2 Chronicles 36:11

Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign, and reigned eleven years in Jerusalem.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

ZEDEKIAH AND THE FINAL CATASTROPHE (2Chronicles 36:11-21). (Comp. 2Kings 24:18 to 2Kings 25:21; Jeremiah 39, 52; Jeremiah 3 Esdr. 1:44-55.)

(11) Zedekiah was one and twenty.—So 2Kings 24:18, adding his mother’s name (Hamutal, who was also mother of Jehoahaz).

Before Jeremian . . . mouth of the Lord.—Not in Kings. (Comp. Jeremiah 21, Jeremiah 22:1-10, Jeremiah 27, 28, 32-34, 37, 38)

Two special sins of Zedekiah are mentioned in this and the next verse—viz., his disregard of Jeremiah’s counsel, and his perjury to Nebuchadnezzar.

MacLaren's Expositions

2 Chronicles

THE FALL OF JUDAH

2 Chronicles 36:11 - 2 Chronicles 36:21.

Bigness is not greatness, nor littleness smallness. Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest of Judah was, in his eyes, one of the least important of his many victories, but it is the only one of them which survives in the world’s memory and keeps his name as a household word. The Jews were a mere handful, and their country a narrow strip of land between the desert and the sea; but little Judaea, like little Greece, has taught the world. The tragedy of its fall has importance quite disproportioned to its apparent magnitude. Our passage brings together Judah’s sin and Judah’s punishment, and we shall best gather the lessons of its fall by following the order of the text.

Consider the sin. There is nothing more remarkable than the tone in which the chronicler, like all the Old Testament writers, deals with the national sin. Patriotic historians make it a point of pride and duty to gloss over their country’s faults, but these singular narrators paint them as strongly as they can. Their love of their country impels them to ‘make known to Israel its transgression and to Judah its sin.’ There are tears in their eyes, as who can doubt? But there is no faltering in their voices as they speak. A higher feeling than misguided ‘patriotism’ moves them. Loyalty to Israel’s God forces them to deal honestly with Israel’s sin. That is the highest kind of love of country, and might well be commended to loudmouthed ‘patriot’s in modern lands.

Look at the piled-up clauses of the long indictment of Judah in 2 Chronicles 36:12 - 2 Chronicles 36:16. Slow, passionless, unsparing, the catalogue enumerates the whole black list. It is like the long-drawn blast of the angel of judgment’s trumpet. Any trace of heated emotion would have weakened the impression. The nation’s sin was so crimson as to need no heightening of colour. With like judicial calmness, with like completeness, omitting nothing, does ‘the book,’ which will one day be opened, set down every man’s deeds, and he will be ‘judged according to the things that are written in this book.’ Some of us will find our page sad reading.

But the points brought out in this indictment are instructive. Judah’s idolatry and ‘trespass after all the abominations of the heathen’ is, of course, prominent, but the spirit which led to their idolatry, rather than the idolatry itself, is dwelt on. Zedekiah’s doing ‘evil in the sight of the Lord’ is regarded as aggravated by his not humbling himself before Jeremiah, and the head and front of his offending is that ‘he stiffened his neck and hardened his heart from turning unto the Lord.’ Similarly, the people’s sin reaches its climax in their ‘mocking’ and ‘scoffing’ at the prophets and ‘despising’ God’s words by them. So then, an evil life has its roots in an alienated heart, and the source of all sin is an obstinate self-will. That is the sulphur-spring from which nothing but unwholesome streams can flow, and the greatest of all sins is refusing to hear God’s voice when He speaks to us.

Further, this indictment brings out the patient love of God seeking, in spite of all their deafness, to find a way to the sinners’ ears and hearts. In a bold transference to Him of men’s ways, He is said to have ‘risen early’ to send the prophets. Surely that means earnest effort. The depths of God’s heart are disclosed when we are bidden to think of His compassion as the motive for the prophet’s messages and threatenings. What a wonderful and heart-melting revelation of God’s placableness, wistful hoping against hope, and reluctance to abandon the most indurated sinner, is given in that centuries-long conflict of the patient God with treacherous Israel! That divine charity suffered long and was kind, endured all things and hoped all things.

