3. A Judean bearing the title “son of the king” (Heb ben hammelek) during the reign of
Zedekiah (Jer 38:6). It is probable that this title (which occurs both in the
OT and on a number of seals and bullae) refers to members of the royal family.
It is apparent that some of these men held important administrative positions.
According to Jer 38:6, the prophet Jeremiah was imprisoned in the cistern of
Malchiah (Heb malkı̂yāhû). His
duties, like those of Joash (1 Kgs 22:26; 2 Chr 18:25) and Jerahmeel (Jer
36:26), appear to have included the maintenance of state security. (John M. Berridge, “Malchijah (Person),”
in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman, 6 vols.
[New York: Doubleday, 1992], 4:486)
Jrm was put into a cistern belonging to Malchiah (v 6),
who is identified as “the king’s son, who was in the court of the guard”; the
designation “the king’s son” offers the same difficulty as it does for
Jerahmeel in 36:26 (see there). If the datum in 2 Kgs 24:18 is correct,
Zedekiah would be thirty years old at this time. If Malchiah was Zedekiah’s
son, he could be approximately fifteen years old, own a cistern and function as
a guard; but, on the other hand, “king’s son” may simply mean “of the royal
family.” If he is Zedekiah’s son, he is certainly not the father of Pashhur
(38:1)! (William Lee Holladay, Jeremiah 2: A Commentary of the Prophet
Jeremiah, Chapters 26-52 [Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on
the Bible; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1989], 289)
On Jer 36:26:
Jerahmeel the king’s son is named only here. A bulla
(stamp-seal impression) has come to light from Jerusalem in the last few
decades of the monarchy bearing the inscription an לירחמאל בן המלך “(belonging) to Jerahmeel the king’s son.”
Opinion has differed whether “king’s son” is to be taken
literally or whether it is the designation of an office. In favor of the latter
is the fact that both Joash (1 Kgs 22:26) and Malchiah (Jer 38:6), who bear the
title, seem to have had a police function, as Jerahmeel did; furthermore it has
been urged that Jehoiakim is too young to have had an adult son, but this
contention is based on the date of 604 for the burning of the scroll. In 601
Jehoiakim is thirty-three years old (2 Kgs 23:36). Jehoiachin was born in 616
(2 Kgs 24:8); Jerahmeel, if he were the son of the king, might have been born
soon thereafter and be fourteen or fifteen years old in 601. André Lemaire,
after surveying the biblical and extrabiblical evidence, likewise concludes
that “the king’s son” is to be taken literally, but a recent study suggests
that the term was current in Egyptian chronicles as a title for a functionary
in the court, so that the same idiom may have been current in Judah. (Ibid.,
260-61)
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