2 Kings 25:1-10 And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month… With this account of the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar should be compared the narrative of its later destruction by Titus (A.D. 70). History does not always repeat itself; but in this instance it does so with marvelous fidelity. The close investment of the city, the desperate resistance, the horrors of famine within, the incidents of the capture, the burning of the temple, the demolition of the walls, and the captivity of the people, present striking parallels in the two cases. By one of those rare coincidences that sometimes occur, it was on the very same month and day of the month on which the temple was burned by Nebuchadnezzar, that the sanctuary was fired by the soldiers of Titus. The earlier destruction fulfilled the predictions of the prophets; the later the predictions of our Lord (Matthew 24.). I. THE LAST SIEGE. 1. Fatal dates. The days which mark the different stages of this terrible siege of Nebuchadnezzar are minutely recorded and carefully remembered. "The ninth year" of Zedekiah, "in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month," Nebuchadnezzar came, he and his host, against Jerusalem (ver. 1); in the eleventh year of Zedekiah "on the ninth day of the fourth month the-famine prevailed in the city" (ver. 3), and a breach was affected; "in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which is the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar," the temple and other buildings were burned by Nebuzar-adan (ver. 8). We have the same careful dating in Jeremiah 39:1, 2; Jeremiah 52:4, 12 (in the latter passage "tenth" for "seventh" as above). These were dates which burned themselves into the very memories of the wretched people crowded in the city, and could never be forgotten. Indirectly they testify to the intensity of misery which was endured, which made them so well remembered. They were observed afterwards as regular days of fasting (Zechariah 7:3, 5; Zechariah 8:19). 2. The enemy without. Nebuchadnezzar's army came up against the city, and closely invested it, building forts against it round about. Ezekiel 21. is a vivid prophecy of what was about to happen. The prophet announces the impending capture of the holy city. A sword was furbished which would work terrible destruction. Ezekiel is directed to mark off two ways along which this sword was to travel - the one leading to Jerusalem, and the other to Rabbath of Ammon. The scene changes, and we see the King of Babylon standing at the head of the ways, deliberating, which one he shall choose. He shakes the arrows, consults images, looks for omens m the liver of dead beasts. The decision given is for advancing first against Jerusalem. Now he is at its gates, and has appointed captains "to open the mouth in the slaughter, to lift up the voice with shouting, to appoint battering-rams against the gates, to cast a mount, and to build a fort" (Ezekiel 21:21, 22). 3. The famine within. For a year and five months the weary siege dragged itself on, the people within well knowing that, when once it was captured, they could expect no mercy. The writings of Jeremiah give us a vivid picture of the city during this period. From the first the prophet held out no hope. When Zedekiah, at the beginning of the siege entreated him, "Inquire, I pray thee, of the Lord for us," Jeremiah plainly told him that the city was delivered to the Chaldeans, and that Nebuchadnezzar would not spare them, "neither have pity, nor have mercy" (Jeremiah 21:1-7). Life was promised, however, to those who should surrender themselves to the enemy (vers. 8-10). This strain was kept up throughout, in spite of imprisonment, threats, and the contrary testimony of false prophets (cf. Jeremiah 32:1-5; Jeremiah 34:1-7; Jeremiah 37:6-21; Jeremiah 38., etc.). At one point an Egyptian army came forth to arrest the Chaldeans, and great hopes were raised, but Jeremiah bade the people not deceive themselves, for the Chaldeans would prevail, as indeed they did, in spite of a temporary raising of the siege (Jeremiah 37:5-11). By-and-by, as in the previous long siege of Samaria by the Syrians (2 Kings 6:24-33), the misery of the people became extreme. The bread was "spent" in the city (Jeremiah 37:21). The Book of Lamentations gives vivid glimpses of the horrors - the young children fainting for hunger at the top of every street (Lamentations 2:11, 19); crying to their mothers. Where is corn and wine? (Lamentations 2:12); and asking bread, and no mall breaking it to them (Lamentations 4:4); the delicately nurtured lying on dunghills (Lamentations 4:5); women eating their own offspring (Lamentations 2:20), etc. II. THE FATE OF ZEDEKIAH. AS the vigor of the defense slackened, the besiegers redoubled their energies, till, on the ninth day of the fourth month, a breach was made in the walls, and Nebuchadnezzar's princes penetrated as far as the middle gate (Jeremiah 29:1-3). The stages that follow are, as respects Zedekiah, those of: 1. Flight. The besiegers had entered by the north side of the city, and the king, with his men of war, feeling that all was lost, made their escape by night through a gate of the city on the south - " the gate between the two walls, which is by the king's garden" - and, evading the Chaldeans in the darkness, fled towards the Jordan. By a symbolic action Ezekiel had foretold this flight, and the actual manner of the escape, down to its minutest details - a singular instance of the unerring prescience of these inspired prophets (Ezekiel 12:1-16). What the king's thoughts were as he fled that night with beating heart and covered face, who can tell? Jeremiah had been vindicated, and the prophets who had buoyed the people up with so many false hopes were now shown to be miserable deceivers. 