Consider the punishment. The tragic details of the punishment are enumerated with the same completeness and suppression of emotion as those of the sin. The fact that all these were divine judgments brings the chronicler to the Psalmist’s attitude. ‘I was dumb, I opened not my mouth because Thou didst it.’ Sorrow and pity have their place, but the awed recognition of God’s hand outstretched in righteous retribution must come first. Modern sentimentalists, who are so tenderhearted as to be shocked at the Christian teachings of judgment, might learn a lesson here.

The first point to note is that a time arrives when even God can hope for no amendment and is driven to change His methods. His patience is not exhausted, but man’s obstinacy makes another treatment inevitable. God lavished benefits and pleadings for long years in vain, till He saw that there was ‘no remedy.’ Only then did He, as if reluctantly forced, do ‘His work, His strange work.’ Behold, therefore, the ‘goodness and severity’ of God, goodness in His long delay, severity in the final blow, and learn that His purpose is the same though His methods are opposite.

To the chronicler God is the true Actor in human affairs. Nebuchadnezzar thought of his conquest as won by his own arm. Secular historians treat the fall of Zedekiah as simply the result of the political conditions of the time, and sometimes seem to think that it could not be a divine judgment because it was brought about by natural causes. But this old chronicler sees deeper, and to him, as to us, if we are wise, ‘the history of the world is the judgment of the world.’ The Nebuchadnezzars are God’s axes with which He hews down fruitless trees. They are responsible for their acts, but they are His instruments, and it is His hand that wields them.

The iron band that binds sin and suffering is disclosed in Judah’s fall. We cannot allege that the same close connection between godlessness and national disaster is exemplified now as it was in Israel. Nor can we contend that for individuals suffering is always the fruit of sin. But it is still true that ‘righteousness exalteth a nation,’ and that ‘by the soul only are the nations great,’ in the true sense of the word. To depart from God is always ‘a bitter and an evil thing’ for communities and individuals, however sweet draughts of outward prosperity may for a time mask the bitterness. Not armies nor fleets, not ships, colonies and commerce, not millionaires and trusts, not politicians and diplomatists, but the fear of the Lord and the keeping of His commandments, are the true life of a nation. If Christian men lived up to the ideal set them by Jesus, ‘Ye are the salt of the land,’ and sought more earnestly and wisely to leaven their nation, they would be doing more than any others to guarantee its perpetual prosperity.

The closing words of this chapter, not included in the passage, are significant. They are the first words of the Book of Ezra. Whoever put them here perhaps wished to show a far-off dawn following the stormy sunset. He opens a ‘door of hope’ in ‘the valley of trouble.’ It is an Old Testament version of ‘God hath not cast away His people whom He foreknew.’ It throws a beam of light on the black last page of the chronicle, and reveals that God’s chastisement was in love, that it was meant for discipline, not for destruction, that it was educational, and that the rod was burned when the lesson had been learned. It was learned, for the Captivity cured the nation of hankering after idolatry, and whatever defects it brought back from Babylon, it brought back a passionate abhorrence of all the gods of the nations.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

36:1-21 The ruin of Judah and Jerusalem came on by degrees. The methods God takes to call back sinners by his word, by ministers, by conscience, by providences, are all instances of his compassion toward them, and his unwillingness that any should perish. See here what woful havoc sin makes, and, as we value the comfort and continuance of our earthly blessings, let us keep that worm from the root of them. They had many times ploughed and sowed their land in the seventh year, when it should have rested, and now it lay unploughed and unsown for ten times seven years. God will be no loser in his glory at last, by the disobedience of men. If they refused to let the land rest, God would make it rest. What place, O God, shall thy justice spare, if Jerusalem has perished? If that delight of thine were cut off for wickedness, let us not be high-minded, but fear.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

When the year was expired - literally, as in the margin, i. e. at the return of the season for military expeditions. The expedition against Jehoiakim took place probably late in the autumn of one year, that against Jehoiachin early in the spring of the next.

Strictly speaking, Zedekiah was uncle to Jehoiachin, being the youngest of the sons of Josiah (marginal note and reference). He was nearly of the same age with Jehoiachin, and is called here his "brother" (compare Genesis 14:14).

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

2Ch 36:11-21. Zedekiah's Reign.

