Curse of Jeconiah

Arthur C. Custance (http://custance.org) writes:

Concerning the curse of Jeconiah, the death of Salathiel this blood line terminated. In the principle of the Levirate (Deut. 25:5,6), it became incumbent upon Pedaiah, the deceased Salathiel's (step) brother, to take his widow and raise up seed through her who would not therefore be of Salathiel's blood line but would be constituted legally as Salathiel's son through whom the title would pass to his descendants. The son of this Levirate union was Zerubbabel. In Matthew 1:12 and Luke 3:27 Zerubbabel is listed legally as Salathiel's son: but in 1 Chronicles 3:19 he is listed as the son of Pedaiah by actual blood relationship.

We thus have a remarkable chain of events. Jehoiakim has a son, Jechonias, who has a son, Salathiel, who by Levirate custom has a son named Zerubbabel. This son, Zerubbabel, has no blood line connection whatever with Jechonias, for he has no blood relationship with Salathiel. The blood relationship of Zerubbabel is with Pedaiah, and through Pedaiah with Pedaiah's mother, and through this mother with Neri. Thus Neri begat a grandson, Salathiel, through his daughter; and Salathiel "begets" a son, Zerubbabel, through Pedaiah.

The blood line thus passes through Zerubbabel: but so does the title also. The former passes via Pedaiah's mother, the latter passes through Salathiel's father. And though this mother and this father were also man and wife, the blood line stopped with Salathiel who literally died childless. It is necessary to emphasize this word literally, for it appears that it was literally true. Jeremiah 22:30 had predicted that Jechonias would also die "childless"-but we are reasonably sure that this was not literally the case, for he had a son Salathiel whom we cannot otherwise account for. But Jechonias' subsequent history tells us the sense in which childlessness was to be applied to him.