Zedekiah

“ Jeremiah and Baruch are hustled from the wall and disappear into the dark. The two sentries stand at the extreme edge of the ramparts to leave room for the king and his train to pass. When Zedekiah enters they clash spears on shields in salute and then stand to attention. Zedekiah is making the rounds, accompanied by Abimelech and others. He is unarmed and bareheaded; his face looks pale and thoughtful in the moonlight. ”

“ So Zedekiah the king sware secretly to Jeremiah, As Jehovah liveth, who is the source and giver of our life, I will not put thee to death, neither will I give thee into the hand of these men that seek thy life. ”

“ Zedekiah, notwithstanding all the remonstrances of Jeremiah to the contrary, resolved to conclude an alliance with the Egyptian monarch; who, puffed up with the success of his arms, and confident that nothing could resist his power, declared himself the protector of Israel, and promised to deliver it from the tyranny of Nabuchodonosor. But God, offended that a mortal had dared to intrude himself into his place, thus declared himself to another prophet: “Son of man, set thy face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and prophesy against him, and against all Egypt. ”

“ There is not a star in heaven which he has not seen in this place. He can no longer deny that God has chosen him. He must give his message to the king, for he knows the end; he sees it; he describes it in prophetic verses.
King Zedekiah, full of fear, making his rounds with Abimelech, hears the voice of Jeremiah, and recognises it as the voice of the one who wished to hold him back on the threshold of the declaration of war. He would pay heed now, could the decision be made over again. Jeremiah assures him that it is never too late to ask peace. Zedekiah is unwilling to be the first to move. ”

“ This prophecy was undoubtedly delivered in the first year of the reign of Zedekiah.
Under the type of good and bad figs, God represents the state of the persons who had already been carried captives into Babylon, with their king Jeconiah, compared with the state of those who should be carried away with Zedekiah. Those already carried away, being the choice of the people, are represented by the good figs: those now remaining, and soon to be carried into captivity, are represented by the bad figs, that were good for nothing. ”

“ But, when he saw the battle increase against them, his spirits sunk, and he died, but his death was so lingering that he had time to feel himself die; and we may well imagine with what horror he now reflected upon the wickedness he had committed, the warnings he had slighted, Baal's altars, Naboth's vineyard, Micaiah's imprisonment. Now he sees himself flattered into his own ruin, and Zedekiah's horns of iron pushing, not the Syrians, but himself, into destruction. Thus is he brought to the king of terrors without hope in his death. ”

“ Dreadful was the carnage. The people, young
and old, were slaughtered wherever they appeared; and even the temple
was no refuge for them; the sacred courts streamed with blood. Zedekiah
himself, with his family and some friends, contrived to escape from the
city; but he was overtaken and captured in the plains of Jericho. He was
sent in chains to Nebuchadnezzar, who had left the conclusion of the war
to his generals, and was then at Riblah in Syria. ”

“ Zedekiah is to be commended for his, and it shows that he had some good in him, some sense of his need of God's favour and of his own unworthiness to ask it for himself, and some value for good people and good ministers, who had an interest in Heaven. Note, When we are in distress we ought to desire the prayers of our ministers and Christian friends, for thereby we put an honour upon prayer, and an esteem upon our brethren. Kings themselves should look upon their praying people as the strength of the nation, Zech. ”

“ WHEN King Jehoiakim was dead, and his son Jehoiachin carried away to Babylon, another king began to reign, named Zedekiah. He was Jehoiachin's uncle; he was Jehoiakim's brother; and he was son to good Josiah. The king of Babylon said that Zedekiah should reign as long as he would be obedient to him, and pay some money every year, so as to show that he owned the king of Babylon for his master. And God spake through His prophet Jeremiah, and said that if Zedekiah would obey the king of Babylon, the people should be left in peace, only they must be patient under their punishment. ”

