Jeremiah 22:18,19 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

They shall not lament for him, saying, Ah my brother! &c. “The prophet here repeats part of the funeral ditty or song which the public mourners used to sing at funerals, (see note on Jeremiah 9:17; Jeremiah 20:14, and compare 1 Kings 13:30,) signifying, that neither Jehoiakim, nor his queen or family, should be buried with those solemn lamentations with which the memory of his predecessors, particularly that of his father, had been honoured: see 2 Chronicles 35:25. Saying, Ah Lord! or, Ah his glory! That is, how is his glory departed and vanished! another burden or chorus of the funeral song. He shall be buried with the burial of an ass None attending him to his grave, none mourning over him. Or, the meaning is, he shall have no burial: for the carcasses of asses are not buried. Drawn and cast forth, &c. The expression seems to be taken from the custom of dogs to draw about a carcass before they tear and devour it. Jehoiakim, having been advanced to the kingdom by Pharaoh-necho, king of Egypt, 2 Kings 23:34, followed the fortune of that king, and upon the conquest of Egypt by the Chaldeans, Jeremiah 46:2, after three years' reign, was taken prisoner by Nebuchadnezzar, and put into irons, Dan 1:2; 2 Chronicles 36:6. But afterward, it seems, the king of Babylon released him and made him a tributary king. After three years' obedience, however, Jehoiakim rebelled, in confidence of assistance from Egypt. Soon after which Nebuchadnezzar's army overran Judea, besieged Jerusalem, and probably took Jehoiakim prisoner in some sally that he made upon them, and killed him, and then cast out his dead body into the highway, denying him the common rites of burial: see 2 Kings 24:1-6. Accordingly, he is said to have slept with his fathers, but not to have been buried with them: see also Joseph. Antiq., lib. 10. cap. 7, 8.