And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth of the month, [that] Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and encamped against it; and they built turrets against it round about.
This verse dates Judah's last chapter to a single day: Babylon's whole army camped against Jerusalem and built siege works. Why did God let an enemy surround the city that held His own house, and why does the record name the very day?
The siege began with Zedekiah's rebellion, not with Babylon's ambition. One writer shows why that rebellion was so serious.
"Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon" (2 Kings 24:20). This act was disgraceful and sacrilegious in the eyes of the Lord. Here is why: Nebuchadnezzar "had made him take an oath by God" (2 Chronicles 36:13). Adding this to all his other sins, this king was breaking an oath made in the name of the Lord. Doing this in front of the idol-worshipping nations, he showed them that he had no regard for the God he claimed to belong to.
Politically the revolt made sense, since everyone hated Babylon's rule. That case collapses once you see whose hand put Babylon there.
Zedekiah's revolt might have had believable political motives in the eyes of the world. As happens today too, it won the sympathy of everyone who chafed under Babylon's yoke. But this yoke was according to God. The Lord announced it in a visible way through the prophet Jeremiah, who walked through the city carrying a wooden yoke on his neck. The king of Judah should have known and remembered this, if he had the least concern to serve the Lord.
The army outside the walls was not God's last word. Prophets kept speaking while the enemy dug in.
You must read the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel to have the complete history — the inner history of the spirit of the people and of the king. It is the history of the condition that drew down the judgment. It is also the history of God's patience. Right up to the taking of the city He kept sending them the most moving calls to repentance — and all in vain. And the times of the Gentiles began.
Even with the siege wall up, God named one way out. The king refused it, and not for military reasons.
Jeremiah told Zedekiah, by the word of the Lord, that if he surrendered to the king of Babylon, he would live and the city would not be burned with fire. If he would not surrender, the city would be burned and he himself would not escape (Jeremiah 38:17-18). But because Zedekiah was afraid of the Jews, he would not surrender.
The same date reached a prophet hundreds of miles away in Babylon, on the day it happened.
The exact date is given by the prophet. It was the tenth day of the tenth month in the ninth year. What happened on that date we find recorded in 2 Kings 25:1... How did Ezekiel know all this? It was the Lord who gave him this information and led him to record the date. That is the statement of the second verse: "Son of man, write down the name of this day, this very day. The king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day."
The fall of one more city to Babylon looked ordinary. It was not.
It was a sad day for many faithful hearts when Jerusalem surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar, and a sadder one when the king's officer destroyed the temple a month later. Both days were kept as fasts for long afterwards. No doubt Nebuchadnezzar had devastated many cities and temples, but the overthrow of Jerusalem was not in the same class with them. Jerusalem was the chosen resting place of the Lord, its sanctuary was His house, and the throne of David was His throne. So handing these over to the enemy meant giving up a divine purpose, at least for a season... But God will be no partner with wrongdoing. He could therefore do no less than discipline His people when their ways became utterly corrupt before Him.
Yet loss is not the last word. God takes the wreckage as an occasion for grace.
The temple is burned. The walls of Jerusalem are broken down. The Gentiles trample the seat of the Lord's throne. What a sorrowful result of His having entrusted His glory to men among whom He had placed His throne!... On the other hand, God will take this as an occasion to display His infinite goodness. In sovereign grace He will restore the very thing man threw down to be profaned.
- Oath. The siege began with a broken promise. Zedekiah swore it to Nebuchadnezzar in God's name, then broke it in full view of the nations.
- Yoke. God set Babylon's rule over Judah, and Jeremiah pictured it by wearing a wooden yoke. Shaking it off was not politics but defiance of the Lord.
- Mercy. Even with the siege wall built, God offered life: surrender and the city stands. Zedekiah refused, held back by fear of men rather than fear of God.
- Day. God gave Ezekiel the exact date in Babylon on the day it happened and told him to write it down. The news came by revelation, not rumour.
- Throne. What fell was not just a city. It was the place God chose for His house and His throne, and Gentile powers took it over — the times of the Gentiles began. Yet grace will restore the very thing man threw down.
And the city was besieged until the eleventh year of king Zedekiah.
From Zedekiah's ninth year to his eleventh, Babylon's army ringed Jerusalem and no one could get out. Those two years show how God warns, waits, and then acts.
The prophet Ezekiel wrote down the exact day the siege began. One writer asks how he could have known it:
The prophet gives the exact date. It was the tenth day of the tenth month in the ninth year... How did Ezekiel know about all this? It was the Lord who gave him this information and led him to record the date. This is what the Lord told him to write: "Son of man, write down the name of this day, this very day. The king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day."
Zedekiah had sworn loyalty to Nebuchadnezzar in God's own name. One writer lists the four charges against him:
"Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon." This was an outrageous and sacrilegious act in the eyes of the Lord. Here is why. Nebuchadnezzar "made him swear by God." And Ezekiel tells us that he "made a covenant with him, putting him under oath." So to all his other sins this king was adding the breaking of an oath made in the name of the Lord. He did this in front of nations that worshipped idols. So he showed them that he had no regard for the God he claimed to belong to. Chronicles records four reasons for the judgment of this king: He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, who spoke to him on the Lord's behalf. He revolted against Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God. He stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against returning to the Lord.
The world had one reading of Zedekiah's revolt. God had another:
Zedekiah's revolt might have had plausible political motives in the eyes of the world. As happens today too, it won the sympathy of all those who chafed under Babylon's yoke. But this yoke was from God. The Lord showed this in a visible way through the prophet Jeremiah, who walked through the city wearing a wooden yoke on his neck. The king of Judah ought to have known and remembered this, if he had the least concern to serve the Lord. But deep down this man, so brave to revolt, was full of terror. He was afraid of compromising himself before the leading men of the people.
