The last of the Jewish kings of the race of David was Zedekiah. He was the son of the pious Josiah, and the uncle of the, late King Jehoiachin. When he ascended the throne, just at the verge of manhood, he seemed to give promise of his father's virtues, and of a better day for the waning fortunes of Israel. He endeavored to effect a reformation, and in a solemn, sacrificial feast induced the nobles, the court and the priesthood to covenant that they would restore to freedom the thousands of Hebrew slaves who had fallen into servitude during the troublous times, through poverty, and were held in perpetual bondage, in violation of the Jewish law. Also, his foreign policy at first was shaped according to the advice of the prophet Jeremiah, and he took a solemn oath of friendship and support to Nebuchadnezzar, in the, name of God. But in a short time there was a relapse. The emancipated Hebrews were still held in slavery; the king turned from the counsels of Jeremiah and his party to their enemies; the oath made to the king of Babylon was broken; an alliance was made with other kings; and open revolt against Nebuchadnezzar was begun. Jeremiah denounced with vigor the violation of plighted faith, and with wild imagery predicted the direful calamities that would shortly come, (Jer. 27:9-14, and 28:1-17,) but he was treated as a madman. Then the overwhelming forces of the Chaldeans came pouring into the country. Palestine was overrun, and Jerusalem itself encompassed with armies.

      1. In the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day. The tenth month of the Jewish year, which began with the first new moon after the venial equinox. As the great and memorable day of the final catastrophe approaches the historian becomes more exact in his dates, and marks not only the year, but the month and the day when the siege began and ended. The present [28] month corresponds to January. Compare Jeremiah 52:4, and Ezekiel 24:1, the two great prophets of the time, one in Jerusalem, and the other already a captive in Mesopotamia. To the latter the beginning and the end of the siege were known on the very day of their occurrence. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. The greatest of all the Babylonian kings, and one of the greatest of the ancient conquerors. We know much of his career from the exhumed records of Babylon, as well as from the book of Daniel. During the siege of Jerusalem he remained most of the time at Riblah, in northern Palestine, from whence he directed two sieges, that of Jerusalem and of Tyre. Came, he and all his host, against Jerusalem. "The nation never forgot the month and the day on which the armies of Chaldea finally invested the city. It was in January, on the tenth day of the tenth month. It was felt as the day of the deepest gloom by the Israelite exiles. (Ezekiel 24:1-27.) Round the walls were reared the gigantic mounds by which eastern armies conducted their approaches to besieged cities, and which were surmounted by forts overtopping the walls. Famine and the accompanying visitation of pestilence ravaged the crowded population within the walls. The store of bread was gradually exhausted. The nobles, with wasted skeleton forms, cared not to be recognized on the streets. The ladies of Jerusalem, in their magnificent crimson robes, might be seen sitting in despair on the piles of refuse. From these foul heaps were gathered morsels to eke out the failing supply of food." Lamentations 4:6, and Ezekiel 4:12.

      2. The city was besieged unto the tenth year of king Zedekiah. The siege lasted almost exactly a year and a half. For details examine Jeremiah 52:1-6, where is learned the day on which it ended. For all understanding of the calamities read the second and fifth chapters of Lamentations, probably written just after the siege. Jeremiah was a prisoner in the hands of his enemies, but constantly counseled by his friends, and even by the king.

      3. On the ninth day of the fourth month the famine prevailed. In the original the number is omitted, probably by the fault of the copyist. It is supplied from Jer. 52:6. The month answers to July. The city yielded to famine, an enemy more dreadful than the Chaldean soldiers. Hemmed in on all sides there was no approach for food. The greatness of the suffering may be gathered from Lamentations, Ezekiel here and there, and Joseph us. A third of the people died from famine and the pestilence that broke out. It was when the defenders were dead or weakened by starvation that the Chaldeans broke in.

      4. And the city was broken up. Rather, "broken into." A breach was made in the walls through Which the enemy entered. Josephus says that the entrance [29] was made at midnight, and Ezekiel says (9:2) that the breach was in the northern wall. On all other sides the city was defended by deep ravines, on the steep sides of which the walls stood. We quote Dean Stanley's description of the capture, based on numerous passages of Scripture and Josephus: "It was at midnight, on the ninth day of the fourth month, still kept as a fast by the Jewish nation, that the breach was made in the walls. By that time the famine had so exhausted the inhabitants that there was no further power of resistance. The entrance was effected by the northern gate. Through the darkness of the night, lit up if at all, by the nine days' moon, the Chaldean guards silently made their way from street to street, till they suddenly appeared in the center of the temple court, in the middle gateway which opened directly on the great brazen altar. Never before had such a spectacle been seen in the inviolable sanctuary of Jerusalem. The number, the titles, of the chiefs who took the chief places, were all recorded (Jer. 39:3). Two of them bore a name famous in Babylonian annals,--Nergal-Sharezar or Neriglissar.   *   *   *   *  *   Then the sleeping city woke.It might well seem as if from the desecrated temple was heard the rushing wings of the departing cherubs, as if Jehovah had indeed cast off the altar, round which these savage warriors stood, the sanctuary, which they had made their own. A clang and a cry resounded through the silent precincts of that dread hour of night as if with the tumult of the great festivals. The first victims were those who were the habitual occupants of the sacred buildings; the prophets who crowded there in the vain hope that the temple was impregnable; the nobles who there pursued their idolatrous rites; the young Levites and priests who were bound to defend the sacred shrine with their swords and lives. The virgin marble of the courts ran red with blood like a rocky wine-press with the vintage." All the men of war fled. Jer. 52:7 says: "And the city was broken into, and all the men of war fled, and went out of the city by night by the way of the gate between two walls," etc. "Before the dawn the king, with his wives and children, and the royal guard, escaped, not by any of the regular gates, but by a passage broken through a narrow alley, between two walls, at the southeast corner of the city, which the Chaldeans had not been able to completely invest. They passed out with their heads muffled, either for disguise, or to express their sense of the greatness of the calamity, and bearing on their shoulders such articles of value as they hoped to save." And the king went the way toward the plain. The plain of the lower Jordan, on the road that leads over Olivet and down to Jericho. He sought to escape into the country east of the Jordan.

