This is the final chapter of 2 Kings, presenting us with a shocking tragedy of national destruction. Flight, slaughter, and torture are vividly depicted, and anyone who puts themselves in that context cannot help but feel a chill. The strength or decline of a nation depends on whether its ruler has reverence for God. Sadly, even the miracles and weeping of the prophets could not prevail against the wooden idols and Jeroboam's two golden calves. Looking back, the most deceitful thing turns out to be the human heart. God's patience is abused, but the moment of reckoning will come sooner or later. What one sows, one reaps. When judgment and curses come, who can resist?
Questions for Reflection:
How should we view God's patience and grace?
What are the consequences of a short-sighted mentality? Why?
If a person forgets his/her original intention, what changes will occur in his/her life of faith?
The Curse Fulfilled
In this chapter, God fulfills the curses prophesied in Deuteronomy, and these curses are fulfilled in Zedekiah. A person without faith will walk a path without faith. For example, Zedekiah walked a path that ended tragically because of his lack of faith. Romans 2:4 says: Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. This chapter is actually about the day of judgment having arrived.
Do Not Be Short-Sighted
People often do not understand God's actions and prefer immediate results. For example, if someone commits a sin yesterday and is still living well today without being judged, they do not believe in judgment and continue to choose the path of sin. This group of Judeans, although they suffered the disaster of national destruction, did not recognize God because they did not repent of their sins and God's love, but instead abused God's patience. This exposes a fatal weakness in people: short-sightedness.
The Book of Jeremiah was written by the prophet Jeremiah during this era. Chapter 44:15-18 records: After the fall of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar appointed Gedaliah as governor of the Judeans, and the country of Judah became a province of Babylon. A group of Judeans killed Gedaliah and then kidnapped the prophet Jeremiah and fled to Egypt. On the way, they asked Jeremiah what they should do. Jeremiah said they should stay in the land of Judah, and nothing would happen. But they had killed the governor, so how could they stay there just based on Jeremiah's words and wait for the Babylonians to arrest them? So in verses 16-17, they answered Jeremiah: As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not listen to you. But we will do everything that we have vowed to do. Why? Because they believed that they had not encountered disaster in the days when they worshiped idols, so they still wanted to go back to worship idols (see Jeremiah 44:15-19). In fact, what they expected did not happen, but they were all destroyed in Egypt.
They knew that Jeremiah was a prophet, and they asked the prophet, but they did not have the faith to act according to the prophet's words. In the end, they followed their own thoughts and intentions and went to destruction. Afterward, those Judeans did not repent but instead attributed the reason to stopping the worship of idols, fully embodying the end of short-sightedness. One thing worth emulating in this is Jeremiah's unwavering faith in entrusting everything to God even when he was in imminent danger.
A person's vision is very crucial. A person who soars in the sky like an eagle overlooking the earth will surely live out the life of an eagle; a short-sighted person will live a life like a rat; and the vision of insects is even shorter, with many eyes seeing very close and small things, and only seeing moving things.
Today, there are still many short-sighted people who, after experiencing many of the Lord's graces, still choose to tempt God and forsake God. God will not judge immediately, and people will only follow their own thoughts and intentions to destruction. Short-sighted people will not know that God cannot be tempted; they will only judge according to their own thoughts and intentions.
As Christians, we must know the will of our God. God is loving, gracious, and merciful, and he often waits for us to humbly repent. But if we are short-sighted and want immediate results, we will walk into destruction. Indeed, God often quickly heals our diseases, but building a person's life takes a process, and the vision of things determines the building of faith in God.
God's work is not immediate, but a process of sowing, growing, and bearing fruit. If you sow the seeds of sin, grow weeds and bitter roots, what you harvest will surely be a curse; if you sow the seeds of blessing, what you harvest will surely be a blessing. Seeds sown with faith will surely receive blessings, even to a thousand generations.
