2 Kings 25: The Bitter End

He set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burned down. The whole Babylonian army, under the commander of the imperial guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem.

For a very long time, the kingdom of Judah had been sliding downhill. Good kings like Hezekiah and Josiah managed to stop the decline temporarily, but as soon as they passed from the scene, immorality and idolatry surged back. Prophets warned again and again of God's judgment, but few heeded them.

Fittingly, Judah endured its bitter end under the weak leadership of Zedekiah, a puppet king put on the throne by Judah's captor, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. Zedekiah personified all that was wrong with Judah. He took an oath of loyalty to Babylon, then spent his eleven-year reign cheating on it.

The great prophet Jeremiah lived during this same time, offering a strong counterpoint to Zedekiah's weakness. Zedekiah could never make up his mind whether to treat Jeremiah as a prophet of truth or as a trouble-making traitor. When Jeremiah warned against Zedekiah's policies, the king had him beaten and imprisoned. At the same time, he kept bringing Jeremiah in for secret consultations, usually ignoring his advice.

Judah paid cruelly for Zedekiah's poor leadership (24:18-20). Responding to his rebellion, the Babylonians put Jerusalem under an eighteen-month siege, then utterly wrecked the city. They treated Zedekiah as a traitor, executing his sons while he watched, then putting out his eyes so that their deaths would be his last visual memory. Judah's final king was led off to Babylon, blind and in chains. Survivors too were taken away in what became known as the Babylonian captivity, a tragic moment in Jewish history.

Life Questions: Under pressure, are you confident or indecisive? What do you need to gain confidence?

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I'd like to think that I'm fairly confident when met with adversity/ personal challenges. I know that it is something that you tend to improve upon the older you get. I can remember many instances while in high school and college where inaction drove me towards failure and poor decision making. Teaching my kids to exude confidence in everything that they do is a personal goal of mine. Christ certainly provided us with the finest example of showing confidence and trust in his Father while he was being led away to Calvary.