'Zedekiah the son of Josiah reigned as king ... whom Nebuchadnezzar
king of Babylon made king'--JER. xxxvii. 1.
Zedekiah was a small man on a great stage, a weakling set to face
circumstances that would have taxed the strongest. He was a youth at
his accession to the throne of a distracted kingdom, and if he had had
any political insight he would have seen that his only chance was to
adhere firmly to Babylon, and to repress the foolish aristocracy who
hankered after alliance with the rival power of Egypt. He was mad
enough to form an alliance with the latter, which was constructive
rebellion against the former, and was strongly reprobated by Jeremiah.
Swift vengeance followed; the country was ravaged, Zedekiah in his
fright implored Jeremiah's prayers and made faint efforts to follow his
counsels. The pressure of invasion was lifted, and immediately he
forgot his terrors and forsook the prophet. The Babylonian army was
back next year, and the final investment of Jerusalem began. The siege
lasted sixteen months, and during it, Zedekiah miserably vacillated
between listening to the prophet's counsels of surrender and the
truculent nobles' advice to resist to the last gasp. The miseries of
the siege live for ever in the Book of Lamentations. Mothers boiled
their children, nobles hunted on dunghills for food. Their delicate
complexions were burned black, and famine turned them into living
skeletons. Then, on a long summer day in July came the end. The king
tried to skulk out by a covered way between the walls, his few
attendants deserted him in his flight, he was caught at last down by
the fords of the Jordan, carried prisoner to Nebuchadnezzar at Riblah
away up in the north beyond Baalbec, and there saw his sons slain
before his eyes, and, as soon as he had seen that last sight, was
blinded, fettered, and carried off to Babylon, where he died. His
career teaches us lessons which I may now seek to bring out.