The two years were not unbroken. An Egyptian army marched north, and for a moment the siege lifted:
Meanwhile the siege continued, without hope of relief... At length a gleam of hope appeared. An Egyptian army advanced through Phoenicia under their King Hophra, the grandson of Necho. It forced the Chaldeans to lift the siege of Jerusalem. You can imagine the excitement and reaction in Jerusalem. Probably for that reason Jeremiah, who still predicted disaster, was thrown into prison. But the relief of Jerusalem was brief. The Egyptian army had to retreat. The Chaldeans resumed the siege of Jerusalem, and conditions for those inside grew even worse.
Surrender was still open, and it came with a promise:
In the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign Nebuchadnezzar came and besieged Jerusalem. He built a wall around it. Jeremiah told Zedekiah, by the word of the Lord, that if he surrendered to the king of Babylon, he would live and the city would not be burned with fire. But if he refused to surrender, the city would be burned and he would not escape. Yet because Zedekiah was afraid of the Jews, he would not surrender.
The siege was not one more military defeat. It closed an era:
God's patience still waited with the kingdom of Judah. It waited until the sin of David's house made it impossible for Him to bear with them any longer. Jerusalem was taken; the temple was destroyed; and the Jews were carried away captive to Babylon. The throne of God no longer existed at Jerusalem. Power was given into the hands of the Gentiles, and has remained with them until now.
- Dated. God had a prophet record the day the siege began, on the very day it began. This judgment was no accident.
- Deserved. Four charges stood against Zedekiah, including breaking an oath he had sworn in God's own name.
- Refused. Babylon's yoke came from God. Shaking it off looked brave to the world, but it was rebellion against the Lord.
- Delayed. Two years of siege, and a brief Egyptian rescue, gave Zedekiah room to surrender and live. He feared men instead, and used none of it.
- Decided. When God's patience ran out, the throne left Jerusalem and world power passed to the Gentile nations.
On the ninth of the [fourth] month the famine prevailed in the city, and there was no bread for the people of the land.
In Zedekiah's eleventh year, after months of siege, Jerusalem's food ran out. This verse marks the day hunger turned deadly — and it asks how a city chosen by God came to this.
The date in this verse is the end of a slow process, not a sudden blow.
The siege continued for one and a half years, till the 11th year of Zedekiah's reign (v.2). Their food supply ran out (v.3), and at that time the city was broken through.
Hunger was not the only thing at work inside the walls.
It was a terrible siege, lasting eighteen months; famine and pestilence prevailed. Mothers boiled and ate their own children (Lamentations 4:10). At midnight the Babylonians broke into the city and captured the fleeing king.
Zedekiah could have stopped this. God gave him a clear choice through the prophet Jeremiah. Fear of his own people decided it.
Jeremiah told Zedekiah, by the word of the Lord, that if he surrendered to the king of Babylon he would live, and the city would not be burned with fire. If he refused, the city would be burned and Zedekiah himself would not escape (Jeremiah 38:17-18). But Zedekiah feared the Jews, so he would not surrender.
The famine was not an accident of war. Moses had warned Israel that this would come, long before they entered the land.
In Jerusalem's distress, the terrible predictions Moses made (Deuteronomy 28:56-57; Leviticus 26:29) came true again. They had come true several times before as well (2 Kings 6:26-29). When "the hands of the compassionate women" could reach out like this against their own starving children, the famine had clearly done its worst.
Hunger reached the youngest child and the richest noble alike.
The nursing baby's tongue sticks to the roof of its mouth from thirst; little children ask for bread, and no one breaks any for them. That was the pitiful state of children, from the tiniest babies upward. Were the adults any better off? "Those who ate fine food now die in the streets; those who grew up in scarlet now lie on ash heaps." Parents and other adults were starving to death.
Ironside draws a lesson from the same scenes for God's people in any age:
Only in fellowship with God do His people find peace and plenty. Away from Him unrest and famine must result.
The bread was running out for everyone. Yet Zedekiah answered the prophet's plea and had him fed.
Zedekiah, in answer to Jeremiah's plea, does not send him back to the prison cells. He has him put in the court of the guard: "and they gave him daily a loaf of bread ... until all the bread in the city was gone."
The fourth month, named in this verse, became one of Israel's four days of fasting. God's last word about those days is not mourning.
Besides the two fasts mentioned in the previous chapter, we now have the one in the fourth month. In that month the famine took hold and Jerusalem was broken into, as Jeremiah 52:6 records... Now we learn that the day would come when these four fasts would become feasts of rejoicing.
- Bread refused. God offered Zedekiah life and a spared city if he surrendered; fear of men made him say no, and the famine followed.
- Bread foretold. Moses warned Israel of this starvation long before it came. It was a warning fulfilled, not an accident.
- Bread gone. After eighteen months of siege, children begged for bread and no one had any. The rich died in the streets.
- Bread kept. The one man who had spoken God's word received a loaf a day, right up until the city had none left.
- Bread restored. The month became a national fast, and God promised that this very day of mourning will one day be a feast of joy.
And the city was broken into; and all the men of war [fled] by night, by the way of the gate between the two walls, which [leads] to the king's garden (now the Chaldeans were by the city round about); and they went the way toward the plain.
The siege had run eighteen months and the bread was gone. Then the wall of Jerusalem gave way, and the king and his soldiers slipped out by night through a gate near the garden. Two questions hang over that night. Where did they think they could go? And why did the king run, when God had offered him terms?
