2 Chronicles 36:16

But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words,.... Which was the treatment Jeremiah and Ezekiel frequently met with: and misused his prophets; imprisoned them, as Micaiah and Jeremiah were: until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people; which burned like fire in his breast, and broke out to the consumption of them: till there was no remedy; or healing of them; there was no reclaiming or recovering of them, no bringing them to repentance, and no pardon for them.

36:1-21 The ruin of Judah and Jerusalem came on by degrees. The methods God takes to call back sinners by his word, by ministers, by conscience, by providences, are all instances of his compassion toward them, and his unwillingness that any should perish. See here what woful havoc sin makes, and, as we value the comfort and continuance of our earthly blessings, let us keep that worm from the root of them. They had many times ploughed and sowed their land in the seventh year, when it should have rested, and now it lay unploughed and unsown for ten times seven years. God will be no loser in his glory at last, by the disobedience of men. If they refused to let the land rest, God would make it rest. What place, O God, shall thy justice spare, if Jerusalem has perished? If that delight of thine were cut off for wickedness, let us not be high-minded, but fear.

2 Chronicles 36:16 . But they mocked the messengers of God — Of which see instances Ezekiel 11:3 ; Ezekiel 20:49 . Misused his prophets — Imprisoning and persecuting them as they did Jeremiah; or, seduced themselves by his prophets; that is, by the prophecies of his prophets, which they perverted, or misconstrued. An eminent instance of which we have in this, that because Jeremiah prophesied that Zedekiah should be led to Babylon, ( Jeremiah 32:5 ,) and Ezekiel, that he should not see Babylon, ( Ezekiel 12:13 ,) and therefore they believed neither, as the Hebrew writers relate. Till there was no remedy — Because the people would not repent, and God would not pardon them without repentance.

16 . mocked the messengers ] Jeremiah was imprisoned, beaten, and threatened with death, Urijah ( Jeremiah 26:20-23 ) was put to death. Of the fate of Habakkuk (who also lived during the Chaldean period, Habakkuk 1:6 ) nothing is known. misused his prophets ] R.V. scoffed at his prophets .

They mocked the messengers of God; of which see instances, Ezekiel 11:3 20:49 . Misused his prophets; imprisoning and persecuting them, as they did Jeremiah. Or, seduced themselves by his prophets , i.e. by their prophecies, which they perverted or misconstrued. An eminent instance we have in this, that because Jeremiah prophesied that Zedekiah should be led to Babylon, Jeremiah 32:5 , and Ezekiel, that he should not see Babylon, Ezekiel 12:13 , therefore they believed neither, as the Hebrew writers relate. Till there was no remedy; because the people would not repent, and God would not pardon them.

(16) But they mocked. — And they were mocking, mal’îbîm ; only here (an Aramaism). Misused.—Mitta’te’îm, only here. Derided, strictly, stammered. Another form of this verb occurs in Genesis 27:12. (Comp. for the fact Isaiah 28:9-14; Ezekiel 33, 30; Jeremiah 17:15; Jeremiah 20:7-8.) Till there was no remedy.—Healing; i.e., deliverance, σωτηρία (comp. 2Chronicles 21:18). God is said to heal, when he averts calamity (2Chronicles 30:20). The wrath . . . arose.—Went up (‘ālāh), like smoke (Psalm 18:8; 2Samuel 11:20).

13. who had made him swear by God—Zedekiah received his crown on the express condition of taking a solemn oath of fealty to the king of Babylon (Eze 17:13); so that his revolt by joining in a league with Pharaoh-hophra, king of Egypt, involved the crime of perjury. His own pride and obdurate impiety, the incurable idolatry of the nation, and their reckless disregard of prophetic warnings, brought down on his already sadly reduced kingdom the long threatened judgments of God. Nebuchadnezzar, the executioner of the divine vengeance, commenced a third siege of Jerusalem, which, after holding out for a year and a half, was taken in the eleventh year of the reign of Zedekiah. It resulted in the burning of the temple, with, most probably, the ark, and in the overthrow of the kingdom of Judah (see on [480]2Ki 25:1-7; [481]Eze 12:13; [482]Eze 17:16).

"And all princes of the priests and the people increased faithless transgressions, like to all the abominations of the heathen, and defiled the house of the Lord which He had consecrated in Jerusalem." Bertheau would refer this censure of their idolatry and the profanation of the temple to the guilt incurred by the whole people, especially in the time of Manasseh, because, from all we know from the book of Jeremiah, the reproach of idolatry did not at all, or at least did not specially, attach to the princes of the priests and the people in the time of Zedekiah. But this reason is neither tenable nor correct; for from Ezekiel 8 it is perfectly manifest that under Zedekiah, not only the people, but also the priesthood, were deeply sunk in idolatry, and that even the courts of the temple were defiled by it. And even though that idolatry did not take its rise under Zedekiah, but had been much practised under Jehoiakim, and was merely a revival and continuation of the idolatrous conduct of Manasseh and Amon, yet the reference of our verse to the time of Manasseh is excluded by the context; for here only that which was done under Zedekiah is spoken of, without any reference to earlier times. Meanwhile God did not leave them without exhortation, warning, and threatening. - 2 Chronicles 36:15.

Jahve sent to them by His messengers, from early morning onwards continually, for He spared His people and His dwelling-place; but they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets. בּיד שׁלח, to send a message by any one, to make a sending. The object is to be supplied from the verb. ושׁלוח השׁכּם exactly as in Jeremiah 26:5; Jeremiah 29:19. For He spared His people, etc., viz., by this, that He, in long-suffering, again and again called upon the people by prophets to repent and return, and was not willing at once to destroy His people and His holy place. מלעיבים is ἁπ. λεγ., in Syr. it signifies subsannavit; the Hithp. also, מתּעתּעים (from תּעע), occurs only here as an intensive: to launch out in mockery. The distinction drawn between מלאכים (messengers) and נביאים (prophets) is rhetorical, for by the messengers of God it is chiefly prophets who are meant; but the expression is not to be confined to prophets in the narrower sense of the word, for it embraces all the men of God who, by word and deed, censured and punished the godless conduct of the idolaters. The statement in these two verses is certainly so very general, that it may apply to all the times of gradually increasing defection of the people from the Lord their God; but the author of the Chronicle had primarily in view only the time of Zedekiah, in which the defection reached its highest point.