2 Chronicles 36:18

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. 2 Chronicles 36:17 Ver. 17. Therefore he brought upon them the king of the Chaldees,.... Nebuchadnezzar; and though it was the rebellion of Zedekiah which was the cause and occasion of his coming against them, yet it was the Lord that moved him to it, and gave him success: who slew their young men with the sword, in the house of the sanctuary; in the temple, where they took sanctuary, imagining that sacred place would protect them from the rage of the enemy, but it did not: and had no compassion on young man or maiden, old man, or him that stooped for age; spared none on account of age or sex, but put them all to the sword, or carried them captive: he gave them into his hand; that is, the Lord delivered them into the hand of the king of Babylon, for their sins. 2 Chronicles 36:18 Ver. 18. And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small,....

And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small,.... All that were left; for some had been carried away in both the reigns preceding: and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his princes; which became the spoil and booty of the soldiers: all these he brought to Babylon; the vessels were laid up there, and restored when Cyrus took it; but the treasures were no doubt in part taken for his own use, and the rest divided in the army.

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 36:18 . And the treasures of the king, and of his princes — The treasures of the temple, by a special providence of God, were preserved, and restored, in the reign of Cyrus, to the house of the Lord: but the other, it is likely, were looked upon as spoil, and spent by the king and his great men.

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).