أخبار الأيام الثاني ٣٦:١٤

"And all princes of the priests and the people increased faithless transgressions, like to all the abominations of the heathen, and defiled the house of the Lord which He had consecrated in Jerusalem." Bertheau would refer this censure of their idolatry and the profanation of the temple to the guilt incurred by the whole people, especially in the time of Manasseh, because, from all we know from the book of Jeremiah, the reproach of idolatry did not at all, or at least did not specially, attach to the princes of the priests and the people in the time of Zedekiah. But this reason is neither tenable nor correct; for from Ezek 8 it is perfectly manifest that under Zedekiah, not only the people, but also the priesthood, were deeply sunk in idolatry, and that even the courts of the temple were defiled by it. And even though that idolatry did not take its rise under Zedekiah, but had been much practised under Jehoiakim, and was merely a revival and continuation of the idolatrous conduct of Manasseh and Amon, yet the reference of our verse to the time of Manasseh is excluded by the context; for here only that which was done under Zedekiah is spoken of, without any reference to earlier times. Meanwhile God did not leave them without exhortation, warning, and threatening. - Ch2 36:15. Jahve sent to them by His messengers, from early morning onwards continually, for He spared His people and His dwelling-place; but they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets. בּיד שׁלח, to send a message by any one, to make a sending. The object is to be supplied from the verb. ושׁלוח השׁכּם exactly as in Jer 26:5; Jer 29:19. For He spared His people, etc., viz., by this, that He, in long-suffering, again and again called upon the people by prophets to repent…

We have here, I. A short but sad account of the utter ruin of Judah and Jerusalem within a few years after Josiah's death. 1. The history of it in the unhappy reigns of Jehoahaz for three months (Ch2 36:1-4), Jehoiakim (Ch2 36:5-8) for eleven years, Jehoiachin three months (Ch2 36:9, Ch2 36:10), and Zedekiah eleven years (Ch2 36:11). Additions were made to the national guilt, and advances towards the national destruction, in each of those reigns. The destruction was, at length, completed in the slaughter of multitudes (Ch2 36:17), the plundering and burning of the temple and all the palaces, the desolation of the city (Ch2 36:18, Ch2 36:19), and the captivity of the people that remained (Ch2 36:20). 2. Some remarks upon it - that herein sin was punished, Zedekiah's wickedness (Ch2 36:12, Ch2 36:13), the idolatry the people were guilty of (Ch2 36:14), and their abuse of God's prophets (Ch2 36:15, Ch2 36:16). The word of God was herein fulfilled (Ch2 36:21). II. The dawning of the day of their deliverance in Cyrus's proclamation (Ch2 36:22, Ch2 36:23).