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- [00:00]
Narrator
Previously on the Chosen People.
- [00:03]
King Niko / Pharaoh
This judgment is not the rage of a tyrant. It is the heartbreak of a father whose children have thrown themselves into danger.
- [00:13]
Narrator
You call it wrath.
- [00:15]
King Niko / Pharaoh
But what is wrath if not love? Betrayed if not justice for the oppressed?
- [00:20]
Yael Eckstein
For the children who screamed as they burned?
- [00:24]
Narrator
Then I will burn their gods before they burn my people.
- [00:29]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Lord Nico of Egypt declares, what quarrel is there, King of Judah, between you and me? I do not come against you today, but against the house with which I am at war. God has commanded me to hurry. Stop opposing God who is with me, or he will destroy you.
- [00:51]
Narrator
The battlefield was loud, which made Josiah's silence all the louder. Horses scarce screamed. Chariots thundered. Bronze clashed against bone. And then it happened. No trumpet, no flash, no divine sign. Just the cold, stupid reality of war. An archer Egyptian, probably not even aiming, let fly. The arrow soared unnoticed until it buried itself in the king's side. Josiah gasped.
- [01:28]
King Niko / Pharaoh
He tried with all his heart. But no man can save Judah.
- [01:33]
Narrator
Not yet. This is an iHeart podcast. You can make a difference in someone's.
- [01:45]
Advertiser
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- [02:13]
Yael Eckstein
Shalom, my friends. From here in the Holy Land of Israel, I'm Yael Eckstein with International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. And welcome to the chosen People. Each day we'll hear a dramatic story inspired by the Bible. Stories filled with timeless lessons of faith, love and the meaning of life. Through Israel's story, we will find this truth that we are all chosen for something great. So take a moment today to follow the podcast. If you're feeling extra grateful for these stories, we would love it if you left us a review. I read every single one of them. And if you're interested in hearing more about the prophetic life saving work of the fellowship, you can visit ifcj.org let's begin.
- [03:02]
King Niko / Pharaoh
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- [03:31]
Advertiser
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- [04:33]
Narrator
The fire had gone out. Not literally. There were still embers smoldering in the pits where idols had been smashed. But spiritually, nationally, Judah had gone cold. The Reformation. Josiah, lit like a match, had burned hot and bright and short. Now the temple smelled like smoke and silence. Revival had slipped into memory, and memory, as it always does, softened the edges and skipped the cost. Josiah, the last good king, was dead. Slain at Megiddo in a war he never should have been in. He had been killed by a pharaoh who hadn't forgotten Judah's insolence and in the vacuum, left behind. The people did what people always did. Panicked. They picked a new king. Not God's choice. Theirs. Jehoahaz. He was 23, inexperienced, insecure, and as much a puppet of public opinion as he was a prince. The scribes later tried to make it sound orderly. It wasn't. It was chaos. Wearing ceremony like a mask, the people crowned him in a rush, a warm body to sit on a cold throne. He'd barely had time to settle into the palace before the world outside started shifting again. There were rumors, war drums and movement in the south. Egypt, and King Jehoahaz wasn't ready. The throne room of Judah still smelled like death. Wilted flowers rotted beneath linen banners half lowered. Oil stained the stone from the anointing of a king who no one really believed in. Jehoahaz sat stiffly on the throne, like a child at a grown man's table. He wore the crown as if it was still debating whether to stay on his head. To his left stood Uriel, a holdover from Josiah's council. Still no word from Lachish.
- [06:53]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Nothing.
- [06:55]
Narrator
No, my king. Perhaps. Perhaps the messengers were delayed, or Pharaoh Nietzsche has chosen diplomacy.
- [07:05]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Diplomacy? After Megiddo, you think Egypt forgot how my father died?
- [07:11]
Narrator
Jehoahaz rose, hands balled into fists. For a heartbeat, he looked like his father, Josiah. Same jawline, same flare of righteous anger. But it was an echo, a mimicry, something thinner underneath.
- [07:28]
King Niko / Pharaoh
My father bled. He bled on that battlefield and he died on his feet. Niko doesn't want peace. He wants tribute. He wants to remind us of who we are. We're slaves.
