Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/467



FINAL CONFLICT AND DELIVERANCE 451

" the mourning of Hadadrimmon 1 in the valley of Megid- don."

The reference can be nothing else than to the national mourning over the pious young king Josiah, who was slain by Pharaoh Necho " in the valley of Megiddon," as recorded in 2 Kings xxiii. 29, 30, and more fully in 2 Chron. xxxv. 20-27. His death was the greatest sorrow which had till then befallen Judah, inasmuch as he was " the last hope of the declining Jewish kingdom, and in his death the last gleam of the sunset of Judah faded into night." In that great mourning for Josiah the prophet Jeremiah took part, and wrote dirges for it (2 Chron. xxxv. 25), and the national lamentations over him continued and became " an ordinance " in Israel, which survived the seventy years

1 "Hadadrimmon" was, according to Jerome, a city near Jezreel ("in the valley of Megiddo"), which in his day was called Maximianopolis, and has been identified by others with the site of the modern village of Rammaneh, or Rumani, in the same " valley," or " plain " ; but the identification is doubtful.

Hitzig, who first held that the reference might be to some mourning for Ahaziah, king of Judah, who was wounded by Jehu when the latter rebelled against Joram, and who fled to Megiddo, and died there (2 Kings ix. 27), afterwards, in his commentary, propounded the still more absurd view, which, however, has been adopted by some modern writers, i.e., that the mourning of Hadadrimmon refers to the mourning for the god Adonis, who, according to mythology, was slain by a boar, and whose orgies probably had their origin in Phoenicia.

A plausible ground for the conjecture that Hadadrimmon, instead of being a place-name, might rather be the name of the object of mourning that is, the god Adonis is advanced by these critics, namely, that according to 2 Chron. xxxv., Josiah, though mortally wounded in Megiddo, was brought to Jerusalem, where he died, and that the great mourning for him took place there.

But to this it has been properly replied that " the mourning may be considered as having commenced at Hadadrimmon, where the good king received his deadly wound, even though the great national mourning took place in Jerusalem, whither his body was brought from the fatal field."

Moreover, as it has been suggested, "the mourning of Hadadrimmon" may be explained as " the mourning over Hadadrimmon," i.e., over the national calamity which took place there.

Other suggestions such as that of Pressel, who considers that the mourning refers to the wailing of the mother of Sisera over her son, the great chieftain of the Canaanites, who was slain by Jael not far from Megiddo are not worth examining. It is quite wonderful to what absurd theories and conjectures some scholars will resort when the simple and obvious sense of these prophecies is passed over.