40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Kings 23:31-25:30 (Episode 351)

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Chad and Daniel take a little extra time and finish the book of 2 Kings in this episode. There is no good king after Josiah. The wrath of God has come, and Judah is taken into captivity. But there is still a glimmer of hope. God keeps His promises. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Donate HWSS Regional Conference 1517 YouTube

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. While you're over there, make sure you check out all the other things that 1517 is doing, which is a lot of things. I mean, we're writing a lot of books, writing a lot of articles, doing a lot of online academies that you can take for free. You'll check out videos from past conferences that we've done, all kinds of things.

You can check out all that stuff at 1517.org. Chad, last week we got all into Josiah's reforms and wrapped those up. We got to hear about a Passover to dwarf all Passovers that Josiah puts in place. We hear that Josiah is the model king. There's never been anyone like him before that. There certainly was no one like him after that. And sort of we were talking afterwards that Josiah, despite just being— I mean, you can't think of a way that he could have been better.

There's not like this, well, there's this one thing. There's no things with Josiah that could have been better. all of this is not enough to make God say, you know what, my wrath isn't coming. And we kind of talked about Josiah being sort of one of those guys, maybe the only guy ever, that was sort of holding back the tsunami of God's wrath. As long as Josiah was there, God's wrath was not going to come. But Josiah doesn't live to be an old man, and God is not going to have Josiah live forever. In this way, he's sort of Christ-like in this mediation role, right?

He is this person that is standing between you and the wrath of God. And once he's gone, it happens quick. Yeah, yeah, really quick. So Josiah's reign ends about 609 B.C., all right? So 609, and then 586 B.C. is the end, like the funeral for the southern for the southern kingdom so it's not going to be long uh from from here on out as i mentioned i think once or twice already you're going to have uh basically four more kings and three of these kings are going to be sons of josiah and one of them is going to be

his grandson and then that's it so we really plummet here uh we go from the best king ever all of a sudden 20 years later to where this best king's kingdom is destroyed we're going to see the the temple taken apart piece by piece and shipped off to babylon we're going to see the people not in one but in two or three deportations all exiled to babylon we're gonna see a bunch of people put to death we're gonna see uh the last king uh has his sons slaughtered before him and then he himself was blinded and then shipped off to captivity so a lot of bad things that are that are coming up so uh yeah we've we wrapped up with verse 30 of second kings 23 last time so verse 31 is going to introduce us to josiah's replacement but he's not going to last very long his name is

jehovah has he's pretty young he's 23 years old when he starts to reign after his dad is is killed in that encounter with pharaoh and uh he lasts three months so i relatively short reign i think we could all agree he's 23 and he only lasts three months uh and here's here's the reason why verse 32 says it doesn't really give us any more explanation but it says he did what was evil in the sight of the lord according to all that his fathers had done yeah notice that's fathers and not father right if only he had done what his father had done but instead he did what his fathers had done and that's not nearly as good this also tells me that uh josiah had this guy young yeah this guy's 20 23 years old josiah is not that old when he died i mean josiah was

uh having heirs young very young uh so uh he takes over and uh yeah it doesn't last long because The same Pharaoh that killed this guy's dad, that killed Josiah, puts him in bonds. Again, we're not really told why, but he put him in bonds in a place called Rivola, which is up in the area of Syria, that he might not reign in Jerusalem. So whatever it was about this guy, Jehoahaz, the Pharaoh didn't like him. And at this point, Pharaoh is in control of this area. it's going to be it's going to be short-lived control because the babylonians are soon going to sweep in and take over take over control but for now anyway egypt has control of this area so pharaoh just says you know what i killed your dad i don't really like you joe as

so i'm going to replace you so he puts him in prison and uh then he he ships him off and he he lays a tribute on the land of 100 talents of silver and a talent of gold so not only is he going to remove the the replacement king because he doesn't like him he's going to take him down to uh take him down to egypt and he's going to replace him with somebody else and he's going to make sure that he gets rich off the deal all this silver and all this gold so verse 34 says that pharaoh nico made eliakim the son of josiah king in a king in place of josiah's father and then to to really he may change his name and and uh it'll like change his name to a pagan name or something like that this was a this was a name change simply to show hey i'm the guy in charge