Verse 4 is the moment the defence collapses. One writer sets the flight directly against the alternative the king had, and then points out how hopeless the plan was:
The siege continued for a year and a half, until the eleventh year of Zedekiah's reign (v.2). Their supply of food ran out (v.3), and at that time the enemy broke into the city. But they would not surrender to the king of Babylon. Instead, all the men of war and Zedekiah tried to escape at night through a gate between two walls (v.4). How did they expect to escape when the army of the Chaldeans surrounded the city?
The gate between the two walls and the king's garden mark a real route out of the city, aimed at the Jordan valley. The enemy already held the other end:
On the ninth day of the fourth month, in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the enemy took the northern suburb. Before the middle gate the Babylonian captains held a council of war. Then the king and all the regular army sought safety in flight during the darkness of the night. Since the Chaldeans held the northern part of the city, they fled southwards. They went between the two walls, out through the "fountain-gate," and past the king's garden, hurrying to reach the Jordan.
This flight was not the king's only option. God had already named the terms, and they were generous:
Jeremiah told Zedekiah, by the word of the Lord, that if he surrendered to the king of Babylon he would live, and the city would not be burned with fire. If he would not surrender, the city would be burned and he would not escape (Jer. 38:17-18). But because of Zedekiah's fear of the Jews, he would not surrender.
Fear ruled this king. He was never in charge of his own capital:
Zedekiah himself persecutes Jeremiah and shuts him up in the court of the prison (Jer. 32:2-3), but in fact it is the king who is the captive of his captains and his princes, and he does not dare resist them. In reality he did not hate Jeremiah. The fear of men pressed him, instead of the fear of the Lord, whom he had despised and dishonoured (Jer. 38:24-28).
This is more than one man's panic. Warnings ignored for years arrive at last, and bold men break:
Hopes founded on man are vain, most of all for God's people when He is morally judging. Unbelief is rich in nothing but devices to fend off submission to God — even more than it fends off conviction. But in the end the moment comes to fulfil the warning they ignored for so long. Then the stout-hearted become cowards, all the more because they have a guilty conscience.
The escape did not defeat God's word. It carried it out — including two predictions that seem to cancel each other:
Both prophets implied that, though he might try to escape, he would be taken. Both affirmed that he must go to Babylon. But Ezekiel predicted, "yet he shall not see it, though he shall die there." Jeremiah predicted, "your eyes shall behold the eyes of the king of Babylon, and he shall speak with you mouth to mouth." … The fugitive king was pursued and overtaken before he crossed the Jordan. At Riblah the king of Babylon judged the matter. He had Zedekiah's sons killed before their guilty father's eyes, then put out Zedekiah's eyes, bound him with chains and carried him to Babylon. So he did not see Babylon, though he went there. Yet he did see the eyes of the angry conqueror, who spoke with him face to face. No word of the Lord falls to the ground.
Not everyone in Jerusalem ran. Those who did the opposite of verse 4 came out alive:
Only a small remnant had their lives saved — those who had received the Lord's message and had handed themselves over to the Chaldeans (2 Kings 25:11). They were the good figs of Jeremiah 24.
- Word given. Jeremiah brought Zedekiah the terms: surrender and live; refuse, and the city burns and you will not escape.
- Word refused. He would not surrender. Fear of his own princes held him, not the fear of the Lord.
- Word evaded. When the wall broke he fled by night through the king's garden. With the enemy ringed around the city, where could he go?
- Word fulfilled. They caught him before the Jordan. He saw the king of Babylon's eyes, then lost his own — and so never saw Babylon. Two prophecies, both true.
- Word obeyed. Those who gave themselves up, as God had said, kept their lives. Obedience, not escape, was the way out.
And the army of the Chaldeans pursued after the king, and overtook him in the plains of Jericho; and all his army was scattered from him.
The Chaldean army has Jerusalem surrounded, and King Zedekiah slips out of the city by night toward the Jordan. Verse 5 tells what happened next: the chase, the capture near Jericho, and an army that scattered from its king.
The king ran rather than surrender. One writer asks the obvious question about that choice:
But instead of surrendering to the king of Babylon, all the men of war and Zedekiah sought to escape at night by way of a gate between two walls. How did they expect to escape when the army of the Chaldeans surrounded the city? At least, Zedekiah and his sons were caught, though others of his men were scattered from him.
Zedekiah was not running blind. The prophet had already told him how to save his life, his house and the city.
Had not the prophet given Zedekiah this promise? If he went out to the king of Babylon's princes, he and his house would live, and the city would not be burned with fire. Sadly, this is one of the effects of the evil heart that turns away from the living God. It always seems to forget the word just when the word is needed most. It feels the force of that word only after it has taken up some new plan of its own, as disappointing as all the ones before. How bitter to remember too late that everything the heart clung to must be given up to vengeance and the enemy! The ruin about to follow is the fruit of one's own folly.
His dealings with the prophet followed a pattern. He asked for prayer, he asked for prophecy, then refused what came back:
He was hypocritical also. He pretended to want the prophet's prayers, saying, "Please pray to the LORD our God for us." At times he also pretended to trust Jeremiah's prophecies: "Inquire of the LORD for us." But when those prophecies came, he refused to heed or believe them.
The Chaldean army caught him. Long before, Ezekiel had described that capture as God's own act.
Ezekiel says: "And the prince who is among them shall lift his baggage upon his shoulder at dusk, and shall go out. They shall dig through the wall to bring him out through it. He shall cover his face, that he may not see the land with his eyes. And I will spread My net over him, and he shall be taken in My snare. And I will bring him to Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans, yet he shall not see it, and he shall die there."
Two prophecies about Zedekiah's end look like they clash.
