136 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTShis wages. Hebrew po'al6. The term pt'i'al usually means "work, deed" (Isa
1:31) but here denotes "wages for work" (cf. Job 7:2). On the pointing, see
GKC §93q.- Who says, 'I will build for myself a house of dimensions, with spacious
upper rooms.'The "woe" of v 13 does double duty: The intended meaning here
is then, "Woe to him who says .... " The main question regarding this confi-
dent boast is whether the king simply intends to build, has recently begun
building, or has now finished building his palatial house. The LXX has
okodomesas seauto, "you have built for yourself," which eliminates the boast
and begins the direct address here instead of in v 15. This reading also assumes
that the palace is already built. In addition, the LXX omits ha)omer ("who
says"), which is present in Aq, Symm, and Theod. The MT reading is to be
preferred. A royal palace was discovered in the 1950s by Aharoni at Ramat
RaJ:iel, south of Jerusalem on the road to Bethlehem, and the suggestion was
made that this may have been Jehoiakim's royal palace (Aharoni 1961;
NEAEHL 4: 1261-63). Aharoni thought originally that this palace was built by
Uzziah in the eighth century B.C., but he later abandoned the date for one in
the late seventh century (1961: 118). This palace, still standing in 597 B.C., was
destroyed at the same time Jerusalem was destroyed. But B. Mazar (1988: 4)
has argued that Jehoiakim's palace, which he believes was a summer resi-
dence, is likely to have been built in the new "Upper City" of Jerusalem, the
Mishneh, an expansion of the city on the western hill occurring during Heze-
kiah's time. P. J. King (1993: 123-24) also thinks that Jehoiakim's palace must
have been in Jerusalem.
It has commonly been supposed (Duhm; Weiser; Bright 1981: 325; Thomp-
son; Boadt; Jones) that Jehoiakim managed this building project in spite of the
heavy tribute imposed on him by Neco. The tribute, as reported in 2 Kgs
23:33-3 5, was 100 talents of silver and one talent of gold, borne entirely by "the
people of the land." Malamat (1975: 127 n. 8), however, says that this amount
was relatively low compared with the 1,000 talents of silver imposed on Mena-
hem by Pul of Assyria (2 Kgs 15: 19), or the 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of
gold imposed on Hezekiah by Sennacherib (2 Kgs 18: 14-16), the latter requir-
ing the king to dig deep into both the Temple and the palace treasuries. Neco
is thought to have imposed the lower tribute in exchange for Jehoiakim's loy-
alty, which he doubtless received. Because of this low tribute, requiring no out-
lay of funds by Jehoiakim himself, the king early on had money enough in the
coffers to build or enlarge his palace.
a house of dimensions. I.e., a house with large dimensions. Hebrew bet mid-
d6t. We might say today, "a house of square footage," meaning extensive square
footage. Compare )anse midd6t, "men of (huge) dimensions," in Num 13:32.
The subsequent adjective, "spacious" (meruwwal;zfm), is a double-duty modi-
fier covering "dimensions" (D. N. Freedman).
with spacious upper rooms. On the "upper rooms," see v 13 above. The Pual
masculine participle meruwwal;zfm ("spacious") is odd after a feminine plural
noun, but the basic meaning is not in doubt. There is little support for a re-