The Cause of the Curse
Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations; lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’ This would sweep away the wet with the dry. (Deuteronomy 29:18-19)
When the curse came upon the Judeans, the nation had already been destroyed, and they were still concerned with how to eat, drink, and be merry, without thinking about God's actions. The Judeans boasted of the law, but ignored God's curse, only seeking temporary peace today.
Then all the nations will say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land? What caused this great heat of anger?’ Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them. Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land, bringing upon it all the curses written in this book.’ (Deuteronomy 29:24-27)
What God cares about is not the temple that Solomon built for him, but the covenant he made with people. When the Judeans abandoned the covenant they made with God, this curse came upon them. If a Christian abandons the covenant made with the God who created the universe, the curse will come. When the curse is fulfilled, one can only eat the fruit of destruction, such as the kingdom of Judah.
Do Not Forget Your Original Intention
The short-sighted Manasseh once attempted to reform the economy in order to bring about the revival of the country, but in the end, not only did it not revive, but it went to destruction. Why did it end up in such a state? Because when people do evil in the eyes of God, the land will suffer the curse along with the people. Moses had prophesied about this: hundreds or thousands of years later, the Israelites would anger God and suffer the curse of destruction because of their short-sightedness and greed for temporary pleasure.
Do not think that the comfortable life in front of you is happiness. When you are immersed in it and enjoy the comfort of eating, drinking, and being merry, your vision will become shorter and your mind will become narrower. Temporary peace is not peace; receiving the blessing of eternal life is permanent. For example, Abraham did not indulge in temporary pleasure when he was alive, but completely followed God's will, because he knew that God would surely bless his descendants like the sand on the seashore and the stars in the sky.
Zedekiah, mentioned in this chapter, reaped the bitter fruit when he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and saw all his sons killed with his own eyes, and then had his eyes gouged out. When he had previously asked the prophet Jeremiah, Jeremiah clearly told him: Thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the God of Israel: If you will surrender to the officials of the king of Babylon, then your life shall be spared, and this city shall not be burned with fire, and you and your house shall live. But if you do not surrender to the officials of the king of Babylon, then this city shall be given into the hand of the Chaldeans, and they shall burn it with fire, and you shall not escape from their hand. (Jeremiah 38:17-18) But he did not believe it, fearing that the Chaldeans would let the Judeans who had already surrendered mock him and humiliate him, causing him to lose face.
Jeremiah continued to advise him, assuring him that God had promised that the Chaldeans would not do this, and that he could save his life after surrendering. Otherwise, Thus says the Lord: Surely all the women who are left in the house of the king of Judah shall be brought out to the officials of the king of
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## Choosing the Path of Blessing
Wouldn't it be good if you could be blessed by God throughout your life? Why must one descend to the point of national ruin and death? Is it not pitiful to still care about one's face when the nation is ruined and the family is destroyed? Zedekiah was truly confused. He knew that Jeremiah was a prophet of the living God. He brought Jeremiah out of prison to ask him to tell him the word of God without reservation, and then he said he didn't believe it. This is really hard to understand. Others pointed out a way to live, but he refused to take it, insisting on taking the path of gouged eyes and the slaughter of his sons. How pathetic are those who are shortsighted! This is exactly what Jesus said: If you want to save your life, you will lose it, but if you give up your life for Jesus Christ, you will gain it (see Matthew 10:39, 16:25).
Life is not about gaining life after death; it is about gaining it while living. God shows us through Zedekiah that even if the prophet tells him the word of God to his face, the final decision to believe or not is one's own choice. Even if a prophet tells you the path you should take, there is no guarantee that your life will end well if you do not follow it.
Therefore, Jesus said that if you love me more than your husband, more than your children, more than your parents during your days on earth, you will receive a hundredfold in this life and eternal life in the age to come (see Luke 18:29-30). This is a good promise. Let us follow all the words of the Book of the Law and do everything according to God's will. God's will is for his chosen people, his people, to choose to serve him and love him with all their heart, soul, and might. That must be choosing a blessed path. Even for brothers and sisters who have just come to faith, if you seek the Lord your God alone, God will open a way for you and you will not die. But when you insist on doing things your own way and doing things that offend God, you are choosing a path of being cursed. Manasseh, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah were all like this, focusing on their own little lives, and the end was death.
