2 Chronicles36chapter 36

2 Chronicles 36:1-3

The people of the land set up Jehoahaz, and Chronicles gives his whole reign three verses where Kings gives a fuller record, the compression itself a comment: from here to verse thirteen the Chronicler works from a sketch that favors the moral shape of these years over the political detail already told in 2 Kings 23-24. Three months on the throne end when Necho puts him down and taxes Judah a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold, the first of four kings this chapter measures by how briefly each reigned before Babylon or Egypt removed him.

2 Chronicles 36:4

Necho makes Eliakim king and turns his name to Jehoiakim, the first of two name changes this chapter records for kings who no longer choose even that much for themselves. Jehoahaz goes to Egypt and Chronicles never brings him back into the story; Jeremiah's oracle names his fate in full, the word left to a fellow prophet to state rather than repeated here.

2 Chronicles 36:5-8

Jehoiakim does evil eleven years, and Chronicles adds one detail Kings omits: Nebuchadnezzar binds him in fetters to carry him to Babylon, though Clarke notes the record does not say the deportation was carried through and he was likely left tributary a while longer. The vessels of the house of the Lord go to Babylon and into Nebuchadnezzar's own temple, the first stage of a stripping this chapter finishes at verse eighteen. Matthew Henry reads the sequence as just: Judah brought the idols of the nations into God's house, and now God lets the nations carry that house's vessels away.

2 Chronicles 36:9-10

Jehoiachin reigns three months and ten days, a boy king on any reading, whether the text's eight years or the parallel eighteen at 2 Kings 24:8 is followed, and evil is still the one word Chronicles gives him. Nebuchadnezzar brings him to Babylon with the goodly vessels that remained and installs Zedekiah, Mattaniah renamed as Jehoiakim was before him, the last king Judah will have. Four kings, three depositions and one rebellion still to come, is the whole of Chronicles' account of the monarchy's end.

2 Chronicles 36:11-13

Verse twelve names the specific failure Kings does not: Zedekiah humbled not himself before Jeremiah the prophet speaking from the mouth of the Lord, a king with a living voice of God in his own city who would not bend to it. He had sworn loyalty to Nebuchadnezzar by God's own name, Wesley notes, so the rebellion of verse thirteen carries perjury with it, and he stiffened his neck and hardened his heart from turning unto the Lord God of Israel, the verdict Chronicles passes on the whole reign in one clause.

2 Chronicles 36:14

The chief priests, who should have led resistance to idolatry, lead it instead, and the whole people follow after the abominations of the nations. Henry's comment stands on the text's own logic: a place is not far from ruin where religion in it is already ruined, and the polluting of the house named here sets up the burning of that same house five verses later.

2 Chronicles 36:15

The Lord of their fathers does not move to judgment first. He sends by his messengers, rising up betimes and sending, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place, patience stated here in words Kings never uses. Henry reads the rising up betimes as diligence, God losing no opportunity to call a people back before he lets them go.

2 Chronicles 36:16

Three verbs measure the answer to that patience: they mocked the messengers, despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy. The phrase no remedy occurs in the Hebrew Bible only here and at Proverbs 6:15 and 29:1, both naming a hardness that sudden calamity cannot cure, and Chronicles applies to a nation the word Proverbs applies to one obstinate man. Gill reads the failed remedy as repentance itself: no reclaiming them, no bringing them back, and so no pardon left to give.

2 Chronicles 36:17-19

The Chaldean sword shows the compassion of verse fifteen inverted: it has no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man, or him that stooped for age, striking in the house of their own sanctuary. Chronicles names in one list what Kings tells as narrative: the house of God burnt, the wall of Jerusalem broken down, the palaces burnt with fire, and the goodly vessels that remained destroyed. Clarke calls the temple the most costly building ever raised by human hands, and this chapter is where it ends.

2 Chronicles 36:20

servants to him and his sons: Those the sword spares become servants in Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar and his sons, until the reign of the kingdom of Persia, the first place the name Persia enters Scripture, Gill notes. The exile is not an ending the chapter leaves open; the next two verses already name the kingdom that will close it.

2 Chronicles 36:21

The land itself keeps the sabbaths its people never gave it, lying desolate to fulfil threescore and ten years, and the chapter names its source twice over: the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, and the sabbath law of Leviticus 26:34-35 that Israel had broken for generations. Barnes dates the seventy years from the fourth year of Jehoiakim to Cyrus's decree, roughly 605 to 536 BC, the same span Daniel reads in Jeremiah's scroll and prays over at Daniel 9:2.

2 Chronicles 36:22-23

The Hebrew Bible's last chapter turns on a pagan king. The Lord stirs the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia so that Jeremiah's word might be accomplished, and Cyrus proclaims that the Lord God of heaven has charged him to build a house in Jerusalem. The book, and in the Hebrew ordering the whole canon, ends mid summons: Who is there among you of all his people, the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up, the same words that open Ezra 1:1-3 almost unchanged. Clarke reads the two verses as carried from Ezra's own opening, but either way the door is left facing Jerusalem, and Matthew opens the New Testament with a genealogy built on this book's own names and method.