2 Kings 24:17-20
He changed his name
Installed by Babylon, renamed by Babylon, twenty-one years old. He does evil according to all that Jehoiakim had done, and rebels against the king who put him there.
People of the Bible
Zedekiah
The last king of Judah, who kept asking the prophet for a word in secret and never once did what it said.
Zedekiah is put on the throne by Nebuchadnezzar, who changes his name from Mattaniah as a way of saying who owns him, and he is twenty-one. He rebels anyway, and the siege lasts a year and a half until there is no bread in the city. Through all of it he sends privately for Jeremiah, asks whether there is any word from the LORD, gets the same answer every time, and does nothing with it because he is afraid of his own officials. When the wall is breached he runs at night by the gate between two walls and is caught in the plains of Jericho.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Zedekiah
- 01
- 02
Jeremiah 38:14-23
Is there any word from the LORD
He sends for the prophet in secret at a third entry of the house and swears he will not kill him. He is told to go out and surrender and live, and answers that he is afraid of the Jews who have already deserted.
- 03
2 Kings 25:1-3
Eighteen months, and no bread
Forts built round the city on every side, and the famine prevailed so that there was no bread for the people of the land. The ninth day of the fourth month is given exactly.
- 04
2 Kings 25:4-7
The gate between two walls
He goes out by night towards the plain and the army scatters from him. Taken at Jericho, his sons are killed in front of him, his eyes are put out, and he is bound in bronze fetters.
- 05
2 Kings 25:8-21
The house burned, the pillars broken
The temple, the palace and every great house burned, the walls broken down, and the bronze of the two pillars and the sea carried to Babylon because it was without weight.
Why it matters
Zedekiah closes the history that began with the elders asking for a king like the nations. The last scene is deliberately final: his sons killed in front of him, and that is the last thing he sees, because they put out his eyes and bring him to Babylon in chains. The temple is burned, the pillars broken up and carried off as bronze, and the book ends in a foreign court with a different king of Judah eating at a table. He is the study of a man who knew the right answer and lacked the nerve.
2 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
