Do not keen for the dead.
The Masoretic Text shows “a dead [man],” but that vocalization is almost
universally corrected to yield “the dead.” The particular dead person here,
according to long-standing scholarly consensus, is Josiah, who was killed by
Pharaoh Neco at Megiddo in 609 B.C.E. One should not keen for him because his
fate of death is not so dire as the fate of his son Shallum (more commonly
called Jehoahaz, who was placed on the throne by Neco after his father’s death,
reigned only scant months, and then was sent down to Egypt as a prisoner). Thus
Shallum-Jehoahaz is the one “who goes,” never again to see the land of his
birth. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton
& Company, 2019], 2:932)
