1). Introduction (2 Kings 24:18-19).
This is the last use of the opening formula which has been common throughout Kings since 1 Kings 14:21, and it once more ends with the chilling words ‘and he did what was evil in the sight of YHWH'. It sums up what the house of David had finally come to. In spite of Solomon's early promise the extravagance, pride and idolatry which began with Solomon had come to its final fruition. Such is ever the result of the outworking of the sinfulness of man. As the book has revealed, it was only due to God's constant activity through the prophets that hope has been maintained. It is, however, the darkness before a new dawning in the ‘lifting up of the head' of Jehoiachin (2 Kings 25:27-30), that will finally result in the coming of Jesus Christ (Matthew 1:11-17).
Analysis.
· Zedekiah was twenty and one years old when he began to reign (2 Kings 24:18 a).
· And he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem, and his mother's name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah (2 Kings 24:18 b).
· And he did what was evil in the sight of YHWH, according to all that Jehoiakim had done (2 Kings 24:19).
‘Zedekiah was twenty and one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem, and his mother's name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.'
Zedekiah was twenty one years old when he began to reign and he reigned for eleven years in Jerusalem ‘the city which YHWH had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel to put His Name there' for David's sake (1 Kings 14:21). It was to be the last eleven years of Jerusalem's existence. The name of the queen mother was Hamutal. Zedekiah was thus the full brother of Jehoahaz (2 Kings 23:31), and the half-brother of Jehoiakim.
‘And he did what was evil in the sight of YHWH, according to all that Jehoiakim had done.'
He continued to walk in the same way as Jehoiakim had done, permitting the continuation of the worship of Baal and Asherah, as well as necessarily having to perpetuate the worship of the gods of Babylon. (Neither Jehoahaz nor Jehoiachin had reigned long enough to be seen as a pattern). All Josiah's efforts had, in the long term, seemingly been in vain. He had given Judah its last chance and it had rejected it.