1:11 1 Ch. 3:15 attributes four sons to
Josiah: Johanan, Jehoiakim, Zedekiah, and Shallum. The first is otherwise
unknown. The fourth (Shallum) succeeded Josiah as king. The second (Jehoiakim)
succeeded Shallum to the throne, and was himself succeeded on the throne by his
son Jehoiachin, also known as Coniah and as Jechoniah. Finally, Jehoiachin is
taken off into captivity (but with a continuing significance) and is replaced
by his uncle, the third son of Josiah (Zedekiah), who was to be the last
reigning king of the Davidic line.
What about brothers for Jechoniah? 2 Ch. 36:10 has the Zedekiah who
became king after him identified as a brother. But this is either an error, or
a use of ‘brother’ to mean ‘kinsman’. 1 Ch. 3:16 might identify Zedekiah as a
brother of Jechoniah, but it is more likely that the reference is to the uncle
who succeeded him on the throne. After the use of the identical phrase ‘and his
brothers’ in Mt. 1:2, it is unlikely that we should consider a nonliteral sense
for ‘brothers’ in v. 11.
The Greek OT does not alter the picture that we have built up, but it
does manage to use Ἰωακίμ
at times for both Jehoiachin and Jehoiakim. The names ‘Jehoiachin’ and ‘Coniah’
are no longer represented in the LXX: ‘Jehoiachin’ is either ‘Jechoniah’ or (a
second) ‘Jehoiakim’.
The Matthean text seems, then, to have difficulties on two fronts:
Jechoniah is not a son of Josiah; and he has no brothers. Despite the
possibilities for confusion that this rather complex situation opens up, it is
hard to see how the person responsible for the genealogy thus far could now
write ‘Josiah produced Jechoniah and his brothers’.
It has to be admitted that at least one text has become confused in
relation to all this: the B text of 1 Esdr. 1:32 (ET v. 34) puts a Jechoniah in
the place of Shallum as the son of Josiah who first succeeded him to the throne
(in v. 41 a second Jehoiakim is named as the son of Jehoiakim as in the LXX
above). This confusion in 1 Esdr. 1:32 seems to be exactly what we have in Mt.
1:11, but I find myself reluctant to use it to explain the Matthean text
precisely because there is no clear anchor for the error in either the
distinctive LXX usage or in the general complexity of the OT picture that would
encourage us to believe that this was a repeatable error. The influence could
even be, in the copying tradition, from the Matthean text.
The best of the solutions on offer in the literature seem to be those
which involve textual emendation (unfortunately, without any text-critical
support). Vögtle argues
for an original with ‘Josiah produced Jehoiakim and his brothers’. This leaves
a gap between ‘Josiah produced Jehoiakim’ and ‘Jechoniah produced Shealtiel’ in
v. 12. Such a gap was forced, Vögtle suggests, by the nature of the time
expressions used to mark off the Exile as a significant turning point in vv. 11
and 12. The time of the Exile is best thought of as beginning during the reign
of Jehoiakim: Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babyon arrives on the scene; Jehoiakim
at first switches allegiance from Pharaoh Neco to Nebuchadnezzar but then
rebels, and this is the beginning of the end (see 2 Ki. 23:34–24:4). Matthew’s
putative original marks this well, but it leaves no place for ‘Jehoiakim
produced Jechoniah’ to be fitted. The alert reader is left to fill the gap. But
a scribe, alert in another way, filled the gap by altering ‘Jehoiakim’ to
‘Jechoniah’. He could support his move by recalling that the LXX frequently
represents ‘Jehoiachin’ = ‘Jechoniah’ as ‘Jehoiakim’. (John Nolland,
The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text [New International
Greek Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005], 81-83,
emphasis in bold added)
