Pericles closed the office door behind him and replaced the wet newspapers. He would have to find a plumber soon, he thought. But one he could trust. Not easy.

With a casual flick he turned on the computer. Another note to self. Get hold of a permanent flick. More reliable. More... trustworthy.

The green glow of the screen reflected off his bacon sandwich, and onto the polystyrene cup. He shut his eyes while drinking the coffee. Much safer.

Should be able to decipher this one more quickly he thought. The Hipper reference in the previous message was easy enough, even though he hadn't actually recommended a medal. But this would be tougher, he knew.

What is he trying to tell me, he muttered. Everyone knows that Doris Day never sang Mockingbird Hill. It wasn't that she particularly disliked the song, but it always gave her indigestion. So did moules marinières. She didn't sing that either. Not after Cincinnatti, anyway.

Perhaps the message was an anagram of the Migil Five? Evil Figim? No, couldn't be. Figim disappeared in Cairo back in '44. Maybe "Doris Day" was a red herring. Hardly likely, considering her attitude towards moules marinières.

Pericles sighed. Gumpp was besting him once again. What would they say at the club? Was he over the hill. Mockingbird Hill...? No. Too obvious.

Then he spotted it. Gumpp knew full well that Pericles could not possibly be Slutskin. Non-Fermi conductors were such old hat, no-one worth their elephant stamp would touch them.

So it had to be - yes, that was it.

It was as he had suspected, an anagram.

But what sort of insults are "K"?

It seems Pericles may have seen in the question posed in an earlier post as to Nehushta's 'status' after the putative death of Hamutal, and its rhetorical answer, a satirically circumlocutory identification of her as effectively a court prostitute. The very silence of the scriptures with respect to her relationship with Eliakim-Jehoiakim is testimony as to its propriety, for Josiah still lived and reigned when that relationship commenced. Had it been anything other than something fully sanctioned by the law it would have been utterly scandalous. Scripture is normally forthrightly condemnatory of scandalous behaviour wherever and whenever found, without respect to rank or reputation. Nothing is said, so it has to be concluded the relationship was accorded the respectability of levirate marriage.

Archaeological evidence, in the form of the jar seals marked "Eliakim assistant to Jehoiachin" found near places where Eliakim-Jehoiakim had building projects, and dating from around this time (but seemingly before he had been placed on the throne), is supportive of such a levirate relationship having been publicly recognized from the outset.

The only problem with Jehoiachin's levirate status as heir to Johanan, was that it was not recognised by Nebuchadnezzar, who simply thought of him as Jehoiakim's son because Nehushta was (levirately) married to him. After the death of Jehoiakim (Josephus records Nebuchadnezzar as having had him killed) in unclear circumstances, Nebuchadnezzar had second thoughts as to the wisdom of Jehoiachin being allowed to remain on the throne in the event he came to resent his 'father's' having been killed. Shortly after, Nebuchadnezzar deposed Jehoiachin and took him as a prisoner to Babylon.

This brings us in a roundabout way to the matter of the date of accession of Jehoiachin, and it is with respect to this that we encounter a seemingly direct contradiction in the scriptural record. II Chronicles 36:9 states that Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign. II Kings 24:8 states that he was eighteen years old when he began to reign. The two references can't both be right, or can they?

During the contemplation time Forrest was allowing for his last question, he had been attempting to penetrate the enigma that Pericles had left him with. Forrest had come to the conclusion that Pericles was actually, secretly, a fellow Linux user, and of the K Desktop Environment to boot.

What else could Pericles enigmatic references to K words mean? Just about all of the applications in KDE used the naming convention of some smart arsed nerd name for the application preceeded by an upper case K, as for example, in Kate, or K Snapshot, a screenshot program. But there were just so many of them in the open source digital world that references could easily be confusing.

Forrest tried Googling 'K Word'. This didn't seem to get him definitively anywhere, which was really hardly surprising, for Microsoft probably had registered 'K Word' as a trademark. In the process Forrest did find an interesting etymology for the F-word, here: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-f-word.htm ; not all that far off-topic either! Forrest had even heard of a user-interactive relational database biographical/historical program about the late former President of the USA Dwight Eisenhower, called, appropriately enough, K Ike. But he had never used it.

A search for K Ike was inconclusive, but at the top of the page Google asked Forrest 'did you mean kike?' Forrest didn't, but clicked on it anyway. Bingo! Made the 'insult' connection!

Now Forrest may not have been the smartest man on the forum, but he knew what wasn't right. Here he was expounding upon Jewish conventions surrounding levirate marriage, and the scriptural genealogies of kings, and he was not about to alienate half his potential readership just to prove he had penetrated Pericles' enigma. Those whom it may have concerned would have to do their own googling and insult themselves! Doing it for them just wasn't Kosher.

"Should have picked up on that bacon sandwich comment", thought Forrest to himself. "Some people should be more observant, particularly after sunset on Fridays", Forrest pontificated with self-satisfaction.

