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Context No. 485 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 52:6-11: in context

6In the fourth month, in the ninth day of the month, the famine was severe in the city, so that there was no bread for the people of the land. 7Then a breach was made in the city, and all the men of war fled, and went out of the city by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king’s garden. Now the Chaldeans were against the city all around. The men of war went toward the Arabah, 8but the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king, and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho; and all his army was scattered from him. 9Then they took the king, and carried him up to the king of Babylon to Riblah in the land of Hamath; and he pronounced judgment on him. 10The king of Babylon killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. He also killed all the princes of Judah in Riblah. 11He put out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the king of Babylon bound him in fetters, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison until the day of his death.

This is the end that Jeremiah had spent his whole career warning was coming. After a long siege, the famine in Jerusalem grows so severe there is no bread left, the walls are breached, and King Zedekiah flees by night. The Babylonian army runs him down in the plains of Jericho, his own soldiers scattering from him, and drags him before the king of Babylon for sentencing. And the sentence is a horror the text records without turning away: they kill Zedekiah's sons in front of him, and then, so that the slaughter of his sons is the last thing his eyes ever see, they put out his eyes and carry him in chains to Babylon, where he dies in prison.

It is a brutal scene, and there is no softening it. But it helps to remember how Zedekiah got here, because the road to this moment was long and full of exits he refused to take. For years Jeremiah had brought him God's word: surrender to Babylon and live, and the city will be spared the worst. Again and again the king heard the warning, and again and again he would not act on it, half-listening, afraid of his officials, hoping the danger would pass on its own. This end is not a bolt from nowhere. It is where a long series of ignored warnings finally arrives. The catastrophe had been announced, and avoidable, for a very long time.

That is the sobering thing to sit with, more than the cruelty of Babylon. I can hear a warning clearly, know in my conscience what I ought to do, and still spend years half-listening, putting off the hard obedience, hoping the consequence will simply never come. Zedekiah's story is what it looks like when the exits are all used up. Is there a warning I have been hearing for a long time and refusing to act on, and am I telling myself I still have time, the way Zedekiah did, right up until there was none?

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