Jeremiah 52:3 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

For through the anger of the Lord, &c.— For it was so because of the anger of JEHOVAH against Judah and Jerusalem. The particle כי ki, is here causal, and assigns a reason for what went before; namely, why Zedekiah succeeded Jehoiakim in the throne. This happened, it is said, "because of the anger of JEHOVAH;" not that JEHOVAH instigated either them or any man else to do wickedly; but it was of his special order and appointment, for the punishment of a wicked people, that men of such perverse and evil dispositions were advanced to be their kings. For having determined, as it is said, Exodus 21:11-16 to execute a signal vengeance upon Judah and Jerusalem for the very heinous provocations that he had received during the reign of Manasseh, he first of all removed the good Josiah out of the way, from respect to whose piety he would not bring the evil in his days, and thus opened the succession to his sons, the badness of whose principles favoured the designs of God's justice, and led them to pursue measures equally fatal to themselves and their country. For hence it flowed, that to their other wicked and sinful actions they added one no less impolitic than profligate, that of rebelling against a prince, to whom they were engaged by all the ties of religion, honour, and gratitude; one who had power to crush them, and who exercised that power with the most unrelenting severity. Thus truly might it be said of the people of Judah, in the words of the prophet Hosea, chap. Jeremiah 13:11. "God gave them kings in his anger, and took, or applied, them to the purposes of his indignation;" which indeed is but another way of expressing the sense here intended, namely, that it, Zedekiah's succession, was the consequence of the anger of JEHOVAH against Judah and Jerusalem, and designed finally to terminate in his removal of them out of his sight.