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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - 2 Chronicles 36:11 - 36:23
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Zedekiah's Reign and the end of Judah
v. 11. Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign, and reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. Cf 2Ki_24:18 to 2Ki_25:21; Jeremiah 52. All the nobles, artisans, and craftsmen of the people having been removed, there remained only the laboring class and the farmers and gardeners.
v. 12. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, his God, persisting in idolatry in the face of the Lord's punishment upon his predecessors, and humbled not himself before Jeremiah, the prophet, speaking from the mouth of the Lord. Cf Jeremiah 37.
v. 13. And he also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God, taking a solemn oath of loyalty from him. wherefore his league with Pharaohhophrah of Egypt included the crime of perjury; but he stiffened his neck and hardened his heart from turning unto the Lord God of Israel. That is the height of God's judgment upon man when He permits self-hardening to take place and delivers man to his own evil way of thinking.
v. 14. Moreover, all the chief of the priests and the people transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen, thus agreeing with the king in his idolatrous practices; and polluted the house of the Lord which He had hallowed in Jerusalem, by heathen sacrifices and customs.
v. 15. And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by His messengers, especially the prophets Isaiah, Micah, Habakkuk, and Jeremiah, rising up betimes and sending, that is, constantly and earnestly, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling-place, wishing to save the people from the punishment which they were inviting upon their own heads.
v. 16. But they mocked the messengers of God, as in the case of Jeremiah, Jer_5:12-13, and despised His words, and misused His prophets, Jer_32:3, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, like a fire eating through into a high flame, till there was no remedy, till the state of affairs was past healing.
v. 17. Therefore He brought upon them the king of the Chaldees, Nebuchadnezzar undertaking a third siege of Jerusalem, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, so called because they had profaned the Temple by their idolatry, and had no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man, or him that stooped for age; He gave them all into his hand, namely, when the city was captured after a siege lasting a year and a half, in the year 587 B. C.
v. 18. And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, those still remaining after the first sacking of the city, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, with the many presents of consecration, and the treasures of the king and of his princes, the entire contents of the royal treasury; all these he brought to Babylon.
v. 19. And they burned the house of God, for the floors and the inner walls of the Temple were of wood, and therefore very inflammable, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof, all those of value which they could not well transport to Babylon.
v. 20. And them that had escaped from the sword, during the siege and at the capture of the city, carried he away to Babylon, where they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia, 2Ki_25:9; Jer_39:8; Jer_27:7,
v. 21. to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths; the Sabbatic years, as seasons of rest for all classes of people and for the land itself having been ignored for centuries, the Lord was now giving the land lest, Lev_26:34; for as long as she lay desolate, she kept Sabbath, for a mere handful of people remained in the land after Nebuchadnezzar's campaign, and many of these went down into Egypt in the course of time, to fulfil threescore and ten years. It seems that no attempt was made to colonize the land in the interval, and that Judah was actually desolate for seventy years.
v. 22. Now, in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, Jer_25:12-13, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, the Babylonian empire having meanwhile passed into the power of the Persian empire, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying,
v. 23. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and He hath charged me to build Him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. This had been revealed to Cyrus either directly or by the mouth of some prophet. Who is there among you of all His people? The Lord, His God, be with him, and let him go up. It was a free invitation calling upon the Jews to return to the land of their fathers. Note the kindness and mercy of the Lord in reinstating a remnant of His people in their country, since the Redeemer was to come out of Zion, born in Bethlehem from the stock of David.