so if i want to change your name from eliakim to jehoiakim i can i'm going to give you a new the taking of a new name by uh a king is is not unusual you have that happening uh all over the place hey the pope still does that i was gonna say yeah it's funny you thought because in my mind i was thinking that too the pope when the pope becomes uh the head uh the roman catholic church well does that too right so uh same thing happens here so you have eliakim's name changed by the pharaoh though to jehoiakim so jehoahaz is out he's the first son of josiah that gets replaced last three months he's replaced by eliakim now known as jehoiakim and then took jehovah has a way he came to egypt and that's where he died which is you know in in the big

scheme of biblical history it's like oh wow that's it's kind of kind of weird huh that a king of israel you know the israel that was taken out of egypt and taken the promised land and settled in the promised land well now that king is overtaken by the egyptians shipped back to egypt and dies there so we come a long way from the exodus we've even come a long way from solomon solomon is marrying the daughter of pharaoh yeah and here we have pharaoh taking the king of israel in chains shipping him back to egypt and that is where that's where he dies now jehoiakim his replacement uh his brother half brother and uh the the second son of josiah to reign he gave the favor what he he gave him silver he gave him gold and he got that by uh uh levying heavy taxes against the

people he taxed the land to give the money according to the command of pharaoh he exacted the silver and the gold of the people of the land from everyone according to his assessment to give to to give to pharaoh so pharaoh's getting what he wants he's in control he puts this this uh young guy on the throne changes his name and is taking in this uh this money from the israelites this silver and the skull we're told that he was uh that uh jehoiakim was 25 when he starts to reign and he made it uh 11 years in jerusalem so he certainly made it a lot longer than his brother did uh his brother lasted three months he makes he makes 11 years and the chapter ends up simply by telling us what his mom's name was uh zebediah and just like his brother we're told that he too

verse 37 did what was evil in the sight of lord according to all that his fathers had done so you can you can see the downward spiral here i mean you go from josiah who loves the lord as god with all his heart and soul and might and then one king one son after the next son we're told did the exact opposite they did what was evil in god's sight just like all the pre most of the pre-josiah kings had had done verse so this is chapter 24 it kind of starts midway it's probably not a very good chapter division here but anyway this is the beginning of chapter 24 so we got chapter 24 and then we got chapter 25 and that's going to be it for kings so in his days that is in the king in the days of the second of josiah's sons jehoiakim nebuchadnezzar now we've uh we've

heard a lot about i heard all about nebuchadnezzar when i was growing up in sunday school yeah this is this is uh some daniel stuff and people back oh we got we're moving into straight from second kings to daniel is that we're doing next i mean you could yeah you certainly could yeah in fact in just a minute we're going to hear about a deportation in which ezekiel was one of the people who was deported so if you're familiar with other parts of the old testament like the book of daniel or like the book of uh of ezekiel then you're going to start hearing about things happening and probably already some of the names of these kings meet me like oh yeah yeah you know jeremiah talks about him and you know daniel mentions him and ezekiel mentions him all these

guys we have we have a lot of biblical literature prophetic biblical literature that uh is involved with this particular time period because it was you know it was a it was a lot of a lot about people so god was sending him jeremiah was sending him ezekiel and he was sending him daniel a lot of stuff was happening during this this period of israel's history so nebuchadnezzar king of babylon uh he came up and jehoiakim became his servant for three years so even though the bible really doesn't say very much about this there's obviously a power shift right we heard about the assyrians and everything that they did how long they were under in in control well when the when the babylonians and the medes captured nineveh and uh destroyed the assyrian empire then we passed

from the assyrians being the top dog to the babylonians being the top dog and even though the the egyptians had been in control for a time now they're driven backward the the really the heyday of the egyptian power has long since passed i mean they they were the power for a long time uh but their days are are well their days are past being numbered they are going to diminish in power significantly over the next few centuries babylon is going to be the king at least for a while until the persians show up so nebuchadnezzar is the most famous of these babylonian kings he comes up and uh when he takes over then jehoiakim is going to be his servant and does this for three years and then verse uh the end of verse one tells us that he decided that he was

going to rebel against the babylonians probably the reason was at one point the babylonians uh attempted to invade egypt and they were thwarted in their attempt so probably what happened was jehoiakim saw that the babylonians were unsuccessful in this battle against the egyptians and he thought oh here's my chance I'm going to rebel maybe they're not as strong as they think they are so he rebels well that didn't work out very well

