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He treated him like a prince, with a respect becoming his former state, took care both for his habit and diet: for his habit, that it should be decent, such as became a person of his quality, though a captive: for his diet, that he should have it in his court, thereby learning others that humanity which becometh all men to treat others with that are fallen under their power; that decency which becometh them as men, and as men whose circumstances have been better; doing to others as we would they should do unto us. Thus Jehoiachin’s lot was different from that of his father Jehoiakim, whose body was cast out, as we heard before; as also from that of his uncle Zedekiah, who did not only die in Babylon, but died a prisoner; his nephew Jehoiachin died there, and a captive, but not in durance.
Thee four last verses are found also 2Ki_25:27-30; and being found here in a narrative form, related as a piece of history relating a thing done not in a prophetical style, are an argument (as was said before) that this whole chapter is no part of the prophecy of Jeremiah, and probably not wrote by him; for he beginning his prophecy in the thirteenth year of Josiah, who reigned thirty-one years, and continuing it three months during the reign of Jehoahaz, and eleven years during the reign of Jehoiakim, and three months during the reign of Jehoiachin, (or Jeconiah,) and eleven years during the reign of Zedekiah, and Jehoiachin outliving the reign of Zedekiah twenty-five years, it must needs be sixty-five years and a half after the word of the Lord first came to Jeremiah before the death of Jehoiachin; so as the prophet, if he lived to that time, must be near a hundred years old, which is not probable.
Here now endeth the history of the kingdom of Judah. I shall only note the severe judgment of God upon this people, whose kingdom was made up of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and half the tribe of Manasseh. In the numbering of the persons belonging to these two tribes, Num 1, (counting half of the number of the tribe of Manasseh,) we find one hundred twenty-six thousand one hundred. Num 26, we find of them one hundred forty-eight thousand four hundred and fifty. Here, Jer_52:30, we find no more of them carried into captivity than four thousand and six hundred. From whence we may judge what a multitude of them were slain by the sword, or killed by the famine and the pestilence, though we make a great allowance for such as were left in the land to dress vineyards and to till the ground. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, to mock his messengers, despise his words, and misuse his prophets, till there be no remedy, as this people did, 2Ch_36:16.