But because our fathers had angered the God of heaven, he gave them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this house and carried away the people to Babylonia.
Persian officials demanded to know who had authorised the rebuilding of the temple. The Jews answered with history, and that history started with their own fathers' sin. Two questions follow. Why did God give His own house up to a destroyer? And why do they call Him "the God of heaven"?
Judgment through Babylon, but from God
The verse does not say Babylon overpowered Judah. It says God gave them into Nebuchadnezzar's hand. Scripture says little of the Chaldeans for centuries. Here they appear as God's instrument.
Morrish Bible DictionaryScripture mentions Ur of the Chaldees (Genesis 11:28, 31; Genesis 15:7) and the Chaldeans who fell upon Job's camels (Job 1:17). After that we do not read of them for some fifteen hundred years. Then God sent them to punish Judah (2 Kings 24:2). By then you cannot tell them apart from the Babylonians. Scripture calls Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon a Chaldean (Ezra 5:12), and when he took Jerusalem it was the Chaldeans who destroyed the city.
Why "the God of heaven"
This title belongs to a particular moment. God had forsaken Jerusalem, and no earthly throne there carried His government any longer.
J. N. DarbyGod once gave the government of the earth to man, in the person of Nebuchadnezzar. It does not return to a throne that is only earthly, as it was at Jerusalem. Meanwhile the earthly power rebels against the Most High. In that setting the saints have taken on a character that comes from looking to heaven and to Him who reigns there. God, in His government of the earth, has taken the name of the God of heaven. Their position is easy to understand, since He had forsaken Jerusalem.
Two names, one ruin, one kingdom's story
The verse compresses centuries into a single sentence. One builder, one destroyer, and one cause.
Edward DennettWhat a history! Solomon had built the house, and Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed it. The cause of all this sorrow was their fathers' sins. And what a story of patient grace and mercy fills the years between those two dates! It also shows what is in the heart of man, even under God's own care. Between those two points lies the whole history of the kingdom under man's responsibility. It rose in glory and splendour under Solomon as prince of peace… and it was destroyed in the reign of weak and wicked Zedekiah.
Confession before their examiners
The Jews stood before hostile officials with every reason to defend themselves. Instead they admitted that they deserved the foreign rule they lived under.
H. L. RossierThe people do not try to make their guilt look smaller. They own before the nations that they are under God's judgment. They are "servants of the God of heaven and earth" (v. 11), and they confess that God punished them justly for their sins… Their subjection to the nations was His discipline for their iniquity (vv. 13-15). Does this attitude not also suit the guilty Church, responsible for what He entrusted to her? Today, as then, God asks His servants that their testimony be, above all, the testimony of their ruin, for that is what makes it effective.
Their enemies wrote the answer down and passed it on. The confession reaches us through the men who opposed them.
The Bible TreasuryIt is touching to hear, even from their enemies, how simply the Jews took their stand. They were servants of the God of heaven and earth, and they were building His house, built long ago by a great king of Israel. They owned the sins of their fathers, and those sins drew from God the destruction of that house and their captivity.
"This house" — destroyed and rebuilt, yet one house
Nebuchadnezzar destroyed this house — the very one they were now rebuilding. One writer sees God looking at the Church, His Assembly, in the same way.
H. L. RossierDespite the ruin, He still sees His Assembly as He wants her to be, even though the unfaithfulness of God's people has made her disappear altogether as a public testimony. Her existence, and even more her unity, are just as real — not to the eyes of the world, but to the eyes of God — as when she was built, like Solomon's temple, and grew into a holy temple in the Lord. It is the same house.
Summary
- Cause. The temple did not fall to superior force. Their fathers' sin provoked God, and He gave them into Nebuchadnezzar's hand.
- Instrument. God sent the Chaldeans, absent from the record for some fifteen hundred years, to punish Judah.
- Title. God takes the name "God of heaven" when no earthly throne at Jerusalem holds His government. He has forsaken the city, so His people look up.
- Confession. Facing their examiners, they owned their guilt. Testimony has power when it starts by admitting the ruin.
- Continuity. Built, destroyed, rebuilt — it is still "this house." What looks broken to the world is one house to God.