well here's what's crazy about this is that so he decides he's going to rebel and what you really want if you're going to rebel against Babylon who's like super power this isn't the first time you've seen little Judah or Israel or the little people of God decide they're going to

go up against like a mighty foe like this happens we've seen this over and over again and uh guess what if you got the lord on your side it ain't no big deal well you got this uh you got the opposite of that going on right here like so this guy rebels against babylon and whose side is god on babylon side babylon side yeah god actually sent babylon to do this they are the sword in the lord's hand to uh to punish to israelites so this is yeah this is going to end badly uh verse two tells us that in response to this the lord sent against him that is against the the king jehoiakim bands of the chaldeans and bands of the syrians and bands of the moabites and bands of the ammonites and sent them against

judah to destroy it according to the word of the lord that he spoke by his servants the prophets so god is making use of probably these nations that had uh been overtaken and now we're allied to the babylonians to punish to punish the king so he's you want oh you want rebellion well i'll give you rebellion i'm gonna have all these other people come and attack you uh then we have a so that was verse two verse three begins a bit of a theological explanation for why this went down the way that it did surely this came upon judah at the command of the lord to remove them out of his sight why for the sins of manasseh according to all that he had done and also for the innocent blood that he had shed for he filled jerusalem with innocent blood and the lord would not pardon

so we're back to manasseh so you know so if i if you think of uh if you think of jeroboam as the capital t center of the northern kingdom then you can kind of think of manasseh as the capital t center of the of the southern kingdom yeah so just like jeroboam made israel to sin manasseh made uh made judah to sin but someone said this the reason you jeroboam But Jeroboam introduces so much stuff and creates the space for all of this idolatry to just get run rampant, which ends up resulting in the extreme version of it, which is a human sacrifice and that kind of stuff. But Jeroboam's like the domino. That's why he gets that cadet all the time, right? He's the first domino.

yeah and then the other one just perpetuated or expanded after him yeah and then what manasseh's done it's kind of on the opposite of the sense of manasseh's not the first he's not like the first king of the north of the southern kingdom that starts all this but he is kind of the acme you know we have a lot of idolatry and then you have a little reprieve and people you know like hezekiah uh but then along comes manasseh and he's the idol collector he's like oh i like that you know he's logging on amazon every day and just like shopping for idols and having them sent to the doorstep of jerusalem and erecting them all over the place uh so that he becomes the uh the southern kingdom's jeroboam figure and then not only that but he also filled jerusalem with

innocent blood yeah and uh some of that innocent blood probably flowed through the veins of isaiah who was according to tradition was martyred during his during his wicked reign verse five tells us, if we want to find out more about Jehoiakim, well, just check out the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah. Jehoiakim slept with his fathers, and Jehoiachin, his son, reigned in his place. Verse 7, and the king of Egypt did not come again out of his land, for the king of Babylon had taken all that belonged to the king of Egypt. So the Egyptians are no longer a threat to this area because the Babylonians have taken over. And they took over, so here's your geographical markers, from the brook of Egypt to the river Euphrates. Now the

reason that's important is because that is almost verbatim how the Solomonic Empire was described. So if you go back to 1 Kings chapter 4 and you hear about how far Solomon's kingdom extended, it's basically from the work of egypt to the river euphrates so now you don't have you certainly don't have the solemn solomonic empire anymore but you do have the babylonian empire which encompasses everything that solomon had plus a whole lot of other areas as well so we got so we've taken care of uh the first two of these kings you had uh jehovah has who only lasted three months, son of Josiah. Then you have his half-brother, Jehoiakim. He makes it 11 years. Now we're going to hear about his son, Jehoiachin, and we'll find out how well his reign

was. Jehoiachin was 18 when he became king, and he reigned three months. I'm discerning a pattern here dan yeah three months three months in jerusalem his mom's name was nahusha and he did what was evil in the sight of the lord according to all that his father had done interesting singular there the other ones had plural yeah no now it is correct to say that joey chin did all the evil according to what his father has done because his father was not josiah but jehoiakim so now this this is the grandson in other words of uh of josiah makes it for three months so what happened to him well at that time the servants of nebuchadnezzar king of babylon came up to jerusalem and they had to besiege the city well that the what that tells you is that

