Jeremiah 52:1

52:1-11 This fruit of sin we should pray against above any thing; Cast me not away from thy presence, Ps 51:11. None are cast out of God's presence but those who by sin have first thrown themselves out. Zedekiah's flight was in vain, for there is no escaping the judgments of God; they come upon the sinner, and overtake him, let him flee where he will.

Jeremiah ‘AS SODOM’Jeremiah 52:1 - Jeremiah 52:11 . This account of the fall of Jerusalem is all but identical with that in 2 Kings 25:1 - 2 Kings 25:30 It was probably taken thence by some editor of Jeremiah’s prophecies, perhaps Baruch, who felt the appropriateness of appending to these the verification of them in that long-foretold and disbelieved judgment. The absence of every expression of emotion is most striking. In one sentence the wrath of God is pointed to as the cause of all; and, for the rest, the tragic facts which wrung the writer’s heart are told in brief, passionless sentences, which sound liker the voice of the recording angel than that of a man who had lived through the misery which he recounts. The Book of Lamentations weeps and sobs with the grief of the devout Jew; but the historian smothers feeling while he tells of God’s righteous judgment. Zedekiah owed his throne to ‘the king of Babylon,’ and, at first, was his obedient vassal, himself going to Babylon { Jeremiah 51:59 } and swearing allegiance { Ezekiel 17:13 }. But rebellion soon followed, and the perjured young king once more pursued the fatal, fascinating policy of alliance with Egypt. There could be but one end to that madness, and, of course, the Chaldean forces soon appeared to chastise this presumptuous little monarch, who dared to defy the master of the world.

Our narrative curtails its account of Zedekiah’s reign, bringing into strong relief only the two facts of his following Jehoiakim’s evil ways, and his rebellion against Babylon. But behind the rash, ignorant young man, it sees God working, and traces all the insane bravado by which he was ruining his kingdom and himself to God’s ‘wrath,’ not thereby diminishing Zedekiah’s responsibility for his own acts, but declaring that his being ‘given over to a reprobate mind’ was the righteous divine punishment for past sin. An eighteen months’ agony is condensed into three verses { Jeremiah 52:4 - Jeremiah 52:6 }, in which the minute care to specify dates pathetically reveals the depth of the impression which the first appearance of the besieging army made, and the deeper wound caused by the city’s fall. The memory of these days has not faded yet, for both are still kept as fasts by the synagogue. We look with the narrator’s eye at the deliberate massing of the immense besieging force drawing its coils round the doomed city, like a net round a deer, and mark with him the piling of the mounds, and the erection on them of siege-towers. We hear of no active siege operations till the final assault. Famine was Nebuchadnezzar’s best general. ‘Sitting down they watched’ her ‘there,’ and grimly waited till hunger became unbearable.

Jeremiah 52:1-11 . Zedekiah was one and twenty years old — The first three verses of this chapter are word for word the same with 2 Kings 24:18-20 , where see the notes; and for the six following verses, see those on 2 Kings 25:1-6 . Where he gave judgment upon him — Namely, for rebelling against him when he had taken an oath of allegiance to him. Of Nebuchadnezzar’s slaying the sons of Zedekiah, putting out his eyes, binding him with chains, &c., see note on 2 Kings 25:7 .

Ch. Jeremiah 52:1-11 . Capture of the city 1 . Zedekiah was one and twenty years old ] So 2 Chronicles 36:11 , but, if we compare 1 Chronicles 3:15 and 2 Kings 23:31 (= 2 Chronicles 36:2 ), we find that, supposing the numbers which we now read there to be correct, Zedekiah should by this time have been thirty-four or thirty-five years of age. An error has somewhere crept in. his mother’s name was Hamutal ] or Hamital, the other reading of MT. both here, and in 2 Kgs. Zedekiah was thus brother of Jehoahaz but half-brother of Jehoiakim ( 2 Kings 23:31 ; 2 Kings 23:36 ). Jeremiah 52:1

Jeremiah 52 is an historical appendix to the Book of Jeremiah, giving details of the capture of Babylon additional to those contained in Jeremiah 39 :The last words of the foregoing chapter affirm that Jeremiah was not the author, and the view adopted by most commentators is, that this chapter is taken from the 2nd Book of Kings, but that the person who added it here had access to other valuable documents, and made several modifications in it, the principal being the substituation of the account of those led captive by Nebuchadnezzar Jeremiah 52:28-30 , for the narrative given in 2 Kings 25:22-26 , where see the notes.