Ezekiel foretold that he would not see Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans, though he would die there. Jeremiah foretold that his eyes would see the eyes of the king of Babylon. To a shallow reader this might look hard to reconcile, even a contradiction. But such a thought would only be ignorance, and irreverence too. Each prophet gave out from God beforehand what the events themselves fulfilled. The Chaldeans pursued the fleeing king and overtook him before he crossed the Jordan. At Riblah the king of Babylon judged his case. He had Zedekiah's sons killed in front of their guilty father's eyes, then put out Zedekiah's eyes, bound him with chains and carried him to Babylon. So he did not see Babylon, though he went there; yet he did see the eyes of the angry conqueror, who spoke with him face to face. No word of the Lord falls to the ground.
The capture cost more than a battle. It took away the man the people had expected to live under.
The Babylonians had captured the king, despite his effort to escape with a few loyal attendants. "The breath of our nostrils, the LORD's anointed, was captured in their pits, of whom we said, 'Under his shadow we shall live among the nations.'" Not until the true Anointed of the Lord comes will there be a ruler under whose shadow His people can live in perfect security.
Even here, the sentence had a limit.
Only, according to the word of the prophet, he does not die a violent death. The Lord takes notice of the least sign of turning in this poor king. Zedekiah had shown a moment of pity for the servant of the Lord and had listened to his word. Yet he lacked the courage to follow that word, and the faith to humble himself before God.
- Word refused. Zedekiah asked Jeremiah for prayer and for prophecy. Then he refused the answer. That refusal put him on the road to Jericho.
- Word forgotten. A heart turned from God forgets the promise just when it would have saved. Zedekiah ran from the one surrender that would have spared his life and his house.
- Word enacted. The Chaldean pursuit was God's net, spread beforehand in Ezekiel's picture of the prince taken in a snare.
- Word verified. Two sayings that look opposed came true in one event. Zedekiah met the eyes of Babylon's king at Riblah, and never saw Babylon itself.
- Word tempered. The capture cost Judah its shelter. Yet Zedekiah did not die a violent death, and the shelter the people longed for still waits for the true Anointed.
And they took the king, and brought him up to the king of Babylon unto Riblah; and they pronounced judgment upon him,
The last king in David's line ends his reign as a prisoner. He stands in an enemy war camp far from Jerusalem, waiting for a Gentile king to sentence him. Two questions run through the chapter: why did it come to this, and whose judgment did Riblah really carry out?
The march to Riblah began with a broken promise. Zedekiah had sworn a covenant with Nebuchadnezzar. One writer ties the ruin to the king's contempt for that oath:
"Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon." He had no real faith in Jehovah, Israel's covenant-keeping God, and so he had no scruples about breaking his covenant with Nebuchadnezzar. But how dearly he paid for violating his oath!
The same writer names what Zedekiah leaned on, and where his captors took him:
The occasion of this rebellion was Zedekiah's hope of help from the king of Egypt (see Ezekiel 17:11-21)… He was brought, with his sons, to Nebuchadnezzar at Riblah. That was "on the high road between Palestine and Babylon, where the Babylonian kings stayed while directing the operations of their armies in Palestine and Phoenicia."
"They passed sentence upon him" describes something formal. The king of Judah was tried:
But their flight could not go unnoticed. They were pursued and overtaken in the plains of Jericho. The soldiers scattered in various directions. But the king himself and his household were taken captive and carried to the headquarters at Riblah, where Nebuchadnezzar himself was at the time. Here Zedekiah was formally charged and sentenced.
Two prophecies about Zedekiah seem to clash. One had him meeting the king of Babylon face to face. The other said he would never see Babylon. Riblah is where both came true:
Even more remarkable, another prophet was given this word to prophesy: that Zedekiah's eyes would be put out, and that he would not see Babylon. "And I will bring him to Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans, yet he shall not see it, and he shall die there." (Ezekiel 12:13.) Both are true. His eyes did not see the king of Babylon in Babylon. He was taken prisoner in "the plains of Jericho." From there they brought him to the king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath.
Jeremiah had offered Zedekiah a way out, and he took his own way instead. The same writer shows how such a heart acts in a crisis:
A spirit that has given in to man's thoughts against God's word remembers very little in the moment of greatest need. It is solemn to see how it forgets what might even then have saved city, people and prince alike. Had not the prophet assured Zedekiah that if he went out to the king of Babylon's princes, he and his house would live, and the city would not be burned with fire? Sadly, this is one of the effects of the evil heart that turns away from the living God: it always seems to forget the word just when the word is needed most… How bitter to remember too late that everything the heart clung to must be handed over to vengeance and the enemy. The destruction soon to follow is the fruit of one's own folly.
Riblah was more than one man's downfall. One writer treats the fall of Jerusalem as a turning point:
Nebuchadnezzar overthrew Jerusalem and carried Judah away captive. After that, everything changed. Royal authority did not pass from the house of David to some other family in Israel, as it had passed from Saul and his house to David and his descendants. No; the covenant with David and his descendants is not broken. Far from it. The captivity was part of the chastening promised in the covenant if David's children failed to walk in his steps. But there was a transfer of power, a transfer from Israel altogether to the Gentiles.
Even in a sentence this severe, one commentator finds a possible mercy in the words "until I visit him" (Jeremiah 32:5):
It is more fitting to take the expression to mean that God in mercy would visit him with repentance and a true knowledge of Himself, as He did with Manasseh before him. How often God has used the stern hand of His government to break down the pride and rebellion of the heart! Through such a "visitation" He secures for the repentant soul the truest liberty of all — deliverance from the bondage of sin. So his soul would be set free, though his body stayed in chains.
- Sentence earned — Zedekiah stood at Riblah because he broke a sworn covenant while leaning on Egypt instead of God.
- Sentence formal — his captors did not cut him down in flight; they charged him and judged him, a king tried in a foreign camp.