they didn't open the gates to nebuchadnezzar i mean of course you don't besiege a city that is uh uh surrendering to you so rather than surrendering to the babylonians they decide you know what we're going to try and hold out and see how see how long we can we can make it and jerusalem i mean was jerusalem was set up to be a good city to survive a siege you had the you had the famous water tunnel that hezekiah had dug so they had a ready access to to water and it was a it was it was on a a hill i mean where you have pretty good natural uh protection on all sides so i mean if you're going to be if you're going to have to endure a siege jerusalem is a pretty good city to have to endure a siege in uh but things aren't still going to go well for him because nebuchadnezzar

babylon king of babylon came to the city while his servants were besieging it and then jehoiachin decides he's just going to give up he gave himself up to the king of babylon himself his mom his servants his officials his palace officials so the king of babylon took him prisoner in the eighth year of his reign now this this isn't the end no we're not talking about 586 bc we're not talking about the temple's destruction we're not talking about jerusalem's destruction we're talking about something that happens prior to that so sometimes i think we have a we kind of have in our heads yeah that uh you know that you had the babylonian exile and that was really the only time you had this massive deportation no you had you had several different deportations of people that

took place and uh ezekiel is going to be swept up in in this one so this is the eighth year of of the reign of this king and so he's gonna he's gonna be hauled off along with these these other officials as well as all the treasures of the house of the lord and the treasures of the king's house he takes all the vessels of gold in the temple that solomon had made and he kind of chops those up and he carried away we read verse 14 all jerusalem the officials the mighty men of valor ten thousand captives the craftsmen the smiths none remained except the poorest people of the land and verse 15 says that he carried away the king jehoiachin to babylon the king's mother wives officials all these people are listed there in verses 15 16 and 17 so this is i mean this

is a huge deportation of people from jerusalem you got all the leadership you got the king you got the king's family you have uh them taking the gold uh from from the temple in jerusalem and then chopping that up and taking that off as well it sounds like the end but it's not quite not quite the end yet because if if jerusalem had not rebelled after this then the city would remain standing but as we'll see things did not go that way so who's going to be his replacement well the king of babylon verse 17 took madaniah who was jehoiachin's uncle and made him king in his place, and what's more, we have a name change. He changed his name to Zedekiah. So this is the young, the third son of Josiah to reign after him, and the youngest of these sons also to reign

after him. I always remember his name because, of course, Z is the last letter of the English alphabet, and this is the last king of Judah. This guy is young, too. I mean, so this guy is 21 years old and there's a there's a pattern here of these of these kings being really now josiah obviously is eight years old uh but um there it it seems that maybe the the king of babylon is like young people are easier to control uh manipulate they're foolish dumb they don't know anything and i just keep lining up of course i mean if you're having kings not reigning very long the next guy up is going to be young but he could put anyone he wants as king and he keeps choosing oh yeah yeah you know young young and young guys

yeah and yeah he probably thinks they're going to be easy to control and you know some are some are not um this guy zedekiah who's 21 well he he makes it 11 years so like three months and 11 years seems to be the the pattern here yeah either make it three months if you don't make If you make it to four months, you're going to make it to 11 years. We're here about his mom, who's the daughter of some guy named Jeremiah. This is not our Jeremiah, the prophet, but some guy named Jeremiah. And verse 19, same thing. He did what was evil in the Lord's sight, just like Jehoiakim had done.

And for because of the anger of the Lord, it came to the point in Jerusalem and Judah that God is going to cast them out from his presence. And the way this is all precipitated is by Zedekiah. and this is the way chapter 24 ends Zedekiah rebelling against the king of Babylon not a good idea exactly what Jeremiah

if you read Jeremiah exactly what Jeremiah would tell them over and over and over not to do he would tell them listen you don't like the Babylonians any more than I like the Babylonians but they are God's agent that he has sent so if you rebel against them you're rebelling against God more or less

he rebels against Babylon and he rebels against Babylon on his own it's not something you're doing with God there was no divine imprimatur God did not send a prophet to say hey Zedekiah why don't you rebel against the king of Babylon some false prophets

would have said that but not God's true prophet so chapter 25 the closing chapter in the ninth year of his reign in the tenth month on the tenth day of the month Nebuchadnezzar is probably by this point

