2 Kings 25 (NIV)✞: The Fall of Jerusalem, Jehoiachin Released
Passage
Technically I’m kind of starting with the last verse of Chapter 24 because the NIV section heading occurs halfway through that verse✞, but it just felt cleaner to label this post for Chapter 25 (and all 24:20 actually says is that Zedekiah rebelled against the Babylonians).
As recounted here, Zedekiah’s rebellion against the Babylonians doesn’t go very far. They immediately surround and besiege Jerusalem, which lasts for two years. Finally, in desperation, Zedekiah and whatever remaining army he has left break through the city wall in an escape attempt but the Babylonians pursue and capture him.
They bring him before the king of Babylon and punish him by first killing his sons in front of him; then putting out his eyes; then shackling him and carting him off to Babylon.
Verses 8–21✞ outline all that the Babylonians did but it essentially boils down to this: any person or thing of importance that hadn’t already been carted off to Babylon is now carted off to Babylon. All of the people except the poorest of the poor are also taken away. (The last chapter had already mentioned this, so this is either a recap of that same thing or there are even less people left in Judah now then there were at that point.)
So the exile of God’s people into Babylon is nearly complete by verse 21, but there are still some of His people left in Judah. However, verses 22–26✞ cover the exile of the rest: the king of Babylon puts a governor over the remaining people left in the land and he tells the people not to be afraid: things will go well if they serve the Babylonians. Some of the people don’t listen, however, and decide to assassinate the governor – which causes everyone who’s left to flee for their lives to Egypt.
So by verse 26 the exile is complete: the Assyrians have conquered the northern nation of Israel and exiled all of its people, and now the Babylonians have conquered Judah and exiled all of its people. God had promised to bring the people to the Promised Land and He did so; he promised the people that He would exile them if they weren’t faithful to Him, and they weren’t, so He did.
There is a bright note at the end of the book, however, because while Zedekiah was rebelling against the Babylonians his brother Jehoiachin—Zedekiah’s brother, who’d been king of Judah when the Babylonians first attacked—has been in Babylon in prison. For whatever reason (mainly God’s Grace), a new king eventually comes to power in Babylon and decides to show favour to Jehoiachin:
27 In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the year Awel-Marduk became king of Babylon, he released Jehoiachin king of Judah from prison. He did this on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month. 28 He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat of honor higher than those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon. 29 So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king’s table. 30 Day by day the king gave Jehoiachin a regular allowance as long as he lived.
Thoughts
I’ve talked a lot in the book of Kings about the fact that it was clear, throughout the history of Israel/Judah, that the people were never going to obey God as they were supposed to. Even at the very best of times, such as under King David or or King Hezekiah or King Josiah, the people would get close to being faithful, but not flawlessly. For most of their history they weren’t even close to faithfulness, they were led by men who did evil in the eyes of the LORD and let the people to do the same.
As a Christian, I can see Jesus in all of this: I’m no better than the people of God in the Old Testament, and I’m not meeting God’s requirements either.
We should remember, however, that God wasn’t asking the Israelites to obey Him in order that they might be His people; they were already His people! He had already chosen them, and He had already made them holy. It wasn’t a matter of “obey my commandments so that I will be your God1,” it was a matter of, “I have made you my people so now, out of love for me, obey my commandments.”
That’s exactly the same as it is for me; the “commandments” might look different, but the situation is the same: God has already chosen me and although I could never properly have obeyed Him on my own Jesus has done so on my behalf so I can obey Him out of love. (See, for example, John 14:15✞, which has a much larger context than this specific point but is still appropriate.)
Notably, whenever God’s people returned to Him in repentance He forgave them because, again, they weren’t obeying Him in order to be His bride, they were already his bride – that is, until Josiah repented and God told him it was too late. Similarly, whenever I sin and repent God is faithful to forgive me as well, but with a big difference: there is no point beyond which He will stop forgiving. Under the new covenant with God, in which Jesus has done all the work, there is nothing I could possibly do to “undo” the powerful work He has done. There’s no point I can reach where He will say, sorry, it’s just too much now, I can’t forgive anymore.
Ironically, instead of giving Christians license to sin as much as we want this makes us want to obey Him all the more!
Killing Zedekiah’s Sons
I’m reading the book of Kings from the perspective of a 21st Century Christian, but I wonder if mention of the killing of Zedekiah’s sons would have been more impactful to early Jewish readers of the book of Kings than it is to modern eyes.
I believe the first readers of this book would have been God’s people who were still in exile2; they would have been concerned with the idea of the line of David living on, and the idea that there might not have been someone from the line of David to sit on the throne would have been devastating. I also think that’s why verses 27–30 are given: to give some hope to God’s people that the line of David hasn’t been wiped out. After their initial anguish when they were first conquered they would have been looking forward to their return home, at which point they’d have been looking for someone from the line of David to become king once again.
That being said, I’m pretty confident that there was never again an official “king” of a nation of “Israel” or “Judah” for the rest of the storyline in the Bible; they will eventually return (spoiler alert), but always continue to be under the rule of some other power (Babylon, Persia, the Greeks, the Romans, and maybe others – I don’t know my history very well). Members of the line of David did continue on, even if they weren’t “king” per se – right up to Jesus Himself, who became the ultimate fulfilment of prophecies around the line of David! He is king now and forevermore.