II Chronicles 36:9 states that Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and that he reigned in Jerusalem three months and ten days. II Kings 24:8 states that Jehoiachin was 18 years old when he began to reign, and that he reigned in Jerusalem three months. Another writer has remarked that "It is a singular testimony to the fidelity of the Hebrew custodians of the text that this apparent discrepancy is left without a trace of attempt at correction.".

Once the status of Jehoiachin as the levirate heir to Johanan is accepted, everything makes sense. As the levirate heir to Johanan, the first son of Josiah, Jehoiachin was Josiah's lawful successor. If Jehoiachin's age at the time of Eliakim-Jehoiakim's death is accepted as being 18, and the length of the reigns that intervened between that time and the death of Josiah are subtracted from it, it should be possible to work out what Jehoiachin's age could have been at Josiah's death.

Subtracting 11 years (the stated duration of Eliakim-Jehoiakim's reign) plus three months (the stated duration of Shallum-Jehoahaz reign) from 18 would leave Jehoiachin as being, on the face of it, only seven years old at Josiah's death. If the Hebrew conventions relating to the reckoning of regnal years, as distinct from calendar years, are applied to the statements in the text, it is quite possible for Jehoiachin to have been both eight years old at the death of Josiah, and 18 years old at the death of Jehoiakim.

What may be seen as the apparent discrepancy in the duration of Jehoiachin's reign is easily explained when it is recognised that the chronicler has simply added the ten days that had immediately followed the death of Josiah before the installation of Shallum-Jehoahaz upon the throne, which ten days without doubt in law belonged to Jehoiachin, to the three months eleven years later for which Jehoiachin without question reigned.

Jehoiachin was thus eight years old upon accession. The same age as Josiah at his.

Now it has to be granted that there is no express scriptural statement that it was ten days between the demise of Josiah and the (unlawful) installation upon the throne of Shallum-Jehoahaz in the place of Jehoiachin, the rightful heir. It can be reliably inferred, however.

First, there would have been the prescribed seven days' mourning associated with the funeral of Josiah, before any other activities, such as popular movements to install Shallum-Jehoahaz, could have occurred. Jeremiah is highly likely to have, by his very presence, acted as a catalyst in ensuring the requirements of the law in these respects were fully observed.

That does not account for the additional three days required to extend the period to one of ten days. It is not difficult to explain, however, should it have been that Josiah was shot and killed by the archer on a Friday on the field of battle near Megiddo, lay in state in camp for all of the following sabbath, to be only taken to Jerusalem on the following Sunday for the commencement of the funeral and seven day mourning period. The mourning period would have in that circumstance ended on a sabbath, with the following Sunday being the day upon which the deposition and unlawful installation would have taken place. In total, ten days, just as the chronicler says.

All in all, Jehoiachin's levirate status under the law doesn't seem to have done him much good, with his having been rejected by his own subjects almost immediately upon accession, followed by having to live in the shadow of his supplanters for the next 11 or so years, to then reign in his own right for only three months, after which was to follow 37 years of imprisonment!

Just to stay on topic, it would thus appear, that if scriptural example is anything to go by, use of sperm from a brother-in-law in insemination (artificial or otherwise) of the spouse of an infertile man, or of an otherwise childless woman, might not necessarily be such an outstandingly good proposal these days.

Moving right along to the end of Jehoiachin's imprisonment, we encounter another seeming contradiction in the scriptural record. Jeremiah 52:31 states that Jehoiachin was released from prison in Babylon on the 25th day of the 12th month of the 37th year of his captivity. II Kings 25:27 gives the date for the same event as being the 27th day of the 12th month.

A resolution of this contradiction is achieved if the process of release from prison and public elevation was to have occurred over three days. One chronicler may have chosen the commencement of the process as its date, while another focussed upon its completion as its date. It is not hard to imagine that a sabbath may have intervened between the release and elevation, a sabbath respected by the Babylonian court to the end that the public ceremonies were held over until Jehoiachin was free in conscience to participate fully in them.

The chapter and verse numbers (those of the King James, or Authorized version of 1611) of the reference in II Kings are curiously interesting in themselves.

A very strong case can be made that the three days over which the release and elevation of Jehoiachin occurred were, day for day, 49 years to the day after the three days upon which Josiah was killed, lay in State, and was buried.

William Whiston, the translator of Josephus, in his Appendix to Josephus, makes the statement in Dissertation 5 that ".....during the Babylonian captivity, about whose 44th year fell the death of Nebuchadnezzar, and a year of Jubilee also." If this is correct, allowing that Jehoiachin went into captivity in the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar, counting forward to Nebuchadnezzar's death gives around 36 years. The scriptural record says 37. Twelve years before Jehoiachin's imprisonment, maybe less depending upon the effects of the regnal reckonings involved in calculating it, it would have been a Jubilee year. That could well have meant that Josiah died in a Jubilee year.

Who or what is identified by all this, BOAZ_David?