The Fall of Jerusalem: 2 Chronicles 36:15–23✞
Passage
The last few passages have been leading up to this: the fall of Jerusalem – which is really the fall of the entire nation of Judah. Much of the former nation of Judah is already in the hands of the Babylonians; my understanding is that Jerusalem might be the last remaining stronghold of Judah. In the last passage we read about the end of Zedekiah’s reign; this passage just gets to the heart of it: Jerusalem falls to the Babylonians and God’s people are carried away into exile.
And just in case we’re tempted to say that God had nothing to do with this, the text makes it quite clear: Babylon might have been the tool, but this was God’s doing:
15 The LORD, the God of their ancestors, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. 16 But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy. 17 He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and did not spare young men or young women, the elderly or the infirm. God gave them all into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. 18 He carried to Babylon all the articles from the temple of God, both large and small, and the treasures of the LORD’s temple and the treasures of the king and his officials. 19 They set fire to God’s temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem; they burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there.
20 He carried into exile to Babylon the remnant, who escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and his successors until the kingdom of Persia came to power. 21 The land enjoyed its sabbath rests; all the time of its desolation it rested, until the seventy years were completed in fulfillment of the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah.
Interestingly, the book ends on kind of a “high note.” I put that in quotes because it’s not the kind of happy ending we might hope for, but still: seventy years after these events the nation of Babylon itself falls, conquered by the Persians. And the very first year of the Persian empire, Cyrus (the king) decides to build a temple for the LORD in Jerusalem, and allows God’s people to return (if they wish):
22 In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing:
23 “This is what Cyrus king of Persia says:
“‘The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up, and may the LORD their God be with them.’”
In fact, this is where the next book of the Old Testament, Ezra, will pick up.
Thoughts
With so much time between these events and now—something like two and a half millennia—it’s difficult for us to understand how badly this event would have shattered the world view of God’s people at the time. Yes, there’s definitely a sense in which they shouldn’t have been surprised: He’d been telling them over and over and over again that they weren’t living up to His standards, and warning them what was going to happen.
And yet, at the same time… they were God’s people! Their whole identity was built on the fact that they were His people! The idea that they would stop being a nation would have seemed absolutely crazy to them! Even the people who hadn’t been following God (which was almost all of them, by this point) would have still been shocked at the idea that God would abandon them; I’m sure there were a lot of people in Judah who were still assuming God would swoop in at the last moment and save them – give them one more chance. As He’d done so many times before.
Maybe that doesn’t seem realistic to modern readers; we’ve been reading about so much sin over the last few chapters, and a people who are obstinately refusing to obey God – surely they don’t really expect Him to save them! But if we’re brutally honest with ourselves, how different is that from North America in the 21st Century? There’s a widespread belief that America and (to a lesser extent) Canada are “Christian” nations, but many of the messages sent by God’s prophets to the nations of Israel and Judah apply equally well to North Americans: how well do we treat our poor? Do we really apply justice equally to all citizens? Do we prioritize God over all else? Neither America nor Canada are theocracies, so we’re not quite the same as Israel/Judah, but I think Christians often view our nations that way – for good and for bad: we like to view ourselves as being under the cover of our God, while being guilty of the exact same offenses as His people in the Old Testament, but if He were to send punishment we’d be just as shocked as the people of Judah.
To be clear, I’m not promoting that we try and set up a theocracy again. I am suggesting that individual Christians should be looking to God for salvation, yearning to be more like Him, and then putting that into practice in our work, in politics, and in our personal lives. We might not change the culture, but if not, so be it. Then again, maybe we might change the culture! We’re supposed to be living like that anyway, so let’s do it…
And by the way, when I say that God had been sending prophets, I mean He had sent a lot of prophets! Even if we only count the ones who wrote books we find published in our Bibles we have Obadiah, Joel, Jonah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, and Jeremiah1. And, as I say, these are just the ones who had books named after them – so it’s not even counting Elijah and Elisha, nor a half dozen others who are mentioned in the books of Kings/Chronicles!
Not all of these prophets were specifically prophesying to Israel/Judah, of course. Jonah, for example, wasn’t talking to God’s people. But there are still a lot of harsh words from God to His people about them not living up to His standards.
It has been clear, from the time of Moses right through to this point in history, that God had certain standards for His people, and they weren’t living up to them – never had! Even at the best of times—such as under the reign of King David—God’s people had never perfectly followed His ways. There’s a facile view that the God of the Old Testament is a harsh God, always angry with His people, but the reality (as quoted above) is that He has been remarkably patient with His people for many, many years—centuries!—out of pity for them. Yes, He has been angry with them, for good reason, but in spite of that anger, and in spite of the fact that He had given them clear warnings what would happen if they disobeyed, He had held back the consequences for a long, long time.
As a Christian, I also have a lot of sympathy for God’s people in the Old Testament. Can I claim I’d have done any better than them? I can say with confidence that I live a more godly life than some of the kings we’ve been reading about lately – but I also have the Holy Spirit living in me and guiding me in a way that those kings never had! Left to my own devices, would I do any better? It’s not false humility when I say that I wouldn’t have; I can look back on my life before I got saved—at the way I get angry and short-tempered with people even now that I am saved—and say with certainty that I would have been judged right alongside anyone else we’re reading about.
I don’t read the Old Testament thinking about what sinful people “they were.” I read it thinking about how sinful “we are.” And thanking Him not only for His patience, but His Grace, in accomplishing on the cross what we could never accomplish on our own.
No comments:
Post a Comment