Week 23 2 Chronicles 36
The snippet-account of Jehoiakim is in 2 Chronicles 36:5-8 (4 verses).
The other short version is in 2 Kings 23:36-24:5 (7 verses).
The passages don’t give me much to go on but the key facts about the third last king are:
Jehoiakim was 25 years old when he became king
He reigned for eleven years
During his reign Judah was taken over by Babylon and Jehoiakim was exiled to Babylon
He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight.
It’s pretty meager information to go on. That’s why Jeremiah’s prophecies add some useful data. For instance Jeremiah told Jehoiakim you are full of selfish greed and dishonesty. You murder the innocent, oppress the poor, and reign ruthlessly.
Jeremiah also told the story of a prophet named Uriah who forecast doom against Judah. Jehoiakim didn’t like what he heard and tracked down Uriah and killed him.
And on another occasion Jeremiah recorded all his prophecies and sent the scroll to Jehoiakim to read. The king’s reaction was to cut the scroll into little pieces and incinerate them.
I don’t know if there’s any way to fairly compare Jehoahaz & Jehoiakim. They both did evil in the sight of the Lord. The big difference is that Jehoiakim had about forty-times more time to do his evil than Three-Month Jehoahaz. Does that make Jehoiakim qualitatively worse? Not necessarily. About all I can say now is that Jehoiakim got more chances to practice his evil. And he took them.
Note: quote from 2 Kings 23:37 & Jeremiah 22:17 (NLT). And see Jeremiah stories in 26:20-23 & 36:1-26.