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Let us look at Jonah 1: 3 and translate it as Dr. Davidson would have it: "And Jonah
. . . . . went down to Joppa, and he found a ship arriving at Tarshish." If this could be
sense, then in some miraculous way Jonah would have no sooner set foot on board at
Joppa than he would have `arrived' at Tarshish. Doubtless this would have made the
journey far more pleasant than it actually was, but the simple fact is that the Hebrew
word bo does mean that the ship was `going' or `setting out' for Tarshish. The plain fact
of Dan. 1: and Jer. 25: is that the former writer tells us the year in which
Nebuchadnezzar `set out' from Babylon, while the latter tells us when he arrived.
Moreover, Jeremiah tells us what occupied Nebuchadnezzar on his journey from one
capital to the other:
"Against Egypt, against the army of Pharaoh-necho king of Egypt, which was by the
river Euphrates in Carchemish, which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon smote in the
fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah" (Jer. 46: 2).
Instead therefore of discovering a discrepancy in the narrative of Scripture, we have
the obvious fact that Nebuchadnezzar took time to accomplish his march from Babylon to
Jerusalem, and was obliged to meet and overcome Pharaoh at Carchemish by the
Euphrates before he could arrive.
In Jer. 25: 3 the prophet reminded Israel that since the thirteenth year of Josiah (see
Jer. 1: 1, 2) the word of the Lord had come urging them to turn from their evil, and
because they had not turned He said:
"Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the Lord, and
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land
. . . . . and this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations
shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years" (Jer. 25: 9-11).
What God therefore had threatened, He brought to pass in the fourth year of
Jehoiakim, and the historic record of the captivity of Jehoiakim is found in
II Chron. 36:, the last chapter of the Hebrew Bible.
Yet with all this apparent on the surface of Scripture, and needing no more scholarship
than ability to read in one's mother tongue, Kuenen in his Historic Critique de l'Ancien
Testament has the audacity to say:
"We know by the book of Jeremiah that no such event (as the siege of Jerusalem,
Dan. 1: 1) took place in the reign of Jehoiakim."
"We know." We also know that it is written: "Professing themselves to be wise they
became fools", and by such statements they demonstrate that they are but `blind leaders
of the blind'.
Jehoiakim was appointed king of Judah by Pharaoh-necho in the place of Jehoahaz
(II Kings 23: 34). He did evil in the sight of the Lord, and filled Jerusalem with
innocent blood. He was succeeded by Jehoiachin. In the reign of the latter,