When Nebuchadnezzar,the Chaldean ruler,got into trouble with Egypt,Zedekiah willingly listened to those of his friends who told him that the time had come for some great deed which should bring everlasting renown to Judah and to her King.
In vain did Jeremiah,now a prophet of woe,raise his voice against such folly.
He appeared before the King and warned him that an attempt at revolution could only end in disaster.
Zedekiah,in his new enthusiasm,refused to listen to all arguments.
In vain Jeremiah reminded the King that he had already served four other Judaean kings and had never been found wanting.
Zedekiah simply grew angry and sent Jeremiah away.
Suddenly he refused to pay the annual tribute to Chaldea and declared himself independent.At once his capital was infested by the soldiers of Nebuchadnezzar.
Jerusalem was not prepared for a long siege.
There was a lack of food and a lack of water,and soon pestilence broke out among the poorer people.Jeremiah alone stood steadfast and would not hear the word “surrender.”
The people,weakened by sickness,turned against him.They accused their faithful leader of having been in the pay of the Chaldeans.When he tried to prove his innocence,they threw him into a dungeon.
A kindly negro took pity upon the old man and released him from the dark pit into which he had been cast,and hid him in the guard-house until the end of the siege.
Before the official surrender of the town took place,the last of the Judaean kings had deserted his people.
In the middle of the night,accompanied by a few courtiers,he had left the gates of his palace and had slipped through the lines of Chaldean sentinels.
When morning came,he was on his way towards the river Jordan.
Nebuchadnezzar,when he heard of this,sent fleet horsemen to intercept the Judaean ruler.
Near Jericho,Zedekiah was taken prisoner.
He was taken back to the royal camp and terrible was his punishment.
First,he was forced to witness the execution of his sons.Then he was blinded and he was sent to Babylon,where he was made to march in the triumphal procession of the Chaldean emperor.Shortly afterwards,he died in a Babylonian prison.
As for Jeremiah,the Chaldeans,who were a highly civilised people,spared his life and treated the old man with great honour.They respected his unselfishness and his wisdom and they told him that he might stay right at home,and that no harm would befall him.
Most of the Judaeans,however,feared that they would suffer the fate of the Israelites and would be taken to Mesopotamia as captives.They prepared to flee to Egypt.Jeremiah advised them to remain where they were.The Jerusalemites,however,were in a panic and refused to listen to him.They gathered their possessions and trekked eastward.Jeremiah,who was the soul of loyalty,followed his people.He was too old for the hardships of such a voyage.He died in an Egyptian village and was buried by the side of the road.
It was the five-hundred-and-eighty-sixth year before the birth of Christ.
Jerusalem lay in ruins.
A Chaldean governor dwelled in the land of Joshua and David.
The smoke-stained walls of the temple stood dark against the blue sky of Canaan.
The last of the independent Jewish states had come to an end.
Judah had paid the price of its indifference to the will of Jehovah.