I encourage everyone, especially those who are married, to learn to live a big life, not a small life, and to choose to serve God, and you will surely receive a hundredfold in this life and eternal life in the age to come. When we are wealthy, let us also be vigilant, not to be deceived by a comfortable life, but to remain pure in mind, to remain single-heartedly serving the Lord God, and not to forget the guidance of the Lord God.
## Scripture
2Ki 25:1 Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. In the ninth year of his reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army, and encamped around it and built siege works against it.
2Ki 25:2 So the city was besieged till the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.
2Ki 25:3 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.
2Ki 25:4 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 besieging the city. They fled toward the Arabah.
2Ki 25:5 But the Babylonian army pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his soldiers were separated from him and scattered,
2Ki 25:6 and they captured the king and took him to the king of Babylon at Riblah, where he pronounced judgment on him.
2Ki 25:7 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.
2Ki 25:8 On the seventh day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan commander of the imperial guard, an official of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem.
2Ki 25:9 He set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burned down.
2Ki 25:10 The whole Babylonian army under the commander of the imperial guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem.
2Ki 25:11 Nebuzaradan the commander of the guard carried into exile the people who remained in the city, along with the rest of the populace and those who had deserted to the king of Babylon.
2Ki 25:12 But the commander of the guard left behind some of the poorest people of the land to work the vineyards and fields.
2Ki 25:13 The Babylonians broke up the bronze pillars, the movable stands and the bronze Sea that were at the temple of the Lord, and they carried the bronze to Babylon.
2Ki 25:14 They also took away the pots, shovels, wick trimmers, dishes and all the bronze articles used in the temple service.
2Ki 25:15 The commander of the imperial guard took away the censers and sprinkling bowls—all that were made of pure gold or silver.
2Ki 25:16 The bronze from the two pillars, the Sea and the movable stands, which Solomon had made for the temple of the Lord, was more than could be weighed.
2Ki 25:17 Each pillar was twenty-seven feet high. The bronze capital on top of one pillar was four and a half feet high and was decorated with a network of bronze pomegranates all around. The other pillar, with its network, was similar.
2Ki 25:18 The commander of the guard took as prisoners Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest next in rank and the three doorkeepers.
2Ki 25:19 Of those still in the city, he took the officer in charge of the fighting men and five royal advisers. He also took the secretary who was chief officer in charge of conscripting the people of the land and sixty other men of prominence who were found in the city.
2Ki 25:20 Nebuzaradan the commander took them all to the king of Babylon at Riblah.
2Ki 25:21 There at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, the king had them executed. So Judah went into captivity, away from her land.
2Ki 25:22 Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon appointed Gedaliah son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, to be over the people he had left behind in Judah.
2Ki 25:23 When all the army officers and their men heard that the king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah as governor, they came to Gedaliah at Mizpah—Ishmael son of Nethaniah, Johanan son of Kareah, Seraiah son of Tanhumeth the Netophathite, Jaazaniah the son of the Maakathite, and their men.
2Ki 25:24 Gedaliah took an oath to reassure them and said, “Do not be afraid of the Babylonian officials. Settle down in the land and serve the king of Babylon, and it will go well with you.”
2Ki 25:25 In the seventh month, however, Ishmael son of Nethaniah, the son of Elishama, who was of royal blood, came with ten men and assassinated Gedaliah and also the men of Judah and the Babylonians who were with him at Mizpah.
2Ki 25:26 At this, all the people from the least to the greatest, together with the army officers, fled to Egypt for fear of the Babylonians.
2Ki 25:27 In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the year Awel-Marduk became king of Babylon, he released Jehoiachin from prison on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month.
2Ki 25:28 He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat of honor higher than those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon.
2Ki 25:29 So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king’s table.
2Ki 25:30 Day by day the king gave Jehoiachin a regular allowance as long as he lived.