Jehoahaz II


 * This article is about the second king by this name of the Kingdom of Judah. For the three other kings known by this name, see Jehoahaz (disambiguation)

Jehoahaz II ("Name means::YHWH has held"), or Shallum ("Name means::retribution") (633 BC-r. 610 BC-610 BC according to Ussher, or 632 BC-r. 609 BC-609 BC according to Thiele ), was the sixteenth king of the Kingdom of Judah and the first of its kings to die in exile (King Hoshea of the Kingdom of Israel also died in exile).

Life and Family
His birth name was Shallum, but his father changed it to Jehoahaz later in his life. Why Josiah so acted, the Bible does not say. Perhaps Josiah did this after reading the full history of the Shallum of the Kingdom of Israel, who was a regicide and who died at the hand of still another regicide (Menahem).

He was born in the eighteenth year of his father's reign. His mother was Hamutal. He had three known brothers. The first-born, Johanan, probably died in action at Megiddo. Another, Jehoiakim, was his half-brother by Zebidah and was in fact two years older than he. His third, full brother was Zedekiah.

Accession
He acceded to the throne of the Kingdom of Judah after his father died in battle against Pharaoh Necho II of Egypt. Ussher says that the people of the kingdom acclaimed him in order to have a king in the land, in fear of an invasion by Necho. Why the people acclaimed him instead of his older brother, again the Bible does not say.

Shortly after Jehoahaz came to the throne, the prophet Jeremiah came to call on him, and warned him that God was angry with the kings of the Kingdom of Judah and that he, Jehoahaz, would be taken prisoner and deported to Egypt and would never see his native land again.

Reign, Exile, and Succession
Jehoahaz reigned only three months, and seems not to have listened to Jeremiah. He practiced all of the idolatrous evils that many of his forbears (Manasseh, Ahaz, and others) had practiced. 

Then Necho returned from his action at Megiddo and elsewhere and apparently exacted a severe punishment for all the trouble that Josiah had caused him. He exacted a tribute of one hundred silver talents and one gold talent. He removed Jehohaz from his throne and made him his prisoner. Then he placed his older brother Jehoiakim on the throne instead of him. 

Jehoahaz was forcibly removed to Egypt, and there he eventually died.