XXXII.
(1) In the tenth year of Zedekiah... — We are carried over a period of six years from the prophecy of Jeremiah 28:1 to B.C. 589, when the treacherous and intriguing policy of Zedekiah had provoked Nebuchadnezzar to besiege Jerusalem in the ninth year of the king of Judah’s reign, and the king, irritated by Jeremiah’s continued predictions of defeat, had imprisoned him in the dungeon for state-prisoners attached to the palace (Nehemiah 3:25). It would appear from Jeremiah 37:15; Jeremiah 38:26, both of an earlier date than this chapter, that he had previously been confined in the house of Jonathan the scribe as a private prison, and that the king had removed him thence with a view to consulting him on the probable issue of the siege. He was not allowed to leave his prison, but friends were permitted to have access to him.
(3. 4) Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon... — A comparison of these verses with Jeremiah 34:2-3; Jeremiah 38:23, shows that Jeremiah never for a moment varied in his tone. To see the king of Babylon face to face, to stand before him in shame and confusion — that was to be the end of the king’s frantic resistance to the Divine purpose. The prophecy of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 12:13), and the fact that Nebuchadnezzar put out the eyes of the captive king (Jeremiah 39:7), give a special force to Jeremiah’s word. The face of the great king, in all the terror of his wrath, was to be the last object Zedekiah was to behold on earth (2 Kings 25:6-7; Jeremiah 39:6; Jeremiah 52:10-11).