A king's doom.
Jeremiah reveals to King Zedekiah his approaching doom. The invader is already occupying the land and coming up before the walls of Jerusalem (verse 7). It is now too late to escape, resistance is vain, the doom is certain. What a terrible scene is that in the royal palace when the mournful prophet stands up to deliver his message to the terror-stricken monarch! Such events are rare in history. Yet the general truths on which the message of Jeremiah depended are eternal and clear to all who will see them. We have no prophet to tell us of the exact nature and date of our future judgments. But we know the principles of God's government and can apply them to ourselves. We know that God is just and must punish sin; we know that "the wages of sin is death." Therefore, though no voice sounds in our ears, the sentence is virtually pronounced every day we sin, and hangs over us continually until our sin is forgiven.
I. THE DOOM.
1. The city is to be destroyed. She has shared the king's sin, therefore she must share his punishment. The destruction of Jerusalem was especially a blow to Zedekiah. They who have most can lose most. Jerusalem was a favoured city—the greater, therefore, was the guilt of her apostasy, and the heavier must be her doom. Past favours are no charms against future judgments.
2. The king shall not escape. (Verse 3.) Rank is no safeguard against the judgment of Heaven. God will call kings to account. So all who have accepted responsible posts will have to answer for their conduct in them. Zedekiah would find his sufferings aggravated by being a witness to the triumph of Nebuchadnezzar. Shame, remorse, mental anguish, are to the sensitive worse penalties than bodily torture.
II. THE MITIGATION. The doom is not utter. "In wrath God remembers mercy." God never delights to punish, never gives one blow more than is absolutely necessary; does not hate, but pities and grieves for the victim. So Zedekiah's life is to be spared, and he is to receive a measure of honour in his captivity. There are degrees of punishment in the Divine execution of justice—some will be beaten with fray stripes, some with many (Luke 12:47, Luke 12:48). In this fact we may see the hope of mercy to the penitent, for God does not wholly cast a soul off. The shadows fall thick, but the darkness is not that of midnight. When trouble comes we are too ready to complain if we do not fall into despair. We should look for mitigating circumstances, those rifts in the clouds that tell of the mercy not yet wholly gone, and give hopes of light after the storm is over. But it is foolish for any to take spiritual comfort to himself for the future life in such thoughts as these, for we may well fear that the lightest doom then will be unspeakably terrible. The refuge we are to seek is not in that poor mitigation, but in the full forgiveness and perfect salvation of Christ now offered to the worst men, even to those over whom hangs the heaviest threat of doom (Hebrews 7:25).