- Sentence foretold — the trial fulfilled both prophecies at once: he saw the king of Babylon's face, yet never saw Babylon.
- Sentence avoidable — Jeremiah had promised life if he surrendered; the ruin was the fruit of his own choice.
- Sentence larger than one man — power passed from Israel to the Gentiles. Yet God's covenant with David stood, and even the blinded king might still meet God's mercy.
and slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him with chains of brass, and carried him to Babylon.
Zedekiah's last moment as a seeing man was also the last moment of the kingdom of Judah. One verse ends the line of kings that began with David. Did God's promise to David end with it?
Zedekiah faced a trial before the sentence fell, and his daughters went free.
They took the king himself and his household captive and carried them to the headquarters at Riblah, where Nebuchadnezzar was at the time. Here Zedekiah faced a formal trial, and the sentence went against him. They set his daughters free, but killed his sons in front of him. It was the last sight the king saw. They put out his eyes, bound him hand and foot with double chains of brass, and carried him to Babylon.
Another writer gives the literal force of the words: his eyes were "dug" out of their sockets (C. Knapp).
This was not random Babylonian cruelty. Zedekiah had sworn an oath by God and then broken it.
While David's throne stood, it was still "the throne of the LORD," however weak and shameful its kings might be. The last king, Zedekiah, brought on the ruin by his treachery. Nebuchadnezzar "made him swear by God" (2 Chronicles 36:13), but he "despised the oath by breaking the covenant" (Ezekiel 17:17-18). Nothing was sacred in his eyes.
Jeremiah said Zedekiah would look the king of Babylon in the eye. Ezekiel said he would go to Babylon but never see it. This verse is where both come true at once.
Both prophets implied that he would be caught, even if he tried to escape. Both said he must go to Babylon. Ezekiel predicted that he would not see it, though he would die there. Jeremiah predicted that his eyes would see the eyes of the king of Babylon, and that the king would speak with him face to face. At first glance the two look hard to square, even contradictory... So he did not see Babylon, though he went there; yet he did see the eyes of the angry conqueror who spoke with him face to face. No word of the Lord falls to the ground.
Zedekiah stayed in prison until he died. Yet Jeremiah had also said "until I visit him," and commentators read hope into that phrase.
It fits better to take the words this way: God in mercy would visit him with repentance and a true knowledge of Himself, as He did with Manasseh before him. How often God has used the stern hand of His government to break down the pride and rebellion of the heart! Through such a "visitation" He gives the repentant soul the truest liberty of all — deliverance from the bondage of sin. So his soul would go free, though his body stayed in prison.
The same mercy shows in how he died. God spared Zedekiah a violent death. One writer sees the Lord "paying heed to the least bit of evidence of turning in this poor king." Zedekiah "had shown a moment of pity for the servant of the Lord and had listened to his word, although he lacked the courage to follow it" (H. L. Rossier).
The physical blinding of the last king carries a wider meaning.
How solemn a judgment for a king of Judah! But it is a picture of Israel's eyes being blinded today because of unbelief (Romans 11:7-8). That spiritual blindness has lasted ever since their scattering among the Gentiles.
God had told David his throne would stand for ever. This verse seems to bury that word in chains.
The last king of Judah was taken captive to Babylon. He was blinded, bound in brass chains and carried in disgrace to that city. Was God's promise overthrown? It was not. If the record of David's seed ended in total failure, then another seed of David must come. Only then can God's promise to David be fulfilled. That Seed has surely come.
God emptied the throne on purpose, not by accident.
Every other hand has proved unfit to hold this sceptre, which God is taking from the line of David for a time. But there is One who has the right, and He will press His claim to it... How we forget that the overturning is not against His right — it has His right in view.
- Oath — Zedekiah swore by God to Babylon and then broke his word. The throne he sat on was the Lord's, so his treachery struck at God before it struck at Nebuchadnezzar.
- Sight — the death of his sons was the last thing his eyes ever saw. The sentence fell in the exact shape the prophets had described.
- Word — Jeremiah and Ezekiel sounded like they contradicted each other. Riblah made both true to the letter. No word of the Lord falls to the ground.
- Mercy — even here God noted the little good in this king. He spared him a violent death, and one writer reads His promise to "visit him" as repentance that frees the soul while the body stays in chains.
- Throne — David's seat was not destroyed but emptied. The overturning waits for the One whose right it is, and God's promise to David is fulfilled in Him.
And in the fifth month, on the seventh of the month, which was in the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuzar-adan, captain of the body-guard, servant of the king of Babylon, came unto Jerusalem;
The date in this verse is exact: a month, a day, a named officer, and a foreign king's year on the throne. What arrived in Jerusalem that day was not just an army. It was the end of a warning God had repeated for generations.
One commentator traces what happened next, and notes that the day was never forgotten:
After the flight and capture of the king, the city could not long hold out. A month later, on the seventh day of the fifth month (Ab), Nebuzar-adan ("Nebo gave posterity") forced his way into the city. The temple was set on fire, and the king's palace with it. The whole city became ruins and ashes, and the walls that had defended it came down. After three days the work of destruction was finished. Ever afterwards the people mourned the 10th (9th) of Ab as the fatal day of Jerusalem's fall.
Years earlier, Jeremiah had warned that God would do to the temple what He once did to Shiloh. One writer points to this day as the moment those words came true:
Again, the temple worship seemed to be flourishing on the outside. But the Lord had laid Shiloh waste, the place where He first set His Name. So, said the prophet, it would be done to this house too, because of their wickedness (Jer. 7:11–14). This too came to pass (2 Kings 25:8–17).