“ Zedekiah
[Strides to and fro, and then returns to the window. He soliloquizes] Never have I seen the stars shine so brightly. They stand confusedly in rows, like letters on the dark background of heaven, a writing which no man can read. In Babylon, they say, are interpreters and priests who serve the stars, conversing with them by night. Other kings can talk with their gods; they have shrines on their towers where they can learn the will of heaven when their hearts are troubled. Why have I no soothsayers who can tell the future? It is terrible to be the servant of a god who is always silent ”

“ Then Nebuchadnezzar raised Zedekiah to a position of power and on his twenty-first birthday elevated him to the governorship of Jerusalem. For the better part of eleven years, he reigned more or less successfully. He seems to have been a graceless scoundrel 305 and utterly without honour. Completely violating their treaties and their oaths of fidelity, Pharaoh and Zedekiah joined in a conspiracy and rebelled against the power of Nebuchadnezzar. It is a matter of wonder to the modern student that these kings of Judah never learned their lesson. ”

“ If it be universal, obliging people to subject themselves to every conqueror, then it is also universal, obliging people to renounce and disown every covenant-breaking tyrant, as here they were to fall away from Zedekiah: if it be only particular, then the owners of tyranny have no advantage from this passage. And I have advantage, so far as the ground of the precept is as moral, as the reason of that punishment of Zedekiah, which was his perfidy and perjury. Hence, if the Lord hath commanded to disown a king breaking covenant, then at least it is not insolent or unprecedented to do so ”

“ But here he was brought to a stand: he had provided the funeral furniture; his arrangements for interment, as far as referred to personal particulars, were complete; but there was no mournful bearer to carry the broom to its grave!
While Zedekiah was meditating on the deficiency, the grave but impassioned Abigail, marked with the grime of her avocations, made her appearance in the stable. Here [29] was a bearer for him every way suitable. Zedekiah, transported with joy, greeted her eagerly, and at once explained to her how he was situated. ”

“ Horrible famine prevailed, and the streets were full of dead; but Jeremiah told the king, that if he would go out and make terms with Nebuchadnezzar all might yet be saved. But Zedekiah would not listen, and at last broke out with his men of war to cut his way through the enemy. His self-will met its deserts; he was taken by Nebuzaradan, the captain who had been left to carry on the siege, and brought a prisoner to Babylon, after his sons had been slain in his very sight, and his eyes then put out, according to a prophecy of Ezekiel, which he is said to have thought impossible ”

“ Zedekiah's oath on this occasion is solemn, and very observable: " As the Lord liveth, who made us this soul, who gave me my life and thee thine, I dare not take away thy life unjustly, knowing that then I should forfeit my own to him that is the Lord of life." Note, God is the Father of spirits; souls are his workmanship, and they are more fearfully and wonderfully made than bodies are. The soul both of the greatest prince and of the poorest prisoner is of God's making. ”

“ Everyone knew Ebed-melech, his story of Josiah's escape, his privileges in the palace. He was a fixture at the court, and people said that he would never die.
Arrived at the palace, he demanded to see the king. Brought into the presence of Zedekiah he asked to speak to him alone. When both were left alone, he fell at Zedekiah's feet. Pointing to the door through which several princes had just gone out, he said:
"My Lord, the King!
"These men have done evil in all that they have done to Jeremiah, the prophet, whom they have cast into the pit. He is like to die in the place where he is." ”

“ But he did not possess the power to oppose the nobles and their actions. Zedekiah may have intended to remain faithful to the oath of fealty which he had taken to his liege lord Nebuchadnezzar; but he had not the strength of will to adhere to his resolution. Rebellious schemes were secretly formed, which he, in the seclusion of his palace, did not find out, or, if cognisant of them, was incapable of opposing. This weakness on the part of the king, and foolhardiness on the part of the nobles, led to the fall of Judah. The nobles appear to have been seized with madness. ”

“ Zedekiah was duly punished for the grievous crime of perjury. When Jerusalem was captured, he tried to escape through a cave extending from his house to Jericho. God sent a deer into the camp of the Chaldeans, and in their pursuit of this game, the Babylonian soldiers reached the farther opening of the cave at the very moment when Zedekiah was leaving it. ”

