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.