Daily Devotional

Around 600 BC King Jehoiachin (also called Jeconiah and Coniah) was just eight years old when he became King of  Judah. Just eight years old! And he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem. Just 100 days!
   
He was carried captive to the City of Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar and imprisoned for 37 years. Eventually he  was freed and lived in the Babylonian king’s palace until he died (Jer. 52:31-34).      

So young to be a king! Such a short reign! Such a long 37-year imprisonment! But, here’s the saddest news of all.  Even before being captured, this eight-year old is recorded as one who “did evil in the sight of the LORD.” (2 Chron. 37:9).      

How does an eight-year old get branded in bible history as evil? What bad choices had he made at such a young age?  Where were his mentors? His parents? How much damage had he done to the overall spiritual life of God’s people that young Child-King Jehoiachin would be the one to be captured by the Babylonians, beginning the 70-year “spanking” God gave His people?      

Perhaps one of the lessons here is that “foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. The rod of discipline will remove it far from him (Proverbs 22:15) and “The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother (Proverbs 29:15). And, in the case of the people of God, this Child-King brought shame to an entire nation!

Proverbs 22:6 calls us to “train up a child In the way he should go…” The word train (Hebrew: kanak), in essence, means to break the wild nature and stimulate righteousness.  One wonders how history might have changed if someone had done that with young Jehoiachin.
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