2 Kings 24

Today’s Passage: 2 Kings 24

The great power of the age has shifted, and Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar now presses down on the little kingdom of Judah. In the space of this one chapter three kings pass across the throne while the end closes in. Jehoiakim submits, then rebels, and dies; his young son Jehoiachin reigns barely three months before Nebuchadnezzar’s armies ring Jerusalem and he walks out to surrender. The Babylonians strip the temple and the palace of their treasures and carry away the leading people of the land, the soldiers and the skilled, ten thousand in the first great deportation, leaving only the poorest behind. In their place Nebuchadnezzar sets Jehoiachin’s uncle on the throne and renames him Zedekiah, who will himself rebel in turn. Through it all the narrator will not let us mistake what is happening. This is not merely Babylon’s ambition running its course. It is the LORD, doing exactly what He said He would do.

As you read, hold this: The judgment God long warned of arrives exactly as He said, for His word, whether promise or warning, always comes to pass.

2 Kings 24:1–4 (BSB)

¹ During Jehoiakim’s reign, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon invaded. So Jehoiakim became his vassal for three years, until he turned and rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar.

² And the LORD sent Chaldean, Aramean, Moabite, and Ammonite raiders against Jehoiakim in order to destroy Judah, according to the word that the LORD had spoken through His servants the prophets.

³ Surely this happened to Judah at the LORD’s command, to remove them from His presence because of the sins of Manasseh and all that he had done,

⁴ and also for the innocent blood he had shed. For he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the LORD was unwilling to forgive.

Read how carefully the narrator refuses to let us tell this as a merely political story. Jehoiakim submits to the greater power and then, three years on, gambles on rebellion, and the raiders come down on Judah from every side. But the text will not credit those raiders with the initiative. It says the LORD sent them, according to the word that the LORD had spoken through His servants the prophets. Long years earlier God had said this day would come, and now it comes, right on the terms He named. The sin of Manasseh, generations back, the innocent blood with which he had filled the city, is still weighing in the scales. This is sobering, and it is meant to be. Judgment long deferred is not judgment forgotten, and a word God has spoken does not fall to the ground.

2 Kings 24:5–7 (BSB)

⁵ As for the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim, along with all his accomplishments, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?

⁶ And Jehoiakim rested with his fathers, and his son Jehoiachin reigned in his place.

⁷ Now the king of Egypt did not march out of his land again, because the king of Babylon had taken all his territory, from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates River.

The formula that has closed out reign after reign in these books closes out Jehoiakim too, and his son takes the throne without pause. But notice the quiet, decisive detail in verse seven. Egypt, the old ally Judah had so often looked to for rescue, does not march out again, because Babylon has swallowed everything from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates. The door of escape has swung shut. There is no longer a great southern power to play against the great northern one, no last-minute deliverer to send chariots up the coast road. Judah is left alone with the God she has spurned and the empire He has raised up. When the LORD sets Himself to accomplish His word, He first clears away every false hope a people might lean on instead of Him.

2 Kings 24:8–9 (BSB)

⁸ Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. His mother’s name was Nehushta daughter of Elnathan; she was from Jerusalem.

⁹ And he did evil in the sight of the LORD, just as his father had done.

Eighteen years old, and three months on the throne. There is something almost unbearably brief about this young king, come to the crown just as the roof is falling in, given hardly a season to reign before it is over. Yet Scripture does not excuse him on account of his youth or the shortness of his time. He did evil in the sight of the LORD, just as his father had done. The pattern that has run down through the whole royal line reaches even into these last months, one more king walking the road his fathers walked, as if the well-worn groove could carry them nowhere but where it always led. The end does not arrive because of one bad king but because of a whole procession of them, each choosing the same evil in his turn.

2 Kings 24:10–12 (BSB)

¹⁰ At that time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched up to Jerusalem, and the city came under siege.

¹¹ And Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to the city while his servants were besieging it.

¹² Jehoiachin king of Judah, his mother, his servants, his commanders, and his officials all surrendered to the king of Babylon. So in the eighth year of his reign, the king of Babylon took him captive.

