Moral weakness and inability to resist strong pressure was the keynote
of Zedekiah's character. There were good things in him; he had kindly
impulses, as was shown in his emancipation of the slaves at a crisis of
Jerusalem's fate. Left to himself, he would at least have treated
Jeremiah kindly, and did rescue him from lingering death in the foul
dungeon to which the ruffian nobility had consigned him, and he
provided for his being at least saved from dying of starvation during
the siege. He listened to him secretly, and would have accepted his
counsel if he had dared. But he yielded to the stronger wills of the
nobles, though he sometimes bitterly resented their domination, and
complained that 'the king is not he that can do anything against you.'
Like most weak men, he found that temptations to do wrong abounded more
than visible inducements to do right, and he was afraid to do right,
and fancied that he was compelled by the force of circumstances to do
wrong. So he drifted and drifted, and at last was smashed to fragments
on the rocks, as all men are who do not keep a strong hand on the helm
and a steady eye on the compass. The winds are good servants but bad
masters. If we do not coerce circumstances to carry us on the course
which conscience has pricked out on the chart, they will wreck us.
II. A man may have a good deal of religion and yet not enough to mould
his life.
Zedekiah listened to the prophet by fits and starts. He was eager to
have the benefit of the prophet's prayers. He liberated the slaves in
Jerusalem. He came secretly to Jeremiah more than once to know if there
were any message from God for him. Yet he had not faith enough nor
submission enough to let the known will of God rule his conduct,
whatever the nobles might say.
Are there not many of us who have a belief in God and a general
acquiescence in Christ's precepts, who order our lives now and then by
these, and yet have not come up to the point of full and final
surrender? Alas, alas, for the multitudes who are 'not far from the
kingdom,' but who never come near enough to be actually _in_ it! To be
not far from _is_ to be out of, and to be out of is to be, like
Zedekiah, blinded and captived and dead in prison at last.