11 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he started out as king. He was king in Jerusalem for eleven years. 12 As far as God was concerned, he was just one more evil king; there wasn't a trace of contrition in him when the prophet Jeremiah preached God's word to him. 13 Then he compounded his troubles by rebelling against King Nebuchadnezzar, who earlier had made him swear in God's name that he would be loyal. He became set in his own stubborn ways - he never gave God a thought; repentance never entered his mind. 14 The evil mindset spread to the leaders and priests and filtered down to the people - it kicked off an epidemic of evil, repeating the abominations of the pagans and polluting The Temple of God so recently consecrated in Jerusalem. 15 God, the God of their ancestors, repeatedly sent warning messages to them. Out of compassion for both his people and his Temple he wanted to give them every chance possible. 16 But they wouldn't listen; they poked fun at God's messengers, despised the message itself, and in general treated the prophets like idiots. God became more and more angry until there was no turning back -
17 God called in Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, who came and killed indiscriminately - and right in The Temple itself; it was a ruthless massacre: young men and virgins, the elderly and weak - they were all the same to him. 18 And then he plundered The Temple of everything valuable, cleaned it out completely; he emptied the treasuries of The Temple of God, the treasuries of the king and his officials, and hauled it all, people and possessions, off to Babylon. 19 He burned The Temple of God to the ground, knocked down the wall of Jerusalem, and set fire to all the buildings - everything valuable was burned up. 20 Any survivor was taken prisoner into exile in Babylon and made a slave to Nebuchadnezzar and his family. The exile and slavery lasted until the kingdom of Persia took over. 21 This is exactly the message of God that Jeremiah had preached: the desolate land put to an extended sabbath rest, a seventy-year Sabbath rest making up for all the unkept Sabbaths.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on 2 Chronicles 36:11-21
Commentary on 2 Chronicles 36:1-21
(Read 2 Chronicles 36:1-21)
The ruin of Judah and Jerusalem came on by degrees. The methods God takes to call back sinners by his word, by ministers, by conscience, by providences, are all instances of his compassion toward them, and his unwillingness that any should perish. See here what woful havoc sin makes, and, as we value the comfort and continuance of our earthly blessings, let us keep that worm from the root of them. They had many times ploughed and sowed their land in the seventh year, when it should have rested, and now it lay unploughed and unsown for ten times seven years. God will be no loser in his glory at last, by the disobedience of men. If they refused to let the land rest, God would make it rest. What place, O God, shall thy justice spare, if Jerusalem has perished? If that delight of thine were cut off for wickedness, let us not be high-minded, but fear.