tired of Jerusalem them you can imagine the king is like receives word he's like what they rebelled these people are wearing it they're wearing him out yeah same thing happened i mean this we're going to have history repeat itself with the romans in the first century they're going to get to the point to where you have jewish rebellion after jewish rebellion after jewish rebellion until finally the romans are like uh enough is enough and they're going to stamp out that rebellion and of course that leads to the temple's destruction in 70 a.d paralleling the destruction that's about to take place here so nebuchadnezzar comes up and they besiege jerusalem build siege works against it

and uh it's under siege for a long time i mean this the conditions within the city were probably beyond uh beyond horrendous besiege until the 11th year of king zedekiah so if if you read sometime the book of lamentations which you you preached the lamentations in you at one time i did yeah yeah yeah read lamentations and read some of the descriptions about the the horrors that were just that are described in that lament uh that was what this was describing you're talking about uh getting all the way down to to cannibalism and it's yeah it's it's brutal yeah it's i mean you're you're trapped i mean you you've got no way so i don't care how many food stores you have i don't care the water's not gonna be an issue the food is the issue you got plenty of water but you

can't eat water you get to the point to where you've eaten all of your your grain stores you've eaten you know every animal in sight uh and you know we talked about how they were eating donkeys brains and uh pigeon poop in the end you resort to to cannibalism which is what limitations describes so on the ninth day of the fourth month the famine was so severe in the city there was no food for the people of the land things got down to the very very bottom then there's a breach made in the city wall and the men of war decide they're just gonna get out while the getting's good they flee by night by way of the gate between the two walls by the king's garden and the caldians were all around the city so this is a chance for the king and some of the

warriors to try and try and escape interestingly they go out by the king's garden kind of i can't hear help but kind of hear an echo there of uh early chapters of of genesis here you know you're you're you're fleeing by way of the by way the garden and things are not going to go well for you they go in the direction of the arba which is south of the desert region but they pursue them and they overtake them ironically in the in the plains of jericho so jericho was the first city that the Israelites captured way back in the book of Joshua, and here it's going to be the place where the very last king of Israel is going to be

faced with defeat. All his army scatters, they capture the king, and they bring him to the king of Babylon, and he passed a sentence on him. And I can't really imagine a worse sentence

that anyone could really have. Yeah, this is as bad as it gets. Yeah, I mean, so what was the sentence? Well, they take the sons of zedekiah who had to have been little boys yeah he's not very old yeah he's this is this guy's not very old uh at this point he is uh probably about 32 so uh his sons you know obviously are very young and they slaughter the sons of zedekiah before his eyes and then they turn around and they put out the eyes of Zedekiah,

bind him in chains, and then take him off to Babylon. So that obviously the very last thing that he sees is the very last thing that any father would ever want to see. So that becomes the image that is emblazoned in his mind for forever thereafter. Yeah, it is a creative and sadistic punishment. yeah that's a perfect way perfect way to describe it and that's the last that's the last king that's last king of uh of uh of the davidic of the davidic line now we're we're not quite done

we're uh we're beginning this last chapter but zedekiah and what happens to him uh blinded his sons killed uh which is of course also not without significance because these are again in the davidic line they're all slaughtered they're put to death and he himself is taken in chains then to babylon so what happens after this well in the in the fifth month the seventh day of the month uh nebuchadnezzar king of babylon along with the captain of his bodyguard a guy by the name of nebuchadnezzar don they came to jerusalem and they just start tearing stuff up uh verse nine says that they the first thing that they did was they torched the temple they burned the house of the lord and then they turned to the king's house and all the houses of jerusalem all the big houses

they just the torch i mean the place was just on fire and then they they broke down the walls around jerusalem and then everybody who was left in the city all the people that had deserted to them everybody who was still kind of there they they hauled off in exile the only people that they left behind verse 12 tells us were the poorest of the land so they could be vine dressers and in plowman so they're leaving behind a few people to uh just kind of take care of take care of the area but jerusalem itself the city the the temple the palace all the big houses everything is destroyed by the babylonian bulldozer they're just taking everything they're wanting to make sure that no one misses the message mess with babylon rebel against us test our patience

