Jeremiah 29:21-22

Ahab the son of Kolaiah... — We know nothing, beyond what is here recorded, of either of these prophets. They would seem to have been the leaders of the party of revolt, and to have been conspicuous, like their brethren at Jerusalem (Jeremiah 23:14), for base and profligate lives. The record of the prediction of their fate implies its fulfilment. They were punished by the Chaldæan king as traitors and rebels, and were burnt alive. The history of the “three children” in Daniel 3:6; Daniel 3:20, shows that this was a sufficiently familiar punishment. A strange legend in the Targum of Rabbi Joseph on 2 Chronicles 28:3 records that the future high-priest Joshua, the son of Jozedek, was thrown into the furnace with them, and came out uninjured (Smith’s Dict, of the Bible, Art. “Zedekiah”). We may, perhaps, trace the source of the legend in the figurative language of Zechariah 3:2, “Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?” The name Kolaiah (which admits of being derived from a verb meaning “roasting”) possibly suggested the cruel mockery of a punishment which turned it into an omen of the false prophet’s fate.