Jeremiah 37:1

37:1-10 Numbers witness the fatal effects of other men's sins, yet heedlessly step into their places, and follow the same destructive course. When in distress, we ought to desire the prayers of ministers and Christian friends. And it is common for those to desire to be prayed for, who will not be advised; yet sinners are often hardened by a pause in judgments. But if God help us not, no creature can. Whatever instruments God has determined to use, they shall do the work, though they seem unlikely.

Jeremiah ZEDEKIAHJeremiah 37:1 . Zedekiah was a small man on a great stage, a weakling set to face circumstances that would have taxed the strongest. He was a youth at his accession to the throne of a distracted kingdom, and if he had had any political insight he would have seen that his only chance was to adhere firmly to Babylon, and to repress the foolish aristocracy who hankered after alliance with the rival power of Egypt. He was mad enough to form an alliance with the latter, which was constructive rebellion against the former, and was strongly reprobated by Jeremiah. Swift vengeance followed; the country was ravaged, Zedekiah in his fright implored Jeremiah’s prayers and made faint efforts to follow his counsels. The pressure of invasion was lifted, and immediately he forgot his terrors and forsook the prophet. The Babylonian army was back next year, and the final investment of Jerusalem began. The siege lasted sixteen months, and during it, Zedekiah miserably vacillated between listening to the prophet’s counsels of surrender and the truculent nobles’ advice to resist to the last gasp. The miseries of the siege live for ever in the Book of Lamentations. Mothers boiled their children, nobles hunted on dunghills for food. Their delicate complexions were burned black, and famine turned them into living skeletons. Then, on a long summer day in July came the end.

The king tried to skulk out by a covered way between the walls, his few attendants deserted him in his flight, he was caught at last down by the fords of the Jordan, carried prisoner to Nebuchadnezzar at Riblah away up in the north beyond Baalbec, and there saw his sons slain before his eyes, and, as soon as he had seen that last sight, was blinded, fettered, and carried off to Babylon, where he died. His career teaches us lessons which I may now seek to bring out. I. A weak character is sure to become a wicked one. Moral weakness and inability to resist strong pressure was the keynote of Zedekiah’s character. There were good things in him; he had kindly impulses, as was shown in his emancipation of the slaves at a crisis of Jerusalem’s fate. Left to himself, he would at least have treated Jeremiah kindly, and did rescue him from lingering death in the foul dungeon to which the ruffian nobility had consigned him, and he provided for his being at least saved from dying of starvation during the siege. He listened to him secretly, and would have accepted his counsel if he had dared. But he yielded to the stronger wills of the nobles, though he sometimes bitterly resented their domination, and complained that ‘the king is not he that can do anything against you.’ Like most weak men, he found that temptations to do wrong abounded more than visible inducements to do right, and he was afraid to do right, and fancied that he was compelled by the force of circumstances to do wrong.

Jeremiah 37:1-2 . Zedekiah, whom Nebuchadrezzar made king — See 2 Kings 24:17 ; 2 Chronicles 36:10 , where is related the history of Zedekiah’s succession. He was but a tributary king, having taken an oath of homage to the king of Babylon. He was a feeble and irresolute prince, and although not so bad as many of his predecessors, yet he had but little true piety or virtue. Neither he nor his servants, &c., did hearken unto the words of the Lord — Though they saw in his predecessor the fatal consequences of contemning the word of God, and though it had already begun to be fulfilled, yet they did not take warning, nor give any more heed to it than others had done before them.

1 . And Zedekiah … reigned as king ] This and Jeremiah 37:2 are apparently an editorial note to indicate to the reader that the narrative now no longer relates, as did the last two chs., to the reign of Jehoiakim. The rest of the ch. we may consider to be taken substantially from Baruch’s memoirs. Coniah ] See on Jeremiah 22:24 .

XXXVII. (1) And king Zedekiah the son of Josiah . . .—The eight chapters that follow form a continuous narrative of the later work and fortunes of the prophet. They open with recording the accession of Zedekiah, following on the deposition of Coniah or Jeconiah. Here, as in Jeremiah 22:24, we have the shortened form of the name of the latter. The relative pronoun “whom Nebuchadrezzar . . . made king” refers to Zedekiah.