Could the building itself keep God committed to them? One writer answers from what had already happened to Shiloh:
What was Shiloh now? God had profaned it: and God would do the very same thing where the ark was now placed, where the sanctuary was in Jerusalem. God could never bind Himself to maintain an empty form. The temple was a beautiful picture of His truth, but He would hold it up no longer, since the state of the people and of the priests was the most offensive evil under the sun in His eyes.
Nebuzaradan came as an officer of Babylon. One writer points to the hand behind him, and to a departure that happened before any torch was lit:
The glory was leaving, not coming to live there. Jehovah is leaving the seat He chose for Himself — not leaving it for ever, for He has chosen it for ever. But for now the sins of His own people, and their turning away from Him, drive Him out... Whatever He might do at other times, it was clearly Jehovah who directed the sweeping destruction of His own city and sanctuary.
The glory was already gone. What Babylon seized was an empty shell:
The temple is void; the glory has departed from it! The golden cherubim spread their wings over a forsaken mercy-seat and over a broken law, but it was all in vain. The One who had filled that throne of glory until a short time before had now left it. Nebuchadnezzar could take possession of the temple the way a man takes possession of a corpse.
The fire closed one chapter and opened another that is still running:
At the taking of Jerusalem, then, we see the judgment of God carried out on His people. The ark of the covenant taken. The house of God burnt. Its royal authority taken from the family of David, and this until the coming of the true son of David. The Urim and the Thummim of the priesthood lost. The throne of God removed from off the earth. And sovereign authority placed in the hands of the Gentiles.
Nebuchadnezzar had a reason for burning the temple. One writer turns that reason into a question for readers today:
He saw that the Jews must have no centre to gather around, so the temple, built in such splendour in the time of Solomon, was destroyed by fire. What is there in Christendom that would answer to this? God's true Centre in the Church is Christ Himself. But is this realised today in the professing church?
- Warned. God had said through Jeremiah that He would do to this house what He did to Shiloh. He did it.
- Emptied. The glory left the house before any torch was lit. Babylon laid hold of the temple the way a man lays hold of a corpse.
- Directed. Nebuzaradan held the torch, but it was Jehovah who "directed the sweeping destruction of His own city and sanctuary."
- Directed. Nebuzaradan held the torch, but it was Jehovah who "directed the sweeping destruction of His own city and sanctuary."
- Applied. No building, however grand, keeps God present. He will not "maintain an empty form." The true centre is Christ Himself.
and he burned the house of Jehovah, and the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem; and every great [man's] house he burned with fire.
The siege of Jerusalem ends in fire, not in a surrender deal. Nebuzaradan, an officer of the king of Babylon, burns the temple, the royal palace, and every great house in the city. The hardest question is why God let His own house — the place where He had set His name — go up in flames.
Babylon lit the fire, but commentators read the event as God's own act of giving the city up. Writing on Jeremiah's warning to Zedekiah, William Kelly says that fighting back was useless. The real opponent was not Babylon:
The Lord then told him to speak to Zedekiah king of Judah, on His own behalf. He assured him that He would "give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire." To fight it out was to resist the Lord Himself. Nebuchadnezzar was not the only one taking Jerusalem. The LORD was giving up the city and their king of the house of David — a most solemn sign of His displeasure.
Kelly also notes the title God gives the conqueror in Jeremiah. It had belonged to Judah's own king:
It was no longer Zedekiah, My servant, but Nebuchadnezzar, My servant. The children of Israel and of Judah were about to lose their special place as His nation, too. Being His servant was now no longer a special honour; it simply meant being used in God's control of events. Nebuchadnezzar, the idol-worshipping Gentile, could be His servant in that way as much as anyone else.
This burning was not a sudden stroke:
Here was the carrying out of God's judgment, which He had foretold long before and long delayed in His patience.
H. J. Vine points out how unlikely the prediction must have sounded when it was made, with temple worship still running smoothly — and that the fire matched the word exactly:
On the surface, everything about the temple worship seemed to be flourishing. But the Lord had laid Shiloh waste, the first place where He set His Name. The prophet said He would do the same to this house, because of their wickedness (Jer. 7:11-14). This too came to pass (2 Kings 25:8-17).
The people treated the sanctuary as a guarantee of safety. Kelly describes what they trusted, and the terms God offered instead:
Danger was closing in, and they were trusting neither in God nor in His word. They trusted lying words of their own: that the outward forms would be enough to hold back the Gentile invader. "Do not trust in these deceptive words: 'This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.' For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another… then I will let you dwell in this place."
The verse names the house of the LORD first, before the palace and the great houses. That order matters:
Judgment must begin at the house of God. It always begins there. The greater the privilege, the greater the responsibility. Being outwardly near to God while the heart is far away only invites judgment all the more.
The fire took the great houses too — the homes of the city's officials. Leslie Grant sees a deliberate plan in the choice of targets, and applies it to the church today:
Nebuchadnezzar seems to have had no more hope that Judah would be subject to him. So he sent his servant Nebuzaradan to Jerusalem to burn the house of the Lord, the king's house and all the houses of the officials (v.9). He realised the Jews must have no centre of gathering. So fire destroyed the temple, that splendid building from Solomon's day. What is there in Christendom that would answer to this? God's true Centre in the Church is Christ Himself.
The verse ends a history, but not God's dealings with the people:
Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple, burning it to the ground and carrying away its golden vessels to Babylon, with the people. In mercy, after seventy years of captivity, God brings a remnant of the people back to Jerusalem, and they rebuild the temple.
- Privilege — Judah stood nearest to God. Nearness raises responsibility; it never lowers it.
- Presumption — They leaned on the building, not on God. They repeated "the temple of the LORD" as if stone could stop an army.
- Patience — God foretold this judgment long before, and He held it back long, before the fire ever touched the roof.
