Jeremiah 22:29,30 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

O earth, &c. The word earth, or land rather, as ארצ may be properly rendered, is repeated three times by way of emphasis, to engage the deeper attention. The prophet speaks to the land of Judea, which he commands to write down the following prediction, that it might be remembered by them, and the truth of it be thereby made manifest. Write ye this man childless Hebrew, ערירי, solitary, deprived, destitute. The LXX. render it εκκηρυκτον αυθρωτον, an ejected, or expelled man; a man that shall not prosper in his days This latter clause seems explanatory of the former; and that again is further explained in the following: “For no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah.” That Jeconiah had children appears both from this verse and Jeremiah 22:28; but according to this prophecy, no man of his seed sat upon the throne of David. This seems the true exposition of this passage, which has been considered as attended with considerable difficulty. “I cannot,” says Blaney, “agree with the generality of commentators, who suppose that God hereby declares it as a thing certain, and, as it were, orders it to be inserted among the public acts of his government, that Jeconiah should die absolutely childless. Other parts of Scripture positively assert him to have had children, 1 Chronicles 3:17-18; Matthew 1:12. Both Jeremiah 22:28, and the subsequent part of this verse, imply that he either had, or should have, seed. But the historians and chroniclers of the times are called upon, and directed to set him down childless; not as being literally so, but yet the same to all intents and purposes of public life, for he was to be the last of his race that should sit upon the throne of David; and his descendants were no more to figure as kings, but to be reduced to the rank and obscurity of private persons. And in this sense the prophecy was actually fulfilled, for, allowing Zerubbabel, who is called governor of Judah, (Haggai 1:1,) to have been a lineal descendant of Jeconiah, yet he could not be said to sit upon the throne of David, and reign, or rule, in Judah, seeing he was but a provincial governor, a mere servant of the king of Persia, in whom the sovereignty resided; nor were any of those persons kings who afterward reigned in Judah, even of the family of David, until the time of Christ.”