and this is what will happen this is what will happen to you the idea here is to put an end to your kingly line put an end to your religion and yeah there is nothing for you there's nothing to rise up yeah you're we've destroyed your temple we've ended your your uh dynasty uh we've all we've left behind is people who are of no threat to raise an army and there there's nothing we've torn down the wall there's nothing to go back to yeah that's right yeah there's nothing to go back to because you have no defense you have you have no houses you have no temple everything has been destroyed now verse 13 through 17 just basically takes us uh bit by bit through what they did to the temple itself it talks about how they the pillars of bronze that were in there and the bronze

see they broke all of broke all that up into pieces and they hauled that off to babylon we have reference to various utensils that were used there in in the temple the two pillars you know the ones that that stood in the front talks about how they uh how big they were and how they were destroyed and it just these verses just kind of go they want to make sure that you don't miss that all the things that were at the temple were no longer at the temple they were they were taken in pieces and there's kind of a symbolism here because these things which were you know so central to to israel and at the house of god all of that is not only destroyed but broken into pieces and shipped off yeah so destroyed decimated and then also deported so that it's no longer even

there anymore so it becomes basically cash in the pocket of the babylonian babylonian king I know we've made this point before. We've done this when we were establishing Israel, and they were going to places, and they were wiping things out. And you're like, man, this seems like a lot. You have to remember that what's happening here is the wrath of God. And God is long-provoked. In other words, he's very patient.

God does not—he's long in nose, as we've talked about before. But much like when the people of God go into Canaan, this is not dissimilar from this in the sense that when the wrath of God comes, it is thorough. It is not just like a little bit of wrath, a little taste of wrath. When the wrath of God comes, it takes out everything. This is significant because for us, as we know, like, where ultimately the wrath of God rests, which is at the cross of Christ, that it's all there. It's not like he's saving some for you. Christ has taken all of it.

And in this situation, it's supposed to tell you something about the wrath of God. Look at how thorough this is. I mean, the temple's gone, the stuff's gone, the houses are gone, the people are gone. everything is destroyed because that's when when the the bill comes due for sin that's always how it is 100 yeah so what what is happening here to the temple and everything connected with it and the people well that's what initially that's what the israelites were to do to the canaanites right they were to tear down all their religious stuff and to take care take out all the people well now now things have come full circle and israel has become completely canaanized well now

god is using the babylonians to do to them what originally the israelites did to to the canaanites god doesn't deal with sin in halves or percentages but always in in totality that's why you really want christ to deal with it because it's not something you want to deal with on your own yeah yeah i was just uh this kind of an aside has made me think of it i was i was reading matt popovich's new book uh um it's not out yet but this was a pre-release and in the front of it uh i wish i wish i could quote jared wilson uh verbatim but he wrote the preface for it and he talked about how uh some of his kids said had had come home from school and told him that one of the teachers had said that uh you know that uh jesus died for for the sins of the world but for

the really bad sins there still might be some punishment in the afterlife maybe look at this you're like well no no uh thanks be to god because all the wrath was done for yeah it's not like if you're in christ jesus then you know 99 of your condemnation is taken care of no it's it's done in totality 100 is is taken care of by christ yeah and this is we talked about this kind of last episode that josiah is is the best jesus hadn't said that john the baptist was the greatest man who ever lived you might think it was josiah he's not enough to stop this uh you you're gonna to need somebody else and and that's what this is all showing you yeah kings is is leading us leading us to uh really to bethlehem it's leading us to the son of david who is to come and kind of

uh summarize some of this is coming up so 18 through 21 this basically tells us that the babylonians gathered up much of the leadership from uh the city of of jerusalem and they they put him to death so i mean it wasn't like everybody got to live who was you know like just taken off in exile they did gather up some of the chief priests and the keepers of the threshold and some some of the other people that were part of the military and they took them to uh nebuchadnezzar don who was babylon the babylonian captain of the guard and uh they put him to death so there were executions that took place as well and then we have this this is the very end of verse 21 that kind of, in just a few words,

sums up everything that's been leading to this point. So Judah was taken into exile out of its land. Kind of a very brief, seemingly anticlimactic summary, but that's what this has all been leading us to. Judah was taken into exile out of its land. So what happens afterward? What happens when all these people are either executed or shipped off to Babylon?