2. Capture. The flight of the king was soon discovered, and a contingent of Chaldeans was dispatched in pursuit. It was not long ere they overtook the fleeing monarch, no doubt faint with hunger, unnerved by fear, and exhausted with the miles he had already traversed, unable therefore to make any defense. If his followers made any stand, they were speedily scattered, and the king was taken on the plains of Jericho. His hopes, his plans, his intrigues with Egypt, all had come to nothing. He stood there, a prisoner of the Chaldeans, as Jeremiah declared he would be. It is God's Word that always comes true. Would that Zedekiah had believed it in time! 3. Punishment. The fate which awaited Zedekiah was not long deferred. With his sons, and the nobles who were with him (Jeremiah 39:6; Jeremiah 52:10), he was taken to Riblah, to have judgment passed on him by Nebuchadnezzar. Little mercy had he to look for from the haughty, infuriate king, who had given him his throne, and whose covenant he had broken, entailing on him the trouble and delay of a sixteen months' siege. Tortures, perhaps, and death in protracted agonies. The wonder is that Zedekiah escaped as mercifully as he did. But his punishment was, nevertheless, heart-breaking in its severity. (1) He saw his own sons slain before his eyes. It was the last spectacle he ever beheld; for (2) his own eyes were next put out. Then (3) he was bound with fetters of brass, and carried to Babylon, where he remained a prisoner all the rest of his life (Jeremiah 52:11; cf. 34:5-8). The nobles of Judah were at the same time slain (Jeremiah 39:6; Jeremiah 52:10). Life thus ended for Zedekiah when he was yet a young man of little over thirty years of age. His sons must have been mere boys, and their pitiable death would be a pang in his heart greater even than the pain of the iron which pierced his eyes. The joy of life was lost to him, like the darkness which had now fallen forever on the outer world. The dreary living death of the prison was all that was left to him. Miserable man, how bitterly he had to expiate his sin, and mourn over past errors and self-willed courses! Will it be otherwise with those who stand at the last before the judgment-seat of God, if their lives are spent in disobedience? If it was hard to face Nebuchadnezzar when he was "full of fury, and the form of his visage was changed" (Daniel 3:19), how shall men endure "the wrath of the Lamb" (Revelation 6:16)? III. JERUSALEM DESTROYED. A month elapsed before the destruction of the now captured city was carried out. It was probably during this interval that Jeremiah composed his passionate and pathetic Lamentations. When at length the work was taken in hand by Nebuzar-adan, an officer deputed for the purpose, it was done with characteristic thoroughness, amidst the glee of Judah's hereditary enemies, whose shouts, "Raze it, ruse it, even to the foundations thereof!" (Psalm 137:7), stimulated the work of demolition. We see: 1. The temple burned. "He burnt the house of the Lord," etc. Thus came to an end the great and beautiful house of God, built by Solomon, consecrated by so many ceremonies and prayers (1 Kings 8.), and whose courts had so often resounded with the psalms and shouts of the multitude that kept holy day (Psalm 42:5). But idolatry and hypocrisy had made "the house of prayer" into "a den of robbers" (Isaiah 56:7; Jeremiah 7:11; Matthew 21:13), and God's glory had been seen by the prophet on the banks of the Chebar departing from it (Ezekiel 11:22, 23). The temple had been the special boast of the godless people. They had trusted in lying words, saying, "The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these" (Jeremiah 7:4). This was to make the temple a fetish, and, as Hezekiah had broken the brazen serpent in pieces when it began to be worshipped (2 Kings 18:4), it had become necessary to destroy the temple also. 2. The buildings burned. "The king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem, and every great man's house burnt he with fire." When the central glory of the city had perished, secular palaces and houses could not expect to escape. They also were set on fire, and the ruddy blaze, spreading from street to street, would consume most of the humbler houses as well. How faithfully had all this been foretold, yet none would believe it! Literally had Jerusalem now become heaps (Micah 3:12). 3. The walls broken down. "All the army of the Chaldeans... brake down the walls of Jerusalem round about." This completed the catastrophe, made the holy city a heap of ruins, and rendered it impossible for inhabitants any longer to dwell in it. Gedaliah made his headquarters at Mizpah (ver. 23). The center of Judah's nationality was destroyed. Jerusalem had been emptied, "as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down" (2 Kings 21:13). One stands appalled at so complete a wreck of a city which God had once honored by making it the place of his abode, and for which he had done such great things in the past. But the lesson we are to learn from it is that nothing can reverse the action of moral laws. God is terrible in his justice. Though a person or place is as "the signet upon his right hand," yet will he pluck it thence, if it abandons itself to wickedness (Jeremiah 22:24, 28). - J.O. Parallel Verses KJV: And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he, and all his host, against Jerusalem, and pitched against it; and they built forts against it round about. |
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