11. Zedekiah—Nebuchadnezzar appointed him. His name, originally Mattaniah, was, according to the custom of Oriental conquerors, changed into Zedekiah. Though the son of Josiah (1Ch 3:15; Jer 1:2, 3; 37:1), he is called the brother of Jehoiachin (2Ch 36:10), that is, according to the latitude of Hebrew style in words expressing affinity, his relative or kinsman (see 2Ki 24:18; 25:1-21).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah,.... Of whose reign, and of the three following, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah, and the account of them, from hence to the end of 2 Chronicles 36:13, what needs explanation or reconciliation; see Gill on 2 Kings 23:31, 2 Kings 23:32, 2 Kings 23:33, 2 Kings 23:34, 2 Kings 23:35, 2 Kings 23:36, 2 Kings 23:37, 2 Kings 24:5, 2 Kings 24:6, 2 Kings 24:8, 2 Kings 24:10, 2 Kings 24:17, 2 Kings 24:18

Geneva Study Bible

Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign, and reigned eleven years in Jerusalem.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

11–19 (= 1Es 1:46-56; cp. 2 Kings 24:18 to 2 Kings 25:21; Jeremiah 37:1 to Jeremiah 39:8; Jeremiah 52:1-27). Reign of Zedekiah. Destruction of Jerusalem

11. in Jerusalem] The Chronicler omits, as usual, his mother’s name. She was “Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah” (2 Kings 24:18), and was mother of Jehoahaz also (ibid. 2 Kings 23:31). Jehoiakim was by a different mother (ibid. 2 Kings 23:36).

2 Chronicles 36:11

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The reign of Zedekiah; the destruction of Jerusalem, and Judah carried away into exile. Cf. 2 Kings 24:18-25:21. - Zedekiah, made king at the age of twenty-one years, reigned eleven years, and filled up the measure of sins, so that the Lord was compelled to give the kingdom of Judah up to destruction by the Chaldeans. To that Zedekiah brought it by the two main sins of his evil reign, - namely, by not humbling himself before the prophet Jeremiah, from the mouth of Jahve (2 Chronicles 36:12); and by rebelling against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had caused him to swear by God, and by so hardening his neck (being stiff-necked), and making stout his heart, that he did not return to Jahve the God of Israel. Zedekiah's stiffness of neck and hardness of heart showed itself in his refusing to hearken to the words which Jeremiah spoke to him from the mouth of God, and his breaking the oath he had sworn to Nebuchadnezzar by God. The words, "he humbled himself not before Jeremiah," recall Jeremiah 37:2, and the events narrated in Jeremiah 37 and 38, and 21:4-22:9, which show how the chief of the people ill-treated the prophet because of his prophecies, while Zedekiah was too weak and languid to protect him against them. The rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar, to whom he had sworn a vassal's oath of fidelity, is mentioned in 2 Kings 24:20, and Ezekiel 17:13. also, as a great crime on the part of Zedekiah and the chief of the people; see the commentary on both passages. In consequence of this rebellion, Nebuchadnezzar marched against Judah with a powerful army; and after the capture of the fenced cities of the land, he advanced to the siege of Jerusalem, which ended in its capture and destruction, 2 Kings 25:1-10. Without further noticing these results of this breach of faith, the author of the Chronicle proceeds to depict the sins of the king and of the people. In the first place, he again brings forward, in 2 Chronicles 36:13, the stiffness of neck and obduracy of the king, which manifested itself in the acts just mentioned: he made hard his neck, etc. Bertheau would interpret the words וגו ויּקשׁ, according to Deuteronomy 2:30, thus: "Then did God make him stiff-necked and hardened his heart; so that he did not return to Jahve the God of Israel, notwithstanding the exhortations of the prophets." But although hardening is not seldom represented as inflicted by God, there is here no ground for supposing that with ויּקשׁ the subject is changed, while the bringing forward of the hardening as an act of God does not at all suit the context. And, moreover, ערף הקשׁה, making hard the neck, is nowhere ascribed to God, it is only said of men; cf. 2 Kings 17:14; Deuteronomy 10:16; Jeremiah 19:15, etc. To God only את־לב הקשׁה or את־רוּח is attributed, Exodus 7:3; Deuteronomy 2:30.