on. There wasn't any concern anymore of the Babylonians for this area. They want to make sure that things at least go as smoothly as possible. So Nebuchadnezzar appoints a guy by the name of Gedaliah, who's going to be the governor of this place. So he's in charge. I mean, the Babylonians are in charge, but he's underneath them. He's supposed to make sure everything is done accordingly. But this doesn't last very long either, because Gedaliah is in charge and then some other israelites come to meet with him and he tries to reason with them verse 24 says he he says listen listen guys don't be afraid of the chaldean officials all we need to do is to live in the bab live in this land we serve the king of babylon and everything's going

to be great everything will be well uh which of course makes sense we saw what happened when we rebelled things did not go well they destroyed everything now we have at least maybe a little bit of a peace now we've got some land here and even though most of our people are in babylon they've let us live here get a lie says so why don't we just kind of be cool and live at peace of the babylonians and they don't listen to him because it doesn't take long before they uh they they sneak up on him and ambush get a lie and they put him to death and not only that so they're They executed the very one that the Babylonians put in charge. But these guys are so scared of the Babylonian forces that they hightail it to Egypt to try and get away.

So they got a lie, but did them no good because they themselves were afraid of the Babylonian revenge against what they'd done. So they have to take off to Egypt. So they go into exile themselves in Egypt, just like their brothers and sisters had gone into exile in Babylon. Yeah, this is some kind of weird last gasp thing. Like, there's a guy—this is a strange thing where there's, like, this small group of people that could have some semblance of peace and, like, maybe a life that wasn't— because the Babylonians don't really care what you're doing as long as you're not doing that, you know? So, as long as you're not— Yeah, as long as you're making their life easy, they don't really care.

Yeah, but this is kind of how—this is sort of—the wrath of God is going to affect everyone, and then you end up just completing the whole thing. We're going to strike this guy down, and now we're going to end up in captivity. I don't know what you're trying to accomplish here, but now the exile has been finalized. Yeah. and that's kind of where everything uh is is left here except there is a uh there is kind of maybe an element of hope here or at least a a wink of hope that's the way this book is going to end so we're at the very end of chapter 25 and the last four verses tell us that in the 37th year of the exile of jehoiachin king of babylon in the 12th month 27th day of the month the next king or

a king a guy by the name of evil metadoc so not this is this isn't nebuchadnezzar this is another king of babylon he freed jehoiachin king of judah from prison it's kind of a joseph kind of moment right so joseph was in prison he was brought up from prison and uh that's what happens to this guy so jehoia uh jehoiachin is taken out of prison it says he spoke kindly to him he gave him a seat at his table in fact he gave him a seat above the seats of the other kings who were there so there were other kings that were you know been captured or overpowered by the babylonians and they were there but jehoiachin hey he gets the highest seat he uh gets a change of clothes he takes off his his prison clothes gets some new clothes and every day of his life he dined at the king's table

as and for his allowance a regular allowance was given him by the king according to his daily needs as long as he lived period end of end of second king so it seems that what the author is intending here is to hold out hold out a little a little bit of hope that maybe something maybe there is hope for a son of david maybe something will happen down uh down the road with this now that's it's where he leaves the story it's up to us to know what's going to happen after that uh but what does happen after that is that you really you never have you never have a son of david sitting on the throne in jerusalem with the davidic kingdom restored you're still waiting for the son of david to come you know over about six centuries later when christ himself is born

but that's kind of the way the book it kind of leaves us hanging wondering okay exile the king of the last king of Israel, or one of the last kings of Israel is there, he's dining at the king's table, what's going to happen? What's going to happen next? Yeah, and that is it, man. We have made it through 2 Kings. I will tell you guys, just up front, that we're not going to go into 1 and 2 Chronicles, and we've done everything in the order that your Bible has it thus far. We have decided not to do that. We will do it eventually, but we have decided that this would just be 1 and 2 Kings all over again, which is what 1 and 2 Chronicles is.

And so we're going to take a break from that, and we're going to go into the book of Ezra. But we will get to 1 and 2 Chronicles eventually. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we decided jumping right from Kings to Chronicles would be like jumping right from Matthew to Mark. Yeah, and if you're a listener to 30 Minutes of the New Testament, we don't do that. We did Matthew, and then we went on to something else. We've covered all the Gospels, but we did not do them back-to-back-to-back. We didn't do all four of them in a row.

And so, yeah, very similar situation. So, 2 Kings, that was depressing, but it shows you the need for Jesus to be sure. And so we will come back next week and start looking at Ezra. I'll see you then, Chad. All right. See you then.