- Purging — Judgment began at the sanctuary and worked outward. It left the people no centre to gather around.
- Pardon — Seventy years later a remnant returned and rebuilt the house. The fire ended a building, not God's mercy.
And all the army of the Chaldeans that were with the captain of the body-guard broke down the walls of Jerusalem round about.
Jerusalem's siege ends with demolition, not battle: soldiers pull down the city wall on every side. Two questions follow — whose hand was behind it, and what is left for a people with no walls?
Losing the wall left the city with no defence. One writer sees the same loss in the church today:
Besides this, the army of the Chaldeans broke down the walls of Jerusalem all around, so that the city would have no protection from raiders (v.10). In the same way today, in the professing church, the wall of separation has been broken down, so that unbelievers have easily come in to do damage.
The Chaldeans swung the hammers. One writer names another hand behind theirs, and finds comfort in it:
The prophet insists that it was the Lord who had done the work of destruction, because of His people's sin. The nations might boast of their power over Jerusalem, but the work was His. "The Lord has done what He purposed; He has carried out His word, which He commanded long ago; He has thrown down without pity; He has made the enemy rejoice over you and exalted the might of your foes." Sorrowful, most sorrowful, that His hand had done it all. Yet it is a comfort to faith, for this is the hand that can and will build up again for His name's sake.
The army that broke the wall belonged to Nebuchadnezzar. The title he now carried had once belonged to Judah's own king:
This last is a remarkable word. It was no longer Zedekiah, My servant, but Nebuchadnezzar, My servant. The children of Israel and of Judah were about to lose their special place as His nation too. It was now a question, not of being His servant as a special honour, but merely in providence. Nebuchadnezzar, the idol-worshipping Gentile, could be His servant in this way as much as anyone else.
The ruin was foretold while Jerusalem still looked safe. One writer asks how such a prediction would sound today:
In Josiah's day, things looked very prosperous at Jerusalem. Still, the prophet announced over the city "disaster from the north, and great destruction" (Jer. 4:6). This was exactly fulfilled, but we tend to overlook how miraculous it was. Suppose someone insisted today that enemies would capture and destroy a great capital city. Most people would smile and dismiss the idea. If it then happened, their doubt would only make the fulfilment more striking.
The warning ran back further than Jeremiah:
This was no hasty chastening. From the earliest days the Lord had threatened and predicted through Moses what Jeremiah sets out in his Lamentations. Compare Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28.
The stones were not the whole story. One writer draws out what a wall and a gate stood for:
"The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire." This was the fact, and Nebuchadnezzar had been the instrument, through his army, to bring it about. There is, however, another meaning. The wall is the symbol of separation; and, as we have seen, the wall of separation between Israel and the nations had been broken down. The gate was the place, and so the emblem, of judgment; and we are taught by this that no one was administering justice and fairness any more.
The gates burned as well. One writer asks whether ruined walls and gates can be repaired now:
The gates stand for the principles of truth: they let in what should be in and keep out what should be out. What a picture, then, of those gates burned — that is, deliberately destroyed! Do we see such things in professing Christendom today? Sadly, it is true almost everywhere. Can we repair these walls and gates? Certainly not in all of Christendom; but we can do so in whatever small sphere of responsibility the Lord may give us.
- Wall — the stones around Jerusalem were its whole defence. Once they fell, the city lay open to anyone.
- Hand — the Chaldeans did the breaking, but Scripture assigns the work to the Lord, doing what He had said long before.
- Servant — the title once carried by Judah's king passed to Nebuchadnezzar; Judah's special place went with it.
- Warning — the prophets named this ruin while the city still looked prosperous, and it came just as they said.
- Rebuilt — the hand that threw the wall down can build it again. Our own repair work starts in whatever small sphere the Lord gives us.
And Nebuzar-adan the captain of the body-guard carried away captive the rest of the people that were left in the city, and the deserters that had deserted to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the multitude.
Jerusalem has fallen, the temple is ash, and Nebuzaradan, commander of the Babylonian guard, marches the last of its people off to Babylon. Among them are the deserters who had already gone over to the enemy — and they are the ones who lived.
One commentator describes the city's last days and names who was taken:
The Babylonians set the temple on fire, and the king's palace too. They reduced the whole city to ruins and ashes and broke down the walls that had defended it (2 Kings 25:9, 10). Three days later the work of destruction was complete. Ever after, people mourned the 10th (9th) of Ab as the fatal day of Jerusalem's fall (Jer. 52:12; Zech. 7:3, 5, 8:19). … We can hardly be wrong to see these captives as most of the civilian population of Jerusalem and Judah.
The deserters did not simply run. They had heard something first:
Only a small remnant who had received the Lord's message and had delivered themselves over to the Chaldeans had their lives saved (2 Kings 25:11). They were the excellent figs of Jeremiah 24.
That message came at a price. The city's officials wanted the man who preached it dead:
"Thus says the Lord: He who stays in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. But he who goes out to the Chaldeans shall live; he shall have his life as a prize of war, and live." … So the officials said to the king, "Let this man be put to death. He weakens the hands of the soldiers who remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, by speaking such words to them. This man does not seek the welfare of this people, but harm."
Walking out to the besieging army looked like betraying your own nation. The same writer explains why it was the opposite:
The Lord meant their exile to be for their eventual good. In a day of ruin faith always recognises the chastening of God and bows to it. Unbelief always resists, and counts it patriotism or perhaps religion to oppose. For this reason Jeremiah seemed, in the eyes of the men of Judah, a very false Jew. He always advised them to submit to the king of Babylon. They thought themselves much better Jews, because they were willing to fight against the king of Babylon.