“ Doom followed the guilt and folly of king, priests, and people. If political wisdom were insufficient to show Zedekiah that the necessities of the case were an indication of God's will, he had the warnings of the prophets constantly ringing in his ears, and the assurance [Pg 442] that he must remain faithful to Nebuchadrezzar. But he was in fear of his own princes and courtiers. A combined embassy reached him from the kings of Edom, Ammon, Moab, Tyre and Sidon, urging him to join in a league against Babylon. [827] This embassy was supported by a powerful party in Jerusalem. ”

“ Zedekiah or his palace-officers, courtiers, and nobles having refused to obey the summons to surrender, Nebuchadnezzar commenced a regular siege. The men of Jerusalem must have defended themselves bravely, for the siege lasted, with little interruption, for nearly a year and a half (from January, 587, to June, 586) . The leader of the besieged party was a eunuch in the service of King Zedekiah. The king himself played a passive part. He was neither commander of the troops, nor leader of the movement. ”

“ These circumstances being borne in mind, it will be readily imagined, on a closer glance at his character, that Zedekiah looked forward to the funeral of Cummer Griffin with no small degree of pleasure. Abigail, however, having a mortal horror of death, did not participate in this feeling, and she replied to Zedekiah’s remarks in a tone of some asperity.
“What a pestilent din dost thou make o’ this burying!” she said. “Thou’dst like all the world to die, so thou mightst but see them buried. But let us to our work, or the Evil One, mayhap, will be upon us anon, and lead us some other dance.” ”

“ Perhaps the prophet did not regard this impotent sovereign as the responsible representative of the state, and when the long-expected catastrophe at last befell the doomed people, neither Zedekiah nor his doings distracted men's attention from their own personal sufferings and patriotic regrets. At the point where a paragraph on Zedekiah would naturally have followed that on Jehoiachin, we have by way of summary and conclusion to the previous sections a brief denunciation of the shepherds of Israel. ”

“ At first it seemed likely to be so; for Zedekiah wished to be faithful to Jehovah. He made a covenant with all the people to set free their Hebrew slaves. Alas! it was very shortlived. Self-sacrifice cost something, and the princes soon took back the discarded bondservants. [816] What made this conduct the more shocking was that their covenant to obey the law had been made in the most solemn manner by "cutting a calf in twain, and passing between the severed halves." [817] But the [Pg 439] weak king was perfectly powerless in the hands of his tyrannous aristocracy. ”

“ See how wretchedly the hearts of sinners are hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Persecution was one of the sins for which God was now contending with them, and yet Zedekiah persists in it even now that he was in the depth of distress. No providences, no afflictions, will of themselves part between men and their sins, unless the grace of God work with them. Nay, some are made worse by those very judgments that should make them better. ”

“ When Zedekiah revolted and the Babylonian armies a second time besieged Jerusalem, their faith in the inviolability of Zion, confirmed, rather than shaken, by the outcome of things in 597 B.C., when Jehoiachin surrendered and the holy city took no harm, made them refuse hearing to Ezekiel's prediction of ruin; they may even have dreamed that Nebuchadnezzar would find out his mistake and restore to Judah its legitimate rulers, chastened by experience, and pack Zedekiah and his advisers into exile in their place. ”

“ He found him sitting, as a king should do, at the post of danger in the gate of Benjamin; for Zedekiah was not a physical, though he was a moral, coward. Ebed-Melech told the king that Jeremiah was dying of starvation, and Zedekiah bade him take three [865] men with him and rescue the dying man. The faithful Ethiopian hurried to a cellar under the treasury, took with him some old, worn fragments of robes, and, letting them down by cords, called to Jeremiah to put them under his arm-pits. ”

“ When the king was come to Babylon, he kept Zedekiah in prison until he died, and buried him magnificently, and dedicated the vessels he had pillaged out of the temple of Jerusalem to his own gods, and planted the people in the country of Babylon, but freed the high priest from his bonds. ”