh Necho was the king of Egypt which was by the River Euphrates in Carchemish, and which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon defeated in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah (Jer. 46:2).

You can see God’s goodness to Judah in telling Jeremiah to put in writing all his prophecies.  God made it clear that He alone was to be trusted; He alone would be able to deliver them from the Babylonians.  But Jehoiakim had put his trust in the Egyptians instead.  And they were defeated at Carchemish.  And the king of Egypt did not come out of his land anymore, for the king of Babylon had taken all that belonged to the king of Egypt from the Brook of Egypt to the River Euphrates (2 Kings 24:7). 

From Jehoiakim’s point of view, God had let him down.  Thus, in his anger, as Jeremiah’s prophecies were read, against the advice of those near to him, Jehoiakim heard every word, cut up the scroll piece by piece, and dropped them one after another in the fire by which he warmed himself.  As we have said, it is one of the most powerful pictures of a hard heart in all of Scripture.

The end, for Jehoiakim, was disastrous.  In the remaining six years of his reign, the LORD first sent terrorists (bands of raiders) against him from every direction (2 Kings 24:2).  In his eleventh year Nebuchadnezzar came against Jerusalem, bound Jehoiakim in bronze fetters, carried him off to Babylon (2 Chron. 36:6) where he died (Jer. 22:18-19; 36:30).
As for the word of God, which Jehoiakim had shredded and burned in the fire, it was all fulfilled.  God instructed Jeremiah to write another copy and let the king know all would be fulfilled (Jer. 36:27-32).  Furthermore, in the fourth year of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, Jeremiah wrote a book with all the prophecies about Babylon, and sent it with couriers to be read in Babylon and then thrown into the Euphrates to assure them that nothing would be changed (Jer. 51:59-64).  It is all a powerful picture for us today: as Jesus said, the Scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35)!