- [07:44]
Narrator
Then he will come to collect. There was no warning. No battle, no siege. Just dust on the horizon and then hoofbeats. Egypt didn't challenge Jerusalem. They didn't invite them out onto the field for battle. Egypt simply entered. Jehoahaz was taken, tied and hoisted up like hunted game, paraded through the same streets that once chanted his name. No arrow was fired, no sword drawn, because no one believed he could win. Maybe not even him. The tent of Pharaoh Niko was massive, more temple than shelter. Gold inlay on the walls, incense burning in thick coils. And in the center, Niko. He didn't rise. He didn't need to. He lounged like a serpent basking after a kill, eyes half lidded, hands lazily folded. Jehoahaz, the fallen king of Judah, knelt in the dirt, wrists scraped raw, mouth dry with dust and defiance.
- [09:03]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Josiah's boy, the king who defied me. The fool who bled for it.
- [09:12]
Narrator
My father stood for the Lord.
- [09:14]
King Niko / Pharaoh
He stood for his people. And now you kneel for neither.
- [09:20]
Narrator
Niko rose, slow and deliberate, crossing the space like a priest before an altar. His voice dropped.
- [09:29]
King Niko / Pharaoh
You are not a king. You are a cautionary tale for anyone who forgets who rules the rivers and roads.
- [09:37]
Narrator
The pharaoh turned away. With a flick of his hand, soldiers dragged Jehoahaz out into the night. He would never see Jerusalem again. He would rot in Egypt, forgotten by all but the chroniclers. A week passed. Judah blinked, sighed, and bowed again. The pharaoh installed a new king. Eliakim, Josiah's other son. Older, quieter, easier to manipulate. Pharaoh renamed him Jehoiakim. Rebranded, like a piece of livestock installed by a foreign power. Eliakim accepted it all. No protest, no fire. Just a quiet obedience that felt like rot in slow motion. The throne room no longer smelled like mourning. Now it smelled like compromise. Incense, fresh cut cedar. The kind of sanitized normalcy that makes you forget the cost. Chains from Jehoahaz capture still hung in the corner. No one had removed them. Maybe they were waiting for another king to earn them. Jehoiakim stood before the throne, freshly robed still and silent. Uriel the steward approached, slower this time, cautious, like a man checking if the ice would hold. My king.
- [11:11]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Don't call me that. Not until I've earned it. They wanted a king like Josiah. But the fire's gone. All that's left is smoke and ashes. Ashes don't rule. They just. They just remind you of what you lost.
- [11:29]
Narrator
They still had the temple, but it was hollow. They still had a king, but he bowed to Pharaoh, not the Lord. They still had peace, but it was the peace of the graveyard. And somewhere far beneath the temple, stones in scrolls no one read anymore. The ink of the covenant began to blur, not from age or neglect, but from the tears of God Himself. Before Jehoiakim raised walls, stationed guards, or reformed the courts, he built a palace. It rose like a curse against everything his father had stood for. The palace was lined with foreign cedar, draped in Assyrian silks and paid for with blood taxes carved from the backs of the poor. It wasn't built to protect Judah. It was built to impress Egypt. A spectacle, a monument to ego. And somewhere, in a cramped stone chamber near the Temple Mount, a gaunt, wild eyed man with ink stained fit fingers began to write about it all. His name was Jeremiah, and he had already seen the end. The palace hall was absurd. Vaulted ceilings, imported mosaics, torchlight flickering off cedar walls brought in at cost from Lebanon. It was stupid. Ill advised. Jehoiakim lounged like a man allergic to responsibility, one leg slung over the side of his chair, a goblet in hand. He ruled not like a son of David, but like a son of Pharaoh. Egypt's leash was still fresh around his neck, Babylon's shadow rising on the horizon. He wore power like it was inherited linen, wrinkled too big and badly stained. Servants moved like ghosts. No one made eye contact. A thin man in court robes, an advisor, gaunt and trembling, stepped forward with the posture of someone who hated what he was about to say. My Lord, a message has arrived from the prophet Jeremiah.
- [13:56]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Ah, the weeping madman. What's he ranting about this time? Fire, famine, frost.
- [14:06]
Narrator
He. He wrote it down this time. A scroll delivered to the scribes this morning. Baruch, the scribe read it publicly at the temple gates. That got his attention. Jehoiakim sat up slowly.
- [14:21]
King Niko / Pharaoh
So now the prophet fancies himself a poet. Well, let's hear the verse. Bring me the scroll. If I'm to be damned, I want the courtesy of knowing why.
