The End

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 He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, just as Jehoiakim had done.

20 It was because of the LORD’s anger that all this happened to Jerusalem and Judah, and in the end he thrust them from his presence.

Now Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.

1 So in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. He encamped outside the city and built siege works all around it. 2 The city was kept under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. 3 By the ninth day of the [fourth] month the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat. 4 Then the city wall was broken through, and the whole army fled at night through the gate between the two walls near the king’s garden, though the Babylonians were surrounding the city. They fled toward the Arabah, 5 but the Babylonian army pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his soldiers were separated from him and scattered, 6 and he was captured. He was taken to the king of Babylon at Riblah, where sentence was pronounced on him. 7 They killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. Then they put out his eyes, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon. (2 Kings 24:18-25:7)

It had been 340 years (925 – 586 BC) since the Israelites had split into two kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The ten northern tribes of Israel had vanished 136 years before (722 BC) after being conquered by Assyria, and now the end was coming for Judah as well.

During its existence, Judah had had good kings who did right in the eyes of the Lord throughout their lives (Asa, Jehoshaphat, Uzziah, Jotham, Hezekiah and Josiah) as well as kings who did right in their youth but evil in their old age (Joash and Amaziah). But most of the twenty kings had done evil. The last four kings (three sons and one grandson of Josiah) all did evil.

Zedekiah, the third son of Josiah, was the last. He had been put in power by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon eleven years before when Jehoiachin, the previous king and Josiah’s grandson, had been taken to Babylon (597 BC). But Zedekiah “rebelled against the king of Babylon” (2 Kings 24:20), perhaps counting on support from Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon (Jeremiah 27).

Zedekiah’s fate was a terrible one. From the ninth to the eleventh year of his reign, Jerusalem was under siege and the people starving (2 Kings 25:1-4). When the Babylonians broke into the city, Zedekiah tried to escape but was captured and the last thing he saw before he was blinded was his sons being killed (2 Kings 25:7).

Such a terrible ending!

But for Christians, we know that God can take even the worst ending and turn it into a new beginning. To the Jews, it seemed like the end, but God would give them a new beginning, as a faith without idolatry and false Gods. And 600 years later, the terrible ending of Jesus on the cross would become a new beginning for the whole world as He conquered death and rose from the grave.

Prayer:
• Have you ever felt that you have reached the end? Do you feel it now?
Look to the cross and know that God offers a new beginning.
Pray that He will give you strength and lead you to follow Him into that beginning.