And he also rebelled against king Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God: but he stiffened his neck, and hardened his heart from turning unto the LORD God of Israel.
Who had made him swear. Zedekiah received his crown on the express condition of taking a solemn oath of fealty to the king of Babylon (Ezekiel 17:13), so that his revolt, by joining in a league with Pharaoh-Hophra, king of Egypt, involved the crime of perjury (see the notes at 2 Kings 25:1-7; also an account of the war between Nebuchadnezzar and Pharaoh-Hophra (Aprics); an account of Zedekiah in Rawlinson's 'Herodotus,'
ii., p. 386). His own pride and obdurate impiety, the incurable idolatry of the nation, and their reckless disregard of prophetic warnings, brought down on his already sadly reduced kingdom the long-threatened judgment of God. Nebuchadnezzar, the executioner of the divine vengeance, commenced a third siege of Jerusalem, which, after holding out for a year and a half, was taken in the eleventh year of the reign of Zedekiah, resulting in the burning of the temple, with, most probably, the ark, and in the overthrow of the kingdom of Judah (see the notes at 2 Kings 22:1-20; Ezekiel 12:13; Ezekiel 17:16).