The armies come up and ring the city, and then the great king himself arrives to be present at the taking of it. And the young king of Judah does not go down fighting behind his walls. He walks out and gives himself up, his mother and his servants and his commanders and his officials with him, the whole leadership of the nation surrendering together into Babylon’s hand. It is a scene of complete submission, the crown handed over without a battle to save it. Everything Judah had trusted, the throne of David, the fortified city, the machinery of a kingdom, files out of the gate and lays itself down. What the prophets had described in words is now happening in the plain daylight of history, precisely as spoken.

2 Kings 24:13–14 (BSB)

¹³ As the LORD had declared, Nebuchadnezzar also carried off all the treasures from the house of the LORD and the royal palace, and he cut into pieces all the gold articles that Solomon king of Israel had made in the temple of the LORD.

¹⁴ He carried into exile all Jerusalem—all the commanders and mighty men of valor, all the craftsmen and metalsmiths—ten thousand captives in all. Only the poorest people of the land remained.

Three words at the head of verse thirteen carry the whole weight of the chapter: as the LORD had declared. The stripping of the temple, the cutting apart of the gold that Solomon had made in his glory, the emptying of the palace, none of it catches heaven by surprise, because heaven had said it would be so. The treasures that had spoken of Israel’s covenant with God are hauled north to a foreign capital, and the leading people of the land, the soldiers and the skilled hands, ten thousand of them, are carried into exile (גָּלָה) galah, pronounced gah-LAH. Strong's H1540, to uncover, to reveal, to go into exile. This is the word that tolls through the closing chapters like a bell, the verb for carrying a people away into exile, uprooting them from their land and leading them off into a stranger’s country. Its plainest sense is to uncover or lay bare, and there is a bitter aptness in that, for exile stripped Judah down to nothing, laid open the emptiness of every idol and alliance she had trusted in place of God. Yet this same word carries a hidden mercy the prophets also spoke. The God who declared the exile also declared its end, promising to gather His people back from the far country. The very judgment that lays a people bare can become, in His hands, the ground of their return. His word of warning came to pass exactly; so too will His word of promise. , until only the poorest are left behind in the emptied city. Everything precious is taken. This is the shape of the warning made real, the long-promised undoing arriving down to the detail, and the narrator wants us to feel the terrible faithfulness of it. God had said it, and so it came to pass.

2 Kings 24:15–16 (BSB)

¹⁵ Nebuchadnezzar carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon, as well as the king’s mother, his wives, his officials, and the leading men of the land. He took them into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

¹⁶ The king of Babylon also brought into exile to Babylon all seven thousand men of valor and a thousand craftsmen and metalsmiths—all strong and fit for battle.

The camera lingers on the road north, on the long, sorrowful procession leaving Jerusalem for Babylon. The king, his mother, his wives, his officials, the leading men, and behind them the seven thousand fighting men and the thousand skilled craftsmen, all the strength and skill of the nation walking away from the city that could no longer hold them. What is left behind is a shell. A kingdom is not only its walls and its throne but its people, and its people are being led off in chains down the same road the prophets had traced years before anyone believed them. There is no triumph in the telling and no gloating, only the steady weight of a thing foretold now coming true, mile after mile, exactly as it had been said.

2 Kings 24:17–20 (BSB)

¹⁷ Then the king of Babylon made Mattaniah, Jehoiachin’s uncle, king in his place and changed his name to Zedekiah.

¹⁸ Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years. His mother’s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah; she was from Libnah.

¹⁹ And Zedekiah did evil in the sight of the LORD, just as Jehoiakim had done.

²⁰ For because of the anger of the LORD, all this happened in Jerusalem and Judah, until He finally banished them from His presence. And Zedekiah also rebelled against the king of Babylon.

Nebuchadnezzar sets a puppet on the emptied throne, an uncle of the captured king, and even renames him, Mattaniah becoming Zedekiah, as if to stamp Babylon’s ownership on the last of David’s line to reign in the city. And the melancholy verdict falls once more, unchanged: he did evil in the sight of the LORD, just as those before him had done. The chapter ends by pulling the whole account up to its true height. All this happened, we are told, because of the anger of the LORD, until He finally banished them from His presence. The rebellions and the sieges and the deportations were the outward events; underneath them was the settled purpose of a holy God responding at last to generations of covenant-breaking. And still the pattern turns one final time, for Zedekiah too rebels, setting in motion the final destruction the next chapter will record. The word had been spoken long ago. Now, before our eyes, it is being kept.