by oath to render fealty. This breach of covenant and frivolous violation of his oath Ezekiel also condemns in sharp words (Eze 17:13.), as a grievous sin against the Lord. Zedekiah also appears from the very first to have had no intention of keeping the oath of fealty which he took to the king of Babel with very great uprightness. For only a short time after he was installed as king he despatched an embassy to Babel (Jer 29:3), which, judging from the contents of the letter to the exiles that Jeremiah gave to the ambassadors to take with them, can hardly have been sent with any other object that to obtain from the king of Babel the return of those who had been carried away. Then in the fourth year of his reign he himself made a journey to Babel (Jer 51:59), evidently to investigate the circumstances upon the spot, and to ensure the king of Babel of his fidelity. And in the fifth month of the same year, probably after his return from Babel, ambassadors of the Moabites, Ammonites, Tyrians, and Sidonians came to Jerusalem to make an alliance with him for throwing off the Chaldaean yoke (Jer 27:3). Zedekiah also had recourse to Egypt, where the enterprising Pharaoh Hophra (Apries) had ascended the throne; and then, in spite of the warnings of Jeremiah, trusting to the help of Egypt, revolted from the king of Babel, probably at a time when Nebuchadnezzar (according to the combinations of M. v. Nieb., which are open to question however) was engaged in a war with Media.
Chap. 25
==Verse 1== Siege and conquest of Jerusalem; Zedekiah taken prisoner and led away to Babel (cf. Jer 52:4-11 and Jer 39:1-7). - 2Ki 25:1. In the ninth year of the reign of Zedekiah, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar marched with all his forces against Jerusalem and commenced the siege (cf. Jer 39:1), after he had taken all the rest of the fortified cities of the land, with the exception of Lachish and Azekah, which were besieged at the same time as Jerusalem (Jer 34:7). On the very same day the commencement of the siege of Jerusalem was revealed to the prophet Ezekiel in his exile (Eze 24:1). “And they built against it (the city) siege-towers round about.” דּיק, which only occurs here and in Jeremiah (Jer 52:4) and Ezekiel (Eze 4:2; Eze 17:17; Eze 21:27; Eze 26:8), does not mean either a line of circumvallation (J. D. Mich., Hitzig), or the outermost enclosure constructed of palisades (Thenius, whose assertion that דּיק is always mentioned as the
