Jeremiah was to Zedekiah the incarnation of God's unwearied pleadings.
During his whole reign, the prophet's voice sounded in his ears,
through all the clamours and cries of factions, and mingled at last
with the shouts of the besiegers and the groans of the wounded, like
the sustained note of some great organ, persisting through a babel of
discordant noises. It was met with indifference, and it sounded on. It
provoked angry antagonism and still it spoke. Violence was used to
stifle it in vain. And it was not only Jeremiah's courageous
pertinacity that spoke through that persistent voice, but God's
unwearied love, which being rejected is not driven away, being
neglected becomes more beseeching, 'is not easily provoked 'to cease
its efforts, but 'beareth all' despite, and hopeth for softened hearts
till the last moment before doom falls.
That patient love pleads with each of us as persistently as Jeremiah
did with Zedekiah.