I think the best fix that aligns with our current tests would be:

• Throw the QueryException internally
• createQuery() translates it to an IllegalArgumentException

Users of the API can then use:

catch ( IllegalArgumentException e ) {
  if ( QueryException.class.isInstance( e.getClause() ) ) {
    // do stuff
  }
}

This keeps with 5.2 behavior but at least allows this use case to be easily be handled.