- [14:33]
Narrator
A hearth fire snapped in the corner, the only sound besides the slow unrolling of parchment. The king sat in a heavy robe Face half lit by firelight. The words of the prophet Jeremiah. Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor serve for nothing and does not pay his wages.
- [15:01]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Oh, good. A wage complaint from heaven. How very revolutionary. Go on, go on.
- [15:09]
Narrator
Do you think you are a king because you excel in cedar? Did not your father, Josiah, do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him?
- [15:22]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Enough.
- [15:23]
Narrator
Jehoiakim's fingers twitched, his jaw clenched. That name, Josiah carried more weight than he'd ever admit. Not because he loved his father, but because he could never measure up. He stood and ripped the scroll from the scribe's hands. Without ceremony, he strove to the fire. The parchment tore like bread in his hands, and he fed it to the flame, piece by piece.
- [15:53]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Let the gods of Babylon and Egypt see how Judah handles prophecy. No more ghosts, no more guilt. We write the story now.
- [16:05]
Narrator
The last scrap curled in the flames. Ash danced in the air, but the words. The words did not die burning. Prophecy doesn't erase it. The scroll is a vessel, not the voice. The word of the Lord doesn't die in flame. It steps through it. And what walked out of that fire wasn't silence. It was war. A name rising like smoke over the eastern hills. Nebuchadnezzar. The moon shimmered over the polished obsidian walls of Babylon's war room. The air smelled of oil and steel. At the center of the war room stood Nebuchadnezzar. He was a statue of a man. No, he was more than a man. He was something cut out of myth, a titan. Not in stature, although he was broad, but in presence. He was a man out of mythology, designed as a weapon of conquest and judgment. His eyes burned with mathematics. Distance, yield, casualties, control. He did not pace. He did not shout. His voice didn't need volume, it had weight. A general moved beside him, hesitant, holding a map of Judah, like a man offering a rabbit to a lion. Judah's king bows to Pharaoh.
- [17:45]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Then he'll bow again, this time to me.
- [17:50]
Narrator
Might be messy. Judah gives tribute to Pharaoh, pays him well.
- [17:55]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Then we collect interest. Every coin he paid Pharaoh, he now owes me, plus blood.
- [18:05]
Narrator
Send the merchants first.
- [18:07]
King Niko / Pharaoh
We'll send tributes and treaties as well. I want them to have the illusion of choice. No fire yet. Threats by time. Let them hope it's enough.
- [18:22]
Narrator
Let them feel the noose before it.
- [18:24]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Tightens around their necks.
- [18:27]
Narrator
Ah, yes. No fire. Let them smell the smoke. Precisely. I want their king to taste Peter every time he swallows. Months had passed the palace of Judah hadn't changed. The cedar still whispered of compromise. But the mood had rotted. Jehoiakim now knelt before emissaries of Babylon. Crown, crooked, hands trembling. Behind him, chests overflowed with tribute. Silver, gold, the temple's wealth hemorrhaged into foreign hands. The lead envoy unfurled a scroll. A treaty. Naught of partnership, of submission. Jehoiakim signed it. His voice cracked as he said the words.
- [19:19]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Long live Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.
- [19:25]
Narrator
He thought it would buy peace. It bought time. Time for Babylon to sharpen its teeth, time for God's patience to run out. Because the Lord doesn't forget. Not the labor stolen to build a palace. Not the scroll that burned, not the silence that followed. And the prophet Jeremiah sat hunched over a new scroll somewhere deep beneath Jehoiakim in the palace cellars. Chained to the wall, his arthritic hands shook. He looked like a man who had survived an apocalypse no one else noticed. He continued to write words of warning, words of judgment, words of words of hope amidst love. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future. His words were for the people of Israel, although the promises of hope would fall on deaf ears until much later, when the walls of Jerusalem crumbled and the temple burned to ash. The siege arrived like a slow, mounting tide. King Nebuchadnezzar was patient, inevitable. Babylon didn't roar in. They waited. Their war machines crouched in the dark like wooden beasts, massive and mute, groaning only when fed by the hands of soldiers. Every night they inched closer, suffocating the city. Inside the walls, food vanished alongside hope. Barley turned to dust. Water was rationed in thimbles. Bread crumbled into ash between trembling fingers. Rats became currency. Hebrew mothers, once noble and proud, rocked their children with cracked lips and empty breasts. Some stopped singing lullabies. Others kept singing long after their children had stopped breathing. The marketplace was a graveyard. The temple courts fell silent. Sacrifice had nothing left to offer. Their prayers fell like broken arrows, too blunt to pierce heaven. Some whispered to God. Others said he was gone. Both answers felt like a curse. The gates of Jerusalem didn't break open. They were opened quietly, willfully. There comes a point when a city stops fighting, not out of cowardice, but out of exhaustion. King Jehoiachin, son of the late Jehoiakim, emerged wearing sackcloth beneath his royal robes. Barefoot, crownless, he walked toward the Babylonian army. Alone. He did not weep. He did not resist. He simply surrendered. King Nebuchadnezzar trotted forward, mounted upon his dark steed. His breath rose in the chill like a dragon's breath.
