Much of Hippolytus’ Commentary on Daniel focuses on the persecution of Daniel and his companions and how this relates to the Church. However, at the start of his work Hippolytus seems to enjoy describing the background behind the Book of Daniel and explaining some of its difficulties. Last week he spoke of why the Book of Susannah was out of chronological order, this week he will speak about geneaological matters:
For these are the five sons of the blessed Josiah [the King of Judah]: Jehoahaz, Eliakem who was also called Jehoiakim, Johanan, Zedekiah who was also called Jeconiah, and Shallum…Therefore scripture describes these things this way so that it may signal the occurrence of the captivity of the people, while Jehoiakim, the son of Eliakim who was also called Jehoiakim , was deported and those with him, the three youths together with Daniel were taken. Thus Jehoiakim was the husband of Susanna.
Here Hippolytus argues that Jehoiakim, the son of the last king of Judah (also named Jehoiakim who’s other name was Eliakem) was Susannah’s husband. None of this is explicit in scripture, but Hippolytus does make an interesting point. In my old Brenton translation of the Septuagint I see that Jehoiakim is variously spelled Ιωακιμ, Ιωαχιμ, and Ιωακειμ (Daniel 1:1; 2 Kings 24:8,12 2 Chron. 36:10 ) Hippolytus uses one spelling for all of them (as far as I can tell).
Hippolytus seems to have had a real interest in chronology and genealogy, which makes sense given that he wrote an entire book on them The Chronicon. Next week we’ll finish off this genealogical stuff with Hippolytus’ rather intriguing discussion on why the genealogies in Matthew and Luke leave out some people mentioned in Daniel, and Hippolytus’ theory on how Jeremiah, Susannah, and others were all related to each other.