When Nebuchadnezzar sent Jehoiachin and many others into captivity in Babylon, he put Josiah’s third son (and Jehoiachin’s uncle) Mattaniah on the throne, renaming him Zedekiah. Zedekiah was never really liked by the people, perhaps because his enthronement came at the hands of Babylonian oppression, and the king’s reign sparkled with agitation and unrest. In 594 B.C., an anti-Babylonian coalition was formed between several ancient Near Eastern nations: Edom, Moab, Ammon, and Phoenicia. They sent messengers to Zedekiah, pleading with him to join their coalition against Babylon. Zedekiah called for a “Jerusalem Council” amongst many leaders and false prophets (Jeremiah was there, too, wearing a wooden yoke to symbolize Babylon’s coming yoke on Judah). The false prophets stated that God would be with Judah: “Go to war!” Jeremiah said, “No! Submit to Babylon! If you go to war against Babylon, Babylon will win!” Zedekiah refused to listen to Jeremiah and joined the anti-Babylonian coalition. When the rebellion began, around 586 B.C., Babylon declared war on those nations involved in the coalition, including Judah. Nebuchadnezzar swept down into Judah and laid siege on Jerusalem. Egyptian armies, allied with Judah, came to their rescue, and for a time the Babylonian armies pulled away from the city. The Egyptian armies were routed, and Nebuchadnezzar restarted his siege on Jerusalem.
As the Babylonian armies laid siege to Jerusalem, multiple armies scoured the countryside, massacring people and burning the cities. Watchmen on the city walls could see lights in the distance at night: every night, the Babylonians would light a town on fire to be seen by those in Jerusalem (a psychological scare-tactic). The city became filled with refugees. “Why did everyone rush to Jerusalem if it were being laid siege to?” Perhaps the Jews thought the Babylonians would leave (idiots), or maybe they thought that Jerusalem would be safe, because God would intervene (however, Jeremiah made it clear that this was the judgment of God, and so he was persecuted). Most likely, they believed that the Egyptian pharaoh Hophra would come to their aide. When Hophra finally came, the people were exuberant; however, he was quickly destroyed, and the peoples’ joy dissipated. The state of the siege became catastrophic, even to the point of cannibalism taking place in homes amongst families! Finally, in July of 586 B.C., the city falls to King Nebuchadnezzar. Zedekiah and his family fled from the city, but they were caught near Jericho. They were taken captive and carried to Riblah, Nebuchadnezzar’s headquarters. Nebuchadnezzar then took pleasure in slaying all of Zedekiah’s sons before his eyes, then he takes out the eyes of the king. King Zedekiah is put in shackles and led 700 miles to a land of idolatry where he would die blind and alone, haunted day and night by the memory of seeing his own sons executed for his own foolishness, always wondering, “What if I had done as Jeremiah told me?” A chronological retelling of the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon (succinct as it may be) might look like this:
Once the food supplies of the cities ran out, King Nebuchadnezzar ordered the actual attack on the city, his loyal servant Captain Nebuzaradan leading the assault. The siege towers moved forward and battered down the city walls; the deadly Babylonian soldiers entered the city, slaying anyone who crossed their paths, setting fire to the buildings and rushing towards the epicenter of the city, the great Temple. Terrified, the warriors of Judah fled, but the Babylonian Army outside the walls cut them off, killing or scattering all the soldiers. Captain Nebuzaradan led the assault on the Temple, completely destroying it as Babylonian soldiers rushed through the city, slaughtering and enslaving the populace as they systematically set fire to the structures. King Zedekiah and his family are caught; his sons are slain before his eyes, then he is held down as Babylonian soldiers gouge out his eyes.
