Of All the Years the Hopes--Or Fears? Jehoiachin in Babylon (2 Kings 25:27-30)‪.‬

I. The Question The tantalizingly brief account, right at the end of Kings, narrating Evil-merodach's release of Jehoiachin of Judah from close imprisonment in Babylon has become a scholarly crux, at least since Martin Noth famously refused to see it as ameliorating in any significant degree what in his view is the book's pessimistic appraisal of the future of Israel as God's people. (1) Gerhard von Rad's prompt and vigorous rebuttal of Noth's negative reading of Kings is equally well known. (2) Not the least element in that rebuttal was von Rad's conviction that, following hard on the dispiriting account of decline and destruction of the people of YHWH, the ending of Kings intentionally, if very obliquely, invoked the hope of a future for dynasty and people still active in the divine promise of an eternal dynasty to David. (3) Subsequently, independent efforts were made by Dennis J. McCarthy, Frank Moore Cross, and Timo Veijola to set the dynastic promise to David at the heart of Noth's Deuteronomistic History (at any rate in one of its putative redactions). (4) Concomitantly, the view that the account of Jehoiachin's release was a portent of hope for Davidic restoration has been expounded with assurance by a steady stream of authors, most recently, with notable enthusiasm, by Iain Provan. (5) On the other side there has also recently been a growing number of dissenting voices. (6)