And for his diet, there was a continual diet given him of the king of Babylon, every day a portion until the day of his death, all the days of his
There was a continual diet given him ... every day a portion - rather, 'its portion,' margin (cf. margin, 1 Kings 8:59, 'the thing of a day in his (its) day' - i:e., 'at all times, as the matter shall require').
Remarks:
(1) When God is angry, and purposes to punish nations and individuals, he gives them over, or at least those on whom their well-being depends, to a judicial blindness as to their own interests, just as he gave over Zedekiah to the suicidal infatuation of rebelling against the great King of Babylon. How much, then, we need to have the Lord on our side in our national politics, seeing that otherwise we have no guarantee against false steps being taken by our rulers, which must end in national humiliation and misery!
(2) Zedekiah tried to secure himself by flight from the consequences of his rebellion and perjury; but it is vain for the transgressor to think of escaping from the appointed judgments of God (Jeremiah 52:7-10). Those eyes which had looked Nebuchadnezzar in the face, at the time of taking the solemn oath of allegiance to him before God, were put out as unworthy any more to see the light of day (Jeremiah 52:11). The sinfully weak king, who had through fear of his princes permitted Jeremiah, the prophet of God, to be cast into a miry dungeon, was himself consigned to a Babylonian prison until the day of his death (Jeremiah 52:11).
(3) The poorer classes alone suffered but little in the general calamity. Nay, many of them were given possessions, which they had never been permitted heretofore to enjoy, through the oppression of the wealthier Jews, and were made by the Chaldeans vinedressers and farmers (Jeremiah 52:16). How wise it is for us to avoid such entanglement of our hearts in earthly goods, as that in losing them we should be losing our all! The believer alone can stand upon the ruins of empires and worlds, and say, I have lost nothing.
(4) The awful enormity and bitterness of sin appear especially in the overthrow even of the temple of God. The remembrance of its precious furniture, its perfect symmetry, and its holy services, now lost to them, would be the most bitter ingredient in the cup of the Jewish captives. How they must have reproached themselves, that they had not prized these spiritual treasures enough while they had them! Let us so use our spiritual privileges now, that there may never come a time when we shall have sad experience of the righteous appointment of God, "From him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."