During the Jerusalem Council around 594 B.C., Zedekiah gathered together various leaders and prophets to try and determine whether he should join the anti-Babylonian coalition. A false prophet named Hananiah stood up amongst the assembly and said, “What I tell you is straight from God Almighty! God says, ‘I will most certainly break the yoke of the king of Babylon. Before two years are out, I’ll have all the furnishings of God’s Temple back here [for they were taken earlier by Babylon], and I’ll also bring back the former king Jehoiachin and all the exiles! Yes, I will break the king of Babylon’s yoke! You’ll no longer be in harness to him!” Everyone applauded, loving Hananiah’s prediction, but Jeremiah stood up and said before them all, “Oh! I wish what you were saying were true! I wish God would do all that you say! But listen to me, listen closely. Listen to me, everyone here! All the other prophets that have come have spoke against many nations and countries, have warned about war and disaster and plague. Hananiah here, he speaks something entirely different! He sticks out like a sore thumb! If Hananiah is really from God as he says, then we’ll know it when his prophecy comes true!” Angered at Jeremiah’s hotheadedness, Hananiah rushed Jeremiah, took the wooden yoke on his shoulders [which he wore symbolizing Babylon’s coming yoke on Judah], and smashed it to pieces. Holding the remnants of the yoke in his hands, he turned to the people and said, “This is God’s message! ‘In just this way I will smash the yoke of the king of Babylon and get him off the neck of all the nations—and within two years!” Hananiah turned to see what Jeremiah would say to that, but Jeremiah was walking out of the chamber. Some time passed, and Jeremiah returned to Hananiah with these words from God: “You may have broken a yoke of wood, but a yoke of iron will be placed on your shoulders! God has put a yoke of iron on all these nations [those involved in the coalition]! They’re harnessed to the king of Babylon, and they’re going to do just what he tells them.” He shouted in Hananiah’s face, “You’re a liar! God never sent you! You’ve talked the whole country into believing a pack of lies! God is extremely pissed. These are His words to you: ‘You claim to be sent? Fine! I’ll send you—I’ll send you into the house of the dead! Before the year is out, you’ll be dead because you’ve turned people against Me!’” Hananiah died that very year.
When the Babylonians first laid siege to Jerusalem, Jeremiah was not put in prison. He walked the streets, though he was met with much hostility. As a prophetic act, he bought a piece of land and buried the title to it; this was to show that the land, though the Babylonians were coming, still had a future. On his way to claim the land, soldiers of the Jewish Army met him and arrested him for treason, throwing him in prison. When Egypt came to rescue them, Jeremiah proclaimed, “Do not trust Egypt! Submit to Babylon! It is the only way to survive!” Zedekiah no doubt felt content with his decision at putting Jeremiah in prison. When in prison, he continued prophesying: he said, “Captivity is unavoidable” (Jer 21.3-10), “Even King Zedekiah will die” (21.7), but there came hope in his messages, something quite unfamiliar to Jeremiah’s preaching: “A remnant will be saved! This remnant shall return and shall be the nucleus of a new kingdom!” Following the Egyptians’ defeat by the Babylonians, Zedekiah secretly went to Jeremiah in prison and asked, “Is there any word from God?” Jeremiah replied, “Yes. It is what I have been preaching all along!” Zedekiah’s soft side got better of him, and he gave him more freedom (though he was still in prison; now he was allowed to go to the outer courts of the prison). When his enemies discovered this, they were outraged. They secretly took Jeremiah and threw him into a slimy dungeon, which was probably an unused cistern somewhere in the city. He was rescued by a sympathetic Ethiopian named Ebed-melech, and Zedekiah allowed this to happen.
When the city fell, Jeremiah was not among the slain or deported. Hearing how Jeremiah had called the people to submit to Babylon and had been persecuted for it, the Babylonians gave Jeremiah a choice: “Do you wish to be taken into exile or do you wish to remain in the land?” Jeremiah chose the latter and took up residence in Mizpah, eight miles north of the smoldering city of Jerusalem. Perhaps here he wrote his lament “Lamentations,” a funeral eulogy lamenting the fall of the city due to the sins of her people.
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