The Big Lie
We should continue to see God’s hands right up to the very last minutes of the nation of Judah. He has sent Assyria to conquer Israel and He has sent Babylon to conquer Judah, and his judgement is so complete that not a single one of His people can be left in the land. So when the Babylonians leave even a tiny remnant of people behind God sees to it that even they end up fleeing.
As is so often the case, I’m guessing the people who assassinated the governor were under a misguided assumption that God would save them no matter what. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had delusions of grandeur: “God has let a bunch of His people go into captivity but He has obviously left his real people behind, to overthrow the Babylonians!” We know that Jeremiah was prophesying at this point in history, telling the people of Judah that this was God’s judgement on them, but we also know that nobody believed him; they thought he was a blasphemer, because they simply couldn’t believe the idea that God would ever abandon His people.
I’m reminded of a YouTube video I saw recently on the types of lies Christians are prone to believe when those lies are beneficial to us. Because, on the surface, people of Judah who refused to listen to Jeremiah were right that God would never abandon His people; He didn’t. He remained their God even once the people were in exile in Babylon and beyond. Their problem wasn’t being out-and-out wrong, it was refusing to see the nuance of the situation, it was picking and choosing what messages from God they chose to listen to and what messages they chose to ignore, and it was including as much wishful thinking as actual information on God’s relationship with His people.
- “The Scriptures say God will never abandon us? Good! That means He’ll always make us ‘win!’”
- “There were times in our history when He didn’t, but that was for specific reasons, they don’t count. And… we haven’t been winning a lot lately, but… we’ll ignore that.”
- “Moses flat out told us in the Book of the Law (Deuteronomy) that we would abandon God? Well… Moses was just being overdramatic. He was trying to get us to worship God.”
- “Which, by the way, we feel is kind of old fashioned now that we’re in a land that has so many other gods we can be worshipping along with Him.”
- “God promised this land to us? Excellent! We’re here forever and ever! Yes, we lost a big chunk of the land when the northern kingdom of Israel was exiled, but they were the bad ones and we’re the good ones!”
- “Why are we the good ones? Well… because we are! Again, let’s not bring that old fashioned “law of God” into the conversation!”
- “God promised that He’d eventually purge us from the land when our sin got too great and give the land a ‘Sabbath rest?’ Er… we don’t remember reading that, you’re probably making it up. Remember, He said earlier that He would never abandon us! That sure sounds like “abandonment!”
- “God has been sending prophets for hundreds of years who have been telling us we really have abandoned God, comparing us to an adulterous wife, and telling us that God is going to let us be conquered? We don’t believe it! Again, read our lips: ‘Never… abandon… us!’”
So again, the problem wasn’t that the people of Judah were 100% wrong, it’s that they cherry-picked the Scriptures to ignore the parts they didn’t want to hear, and then interpreted those parts they did listen to in a way that wasn’t really faithful to what God had said (i.e. “never abandon us” means that we will never be conquered and never be exiled – He will make sure we always “win.”). They had a very narrow definition of what it would mean for God to not “abandon” them, interpreted all events against that very narrow definition, and when someone like Jeremiah tried to correct them he was accused of blasphemy – not for going against the Scriptures, but for going against how the people chose to define the word “abandon,” or other concepts they’d created that weren’t what the Scriptures really said.
The best modern-day example of Christians doing the same thing is the “health and wealth Gospel” or “prosperity Gospel,” in which Christians are told that people who are truly faithful to God will never suffer, never be sick, never be poor. Many of the people who believe this message are suffering and/or sick and/or poor, but they feel it’s because they simply aren’t being faithful enough, and when they muster up enough faith God will reward them by taking away those problems. The ones who promote this message are doing the same thing the people of Judah were doing at the end of their kingdom: cherry picking the parts of the Bible they pay attention to and the parts they de-emphasize and interpreting things in very narrow ways that don’t really fit in with the larger message of the Bible. (e.g. “God says He’ll answer prayers, so obviously people with enough faith can pray for whatever they want and God will give it to them.”)
It’s tempting to interpret the events of Kings (and Chronicles and other Old Testament historical books) in an Old Testament vs. New Testament kind of way, and there is some validity to that when we consider that Christians now have the Holy Spirit and a more fulsome understanding of the work of Christ that God’s Old Testament people didn’t have, but we should also remember that we’re just like God’s people as depicted in the book of Kings. If it wasn’t for Jesus and the Holy Spirit I’d be no different; in other words, the ways I am different I attribute to them, not me being a better person. I’ve said it time and again, but we shouldn’t read the book of Kings thinking how dumb or unfaithful those people were, we should read it and see what people are really like – and how God is faithful regardless. He knew from the beginning what we’re like, and made the Israelites His people anyway, and made me His person anyway.
- I believe it is phrased like this in some places, but I believe the way we should be reading that is more like, “to continue being my people you should obey My commandments,” and even then, God never abandoned His people, regardless of how much or how little they obeyed. ↩
- Scholars aren’t 100% sure when the book of Kings was written, though there seems to be a general belief that it probably evolved over time before getting to its final form, but regardless of the exact date God’s people would still be exiled under some kingdom; perhaps the Persians (who conquered the Babylonians). ↩
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