- [22:49]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Take them.
- [22:51]
Narrator
And then the screaming began. The army of Babylon was released like wolves. Every corner of the city was ra. Men were killed, priests were put on pikes, and the monuments to Judah's former greatness were burnt to a crisp. The work of Solomon. Ashes, the legacy of David rubble. Nebuchadnezzar knew better than to simply subjugate a people. He wanted them to lose all sense of culture and history. He wanted their heritage diluted and their heroes forgotten. In the south, where the lower priests and their families lived in worn brick homes, fire erupted. Soldiers slashed away at the priests, dragging the young men into carts. A boy no older than 15 was dragged by his hair through the courtyard. His mother clawed at the dirt, lungs emptying. Nebuchadnezzar watched it all, still unmoved.
- [23:59]
King Niko / Pharaoh
That's enough.
- [24:01]
Narrator
Leave Judah intact for now.
- [24:05]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Guards, find another of David's line to replace the king.
- [24:10]
Narrator
One who knows how to bow is one. His name is Mattaniah.
- [24:16]
King Niko / Pharaoh
Not anymore. Call him Zedekiah.
- [24:21]
Narrator
The name meant the Lord is righteous. History would remember it as irony, a final candle in a temple filled with ash. Judah still breathed, but it bled with every exhale. And somewhere in the temple, once the footstool of the Most High, the smoke no longer rose because the covenant had been broken not just once, but a thousand times. But the God of Jacob was still watching, waiting.
- [25:03]
King Niko / Pharaoh
You can make a difference in someone's life, including your own, with a job in home care. These jobs offer flexible schedules, health care, retirement options and free training. They also provide paid time off and opportunities for overtime. Visit oregonhomecarejobs.com to learn more and apply. That's oregonhomecarejobs.com.
- [25:34]
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- [26:34]
Yael Eckstein
If your faith has been kindled by this podcast and it has affected your life, we'd love it if you left a review. We read them and me personally, I cherish them. As you venture forth boldly and faithfully, I leave you with the Biblical Blessing from Numbers 6. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine upon you. May he be gracious to you. May the Lord turn His face towards you and give you peace.
- [27:16]
Narrator
Amen. You can listen to the Chosen People with Yael Eckstein ad free by downloading and subscribing to the pray.com app today. This pray.com production is only made possible by our dedicated team of creative talents. Steve Cattina, Max Bard, Zach Schellewager and Ben Gammon are the executive producers of the Chosen People with Yael Eckstein. Edited by Alberto Avila Narrated by Paul Coltofianu. Characters are voiced by Jonathan Cotton, Aaron Salvato, Sarah Seltz, Mike Reagan, Stephen Ringwald, Sylvia zaradoc, Thomas Copeland Jr, Rosanna Pilcher and Mitch Leschinsky and the opening prayer is voiced by John Moore. Music by Andrew Morgan Smith. Written by Aaron Salvato, Bree Rosalie and Chris Baig. Special thanks to Bishop Paul Lanier, Robin Van Etten, Caleb Burrows, Jocelyn Fuller, Robert, Rabbi Edward Abramson and the team at International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. You can hear more Pray.com productions on the Pray.com app available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. If you enjoyed the Chosen People with Yael Eckstein, please rate and leave a review.
- [28:30]
King Niko / Pharaoh
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- [29:06]
Narrator
Well, almost. Almost anything.
- [29:08]
King Niko / Pharaoh
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- [30:23]
Advertiser
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- [31:21]
Narrator
This is an iHeart podcast.