Behold, I will command, saith the LORD, and cause them to return to this city; and they shall fight against it, and take it, and burn it with fire: and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation without an inhabitant. I will command - Nebuchadnezzar, impelled unconsciously by a divine instigation, returned on the withdrawal of the Egyptians.
Remarks:
(1) Zedekiah was so weak that, not even when Jeremiah's words were coming true in the actual arrival of Nebuchadnezzar's army before Jerusalem, had he the courage to obey his better impulses, and submit to the Babylonian king. Fearing his princes he did not fear God enough. By his fear of man he actually fell into the evil from man which he feared (Jeremiah 38:19-23). The fear of God delivers us from the fear of man, and is our only true safety.
(2) Affliction and captivity probably worked in Zedekiah the right spirit which he had been lacking while he was a king. Hence, there followed a mitigation of his punishment (Jeremiah 34:4). Though his life was a stormy one, he was to close it "in peace" (Jeremiah 34:5), and his memory was to be honoured. 'It is better to live and die penitent in a prison than to live and die impenitent in a palace.'
(3) The Jews, when under the terror of the Babylonian army brought by God against them, at the command of the Lord by Jeremiah, liberated their Jewish bond-servants. But when the terror passed away, the siege having been raised for a time through the diversion in the Jew's favour made by Pharaoh's army, they again enslaved their brethren whom they had just manumitted; and this in violation of their own solemn oath and covenant in the house of God (Jeremiah 34:8-16). How often 'ease recants vows made in pain, as recreant and void.' Sick-bed covenants of repentance are soon forgotten and broken when the fear which produced them is passed away. But they who think thus to cheat God are only cheating themselves, to the everlasting ruin of their souls. "God will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." Those who are readiest to bind themselves by gratuitous oaths are often the readiest to break them. Let us be slow in such appeals to Yahweh; and when with due deliberation we make a covenant with God, let us scrupulously adhere to it at all costs. Let us watch and pray continually that we may not be unfaithful to sacramental and other solemn engagements entered into in the house of God. "When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools
... Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay" (Ecclesiastes 5:4-5).
(4) God repays men who set at nought their obligations to Him, with most exact retribution. The Jews who would not proclaim liberty to their brethren must be deprived of their own liberty, while their bondmen were to enjoy at the hands of the enemy the freedom which their own countrymen denied them (Jeremiah 52:16). The Jews had been originally delivered from the state of bondmen in Egypt, to be the Lord's servants and freedmen, under His continual protection. But being impatient of His free service they must get their wish, and have the liberty from his service which they strove after-a fatal liberty! for soon they found liberty from Him means bondage to the world. Their liberty was to be unrestricted dooming to the sword, pestilence, famine, and exile (Jeremiah 34:17). They who cut the victim in two, to ratify the cove nant, were for their violation of it to be cut in two themselves. As God gave the besieged Jews manumission by the departure of Nebuchadnezzar's army upon their manumission of their brethren, so God revoked His manumission and recalled the Babylonian army upon their revoking the manumission of their brethren, and forcing them back to service. None ever gains in the end by wronging his fellow-man. God espouses the cause of the oppressed as His cause. Let us, in looking for mercy from God, take care that we exercise mercy to our fellow-men. "Blessed are the merciful, for they" - and they alone - "shall obtain mercy."