against the Chaldeans, and
for some years he was allowed to continue in the delusion of having
acted very wisely, for Nebuchadnezzar had more important things to mind
and to settle. But then he went up against Jerusalem, and put an end to
his reign and life, Jer. xxii. 1-12; 2 Kings xxiv. 2; "_Dissertations
on the Genuineness of Daniel_," p. 49. As yet, the long-suffering of
God, and, hence, the patience of the Chaldeans, were not at an end.
Jehoiachin or Jeconiah was raised to the throne of his father. Even the
short reign of three months gave to the youth sufficient occasion to
manifest the wickedness of his heart, and his enmity to God. Suspicions
against his fidelity arose; a Chaldean army anew entered the city, and
carried away the king, and, along with him, the great mass of the
people. This was the first great deportation. In the providence of God
it was so arranged that, among those who were carried away, there was
the very flower of the nation. The apparent suffering was to them a
blessing. They were, for their good, sent away from the place over
which the storms of God's anger were soon to discharge themselves, into
the land of the Chaldeans, and formed there the nucleus for the Kingdom
of God, in its impending new form, Jer. xxiv. Nothing now seemed to
stand in the way of the divine judgment upon the wicked mass that had
been left behind, like bad figs that no one can eat for badness,--they
whom the Lord had threatened that He would give them over to hurt and
calamity in all the kingdoms of the earth, to reproach, and a proverb,
and a taunt, and a curse, in all places whither He would drive them,
Jer. xxiv. 9. And still the Lord was waiting before He carried out this
[Pg 369] threatening, and smote the land to cursing. Mattaniah or
Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, the uncle of Jehoiachin, who was given to
them for a king, might, at least partially, have averted the evil. But
he too had to learn that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom. From various quarters, attempts have been made to exculpate
him, on the plea that his fault was only weakness, which made him
the tool of a corrupt party; but Scripture forms a different estimate
of him, and he who looks deeper will find its judgment to be
correct,--will be able to grant to him that preference only over
Jehoiakim which _C. B. Michaelis_ assigned to him in the words:
"Jehoiakim was of an obdurate and wild disposition; Zedekiah had some
fear of God, althou