Emptying the land served a purpose. It reached back to a command Israel had ignored: let the farmland rest every seventh year.
So God's word through Jeremiah came true. The land of Israel would be left empty, to enjoy the sabbaths it had not enjoyed for years. The people were greedy and wanted crops in the seventh year as well as in the six years God had allotted them. So God had told them through Jeremiah that the land would stay empty for 70 years — the length of Judah's captivity in Babylon (Jer. 25:9-12).
This deportation did more than end a kingdom. It moved the seat of authority on earth:
God still waited patiently with the kingdom of Judah. Then the sin of David's house made it impossible for Him to bear with either any longer. Jerusalem fell, the temple was destroyed, and the Jews were carried captive to Babylon. The throne of God no longer existed at Jerusalem. Power passed into the hands of the Gentiles, and it has stayed with them until now. With Nebuchadnezzar, the times of the Gentiles began, and so did the captivity and scattering of the Jews.
The chapter reads like an ending. One writer sees it closing man's story, not God's:
The people are carried away to Babylon. The priests and those who had helped with the resistance die a violent death at Riblah. The last traces of Judah's power and wealth disappear after this attack. Even the two pillars of the temple are broken in pieces and carried to Babylon, along with all the brass, the gold and the silver of the house of God. … So ends the history of man, placed under responsibility before God. God must give him up — but His promises are not withdrawn. He will re-establish the reign of His anointed upon these two marvellous pillars, and this reign will be unshakeable.
- Sin. Real guilt emptied the land. Israel had ignored God's command to let the ground rest, and the seventy years abroad collected that unpaid rest.
- Sentence. Everyone left in the city went to Babylon. Most were ordinary civilians, taken after the temple and the walls had fallen.
- Surrender. The deserters lived because they believed a warning: stay and die, go out to the Chaldeans and live. Obedience, not the city wall, was the safe place.
- Shift. This captivity ended God's throne at Jerusalem. Authority passed to the Gentile powers, and it has stayed there ever since.
- Sureness. Man's record under responsibility ends in ruin here. God's promise does not end, and the reign He will set up cannot be shaken.
But the captain of the body-guard left of the poor of the land for vinedressers and husbandmen.
Judah's capital lay in ruins, and its leading citizens were gone. Why did the captain of the guard leave a handful of the poorest to work the land, and what does that say about God's dealings with His people?
The verse closes a national collapse. King, temple and city were gone. Only the poorest layer of society stayed.
The temple was burned to the ground. Only a miserable remnant of the nation was left in the land — "the poor" — to be vinedressers and plowmen (2 Kings 25:12). Rebellion arose even among these. In fear of the Chaldeans they fled to the land of Egypt, only to perish miserably there, as Jeremiah had faithfully warned them, with tears.
Even the survivors did not survive well.
Commentators point to this moment as the start of a long period in which Israel no longer holds power over itself.
The end of 2 Kings tells how Nebuchadnezzar's captain of the guard destroyed Solomon's temple and razed Jerusalem to the ground. He broke down its walls and burned its palaces and houses. He deported all the Jews, except for leaving a few of "the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and plowmen" (2 Kings 25:12). It was then that the Times of the Gentiles began — the time when the Jewish nation came under Gentile domination.
Another writer weighs what that handover cost: a nation given every advantage, and pardoned once before.
So the history of Israel's downfall ends in mercy — but in a mercy that recognises that power has passed into the hands of the Gentiles. This was the downfall of a people placed in the most favourable circumstances. God could say to them, "What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it?" They were a people who had already been pardoned once... The long-suffering of God, the restoration He had granted them, the establishment of the house of David in grace, all was fruitless.
The parallel account in Jeremiah gives more detail, and one writer reads the selection of the poor as something more than military calculation.
The poorest are permitted to remain and were treated mercifully. God remembers the poor and they are spared. As far as we know, these poor people, who had nothing, were the godly ones, those who wept over the conditions and who cried to God for help. Their prayer, the prayer of the needy, was answered.
Commentators differ here: Knapp, above, sees the same group rebelling soon after.
The Babylonian officer thought he was tidying up a conquest. Another writer sees a promise buried in the arrangement, noting that Jeremiah's version adds that these landless people were actually given the vineyards and fields.
Still, the clearance was not complete. The poor did not fail in the land; some were left in it. They were a pledge — little as the foreigner thought it — of the return of a poor remnant, and of a nation yet to be poor in spirit. That will be when God brings back the captivity of His people, and Jacob shall rejoice and Israel shall be glad.
Those left behind were placed under a governor and told to work the land in submission to Babylon. One writer treats that submission as the right response, and draws a lesson from it.
It was God who had put them in that position because of Judah's previous guilt, and faith could only bow to it... rebellion would have been rebellion against God. So too in Christendom, because of the sad failure in testimony, God has allowed confusion (the meaning of Babylon) to take possession of the church publicly, and it is only right that we bow to the shame of our confusion.
A quiet season followed the collapse.
For this poor remnant there was a respite of several months. They gathered wine and summer fruits in great abundance (Jer. 40:12). People even seem to have honoured the worship of the Lord again, at a time when the temple lay completely destroyed and ruined.
- Emptied — the temple burned, the city fell, and only a miserable remnant stayed to tend vines and fields.
- Transferred — the Times of the Gentiles begin here. Power over Jerusalem passes to the Gentiles, after long patience and by mercy.
- Remembered — God remembered the poor, who had nothing, and spared them; one writer reads them as the godly who cried to Him.
- Pledged — the poor left in the land were a hidden pledge: a poor remnant will return, and a nation will yet be poor in spirit.
- Bowed — God had put them under Babylon for Judah's guilt. Faith could only bow; rebellion here would have been rebellion against God.