John Wesley

because they have done evil in My sight and have provoked Me to anger from the day their fathers came out of Egypt until this day.’”

“Since, &c. - This forejudgment, though it was chiefly inflicted for the sins of Manasseh and his generation, yet had a respect unto all their former sins.”

And Manasseh rested with his fathers and was buried in his palace garden, the garden of Uzza. And his son Amon reigned in his place.

“Garden - Not in the sepulchre of the kings; probably, by his own choice and command, as a lasting testimony of his sincere repentance and abhorrence of himself for his former crime.”

When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes

“If Josiah had seen and read it before, which seems more probable, yet the great reverence which he justly bare to the original book, and the strange, and remarkable, and seasonable finding of it, had awakened and quickened him to a more serious and diligent…”

At the end of Josiah’s reign, Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt marched up to help the king of Assyria at the Euphrates River.

“The king, &c. - The king of Babylon, who having formerly rebelled against the Assyrian had now conquered him; as appears by the course of the sacred, and the concurrence of the prophane history; and therefore is here and elsewhere called the Assyrian, and the…”

From Megiddo his servants carried his body in a chariot, brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own tomb.

“Jehoahaz - Who was younger than Jehoiakim, yet preferred by the people before the elder brother; either because Jehoiakim refused the kingdom for fear of Pharaoh, whom he knew he should hereby provoke.”

And he did evil in the sight of the LORD, just as his fathers had done.

“His fathers - His grand-parents, Manasseh, and Amon. He restored that idolatry which his father had destroyed. Jerusalem saw not a good day, after Josiah was laid in his grave; but one trouble came after another, 'till within two and twenty years it was destroyed.”

Then Pharaoh Neco made Eliakim son of Josiah king in place of his father Josiah, and he changed Eliakim’s name to Jehoiakim.

“Jehoiakim - The giving of names was accounted an act of dominion; which therefore parents did to their children, and conquerors to their vassals or tributaries.”

He carried into exile all Jerusalem—all the commanders and mighty men of valor, all the craftsmen and metalsmiths—ten thousand captives in all. Only the poorest people of the land remained.

“All - Not simply all, but the best and most considerable part, as the following words explain it. Captives - Which are more particularly reckoned up, ver. 16, where there are seven thousand mighty men, and a thousand smiths; and those mentioned ver.”

For because of the anger of the LORD, all this happened in Jerusalem and Judah, until He finally banished them from His presence.

“Came to pass - Thus the peoples sins were the true cause why God gave them wicked kings, whom he suffered to do wickedly, that they might bring the long-deserved, and threatened punishments upon themselves and their people.”

By the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine in the city was so severe that the people of the land had no food.

“The people - For the common people, but only for the great men. Now they eat their own children for want of food, Lam. iv, 3, &c. Jer. in this extremity, earnestly persuaded the king to surrender; but his heart was hardened to his destruction.”

And they slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. Then they put out his eyes, bound him with bronze shackles, and took him to Babylon.

“Slew, &c. - Tho' they were but children, that this spectacle, the last he was to behold, might leave a remaining impression of grief and horror upon his spirit.”

Then Nebuzaradan captain of the guard carried into exile the people who remained in the city, along with the deserters who had defected to the king of Babylon and the…

“People - Whom neither the sword nor famine had destroyed, who were eight hundred and thirty two persons, Jer.”

On the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month of the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Judah’s King Jehoiachin, in the year Evil-merodach became king of Babylon, he released King…

“Seven and twentieth - Or, on the twenty fifth day, as it is, Jer. lii, 31. For then the decree was made, which was executed upon the twenty seventh day.”