      5. The army of the Chaldees *   *   * overtook him. His escape was soon discovered and he was promptly pursued. Near Jericho, in the plains below the city, he was overtaken and his army at once scattered to save itself and left him to his fate. The student must bear in mind that the Babylonians were also called Chaldees. The Mesopotamian region, from which Abraham migrated to Palestine, was called Chaldea. [30]

      6. Took the king and brought him to the king of Babylon to Riblah. Nebuchadnezzar's headquarters were now at Riblah on the northern limits of Palestine, a point from whence he could direct the two sieges of Tyre and Jerusalem. The siege of Jerusalem seems to have been under the immediate direction of a great general by the name of Nebuzar-adan, and the captain of the guard, Neriglissar. They gave judgment. Jeremiah says: "He gave judgment," referring to Nebuchadnezzar. As an absolute eastern monarch the judgment would be in his hands. Zedekiah was brought to trial as an oath-breaker and a rebel. The treatment he might expect would not be that of a captured enemy, but of a malefactor.

      7. They slew the sons of Zedekiah. Usually, in those days, the children were involved in the hapless fate of the father. They were slain before his eyes in order to add to the bitterness of his punishment. Pity was not a characteristic of an oriental monarch. And put out the eyes of Zedekiah. Not until he had seen his sons slain. Blinding was a common Eastern punishment. The Philistines blinded Sampson, an Assyrian sculpture represents Sargon blinding a prisoner, the Shahs of Persia, until a recent period, blinded their brothers, when they ascended the throne. Ezekiel declared (12:13) that Zedekiah should not "see" Babylon, and Jeremiah (32:5) declared that he should be carried there. Both predictions were fulfilled.

      8. And in the fifth month and on the seventh day. August. "It was the tenth day of the fifth month, a day memorable in Jewish annals as a day of misery, when the siege of Titus closed in like manner,--a day tragical in European annals as the tenth of August,--that Nebuzaradan, captain of the royal guard, came with orders from Nebuchadnezzar to put the finishing stroke to the work of destruction." For a month the disposition to be made of the captured city seems to have been held in suspense.

      9. And he burnt the house of the Lord. The temple, as predicted. Jer. 21:10. Every great man's house. The king's palace and the homes of the nobles. All houses of any pretension were destroyed. The hovels of the poor might have been passed over. [31]

      10. And all the army . . . brake down the walls of Jerusalem. We learn from Jeremiah, not only that the walls were leveled, but that the sepulchres of the kings were opened and the bodies thrown out to the vultures. Some of the great men were hung up on the ruined temple walls and others were carried to execution at Riblah. The spoils of the temple were carried away to Babylon.

      11. The fugitives that fell away to the king. Those who had been satisfied of the folly of resisting him, and had quitted Jerusalem before or during the siege. There were two factions during all these troublous times, one that insisted on peace with the Babylonians, and one that was for war. The remaining population of Jerusalem, the fugitives and the people of the land, were all marched to the Babylonian king, and carried into the captivity.

      12. The captain of the guard left the poor. A remnant of the nation was left in Judea, principally the poor tillers of the soil. To these were assigned certain fields and vineyards (Jer. 39:10). Some of other classes also remained, Jeremiah of his own free choice (Jer. 40:6); Gedaliah, the grandson of Shaphan the scribe, who was appointed governor, and various officers and men who hid themselves until the Chaldeans were gone (see verse 23). But the temple was gone, the city walls destroyed, the city a desolation, and the land almost a wilderness. After a splendid history of 400 years as the Jewish capital, Jerusalem was a waste, and in the ordinary course of human affairs would have disappeared from history, as Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre, Palmyra, Memphis, Thebes, and other ruined cities.

      1. The "inevitable day" comes to cities and nations. It comes when their sins cry aloud to God. When the iniquity of the Amorites was full they were destroyed. When ten righteous could not be found in Sodom, it was turned over to destruction.

      2. God is a sure defence. As long as Israel obeyed the Lord it was protected against all foes. God made his people stronger than Egypt, Philistia, or Assyria. Nebuchadnezzar would have been as clay in his hands.

      3. His word is steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience will receive a just recompense of reward. The fate of Judah was what Moses and the prophets had declared should be the result of disobedience.

      4. Sin exiles from the favor of God and the heavenly Canaan. As the Jews [32] were driven exiles into a far-off land on account of sin, so still the impenitent sinner becomes an eternal exile. There is no place for him in the heavenly Jerusalem.

      5. The Chaldean armies could never have destroyed the temple had not idolatry, division and sins prepared the way. The temple was the type of the church. Satan and infidelity would assail it in vain if all within were pure and holy. The temple is too often made a desolation by the divisions and idolatry of the worshippers.

      6. There is nothing more terrible than exile. John Howard Payne, when far away, wrote, "Home, Sweet Home." Swiss soldiers abroad have often died on account of longing for their native mountains. The Jews in Babylon could not sing because they remembered Jerusalem. But if we should be banished from the heavenly home forever! Sin exiled Israel from Judah to Babylon; the sin of rejecting Christ a second time destroyed Jerusalem and sent the people into captivity. Sin, too, may exile us from the New Jerusalem forever. Nothing unclean can enter the pearly gates.

[CLC01 28-33]