He put out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the king of Babylon bound him in fetters, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison until the day of his death.
Parallel Translations
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He put out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the king of Babylon bound him in fetters, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison until the day of his death.
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Then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the king of Babylon bound him in chains, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death.
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And he put out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the king of Babylon bound him in fetters, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death.
Cross-references (2)
Passages linked to Jeremiah 52:11 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Ezekiel 12:13 I will also spread my net on him, and he will be taken in my snare. I will bring him to Babylon to the land of the Chaldeans; yet he will not see it, though he will die there.
- Jeremiah 34:3-5 You won’t escape out of his hand, but will surely be taken and delivered into his hand. Your eyes will see the eyes of the king of Babylon, and he will speak with you mouth to mouth. You will go to Babylon.” ’ “Yet hear Yahweh’s word, O Zedekiah king of Judah: Yahweh says concerning you, ‘You won’t die by the sword. You will die in peace; and with the burnings of your fathers, the former kings who were before you, so they will make a burning for you. They will lament you, saying, “Ah Lord!” for I have spoken the word,’ says Yahweh.”
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (10 sources)
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Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain This history is found 2Ki 25:1-7, much in the…
This history is found 2Ki 25:1-7, much in the same words. See the annotations on that chapter. Jeremiah also hath the substance of it, Jer 39:1-7; only neither of those places have the last words, from whence we learn that Zedekiah died in Babylon a prisoner.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Now in the fifth month, in the tenth day…
Now in the fifth month, in the tenth day of the month,.... Hence the fast of the fifth month, for the burning of the city, which was the month Ab, and answers to part of July and part of August, Zac 8:19;
which was the nineteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; that is, the nineteenth year of his reign; who reigned in all forty three years, according to Ptolemy's canon:
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came Nebuzaradan captain of the guard, which served the king of Babylon, into Jerusalem; or "stood before the king of Babylon" (s); ministered to him, was a servant of his, the provost marshal, or chief marshal; he was sent, and came from Riblah to Jerusalem, with a commission to burn the city. In Kg2 25:8; it is said to be on the "seventh" day of the fifth month that he came thither; here, on the "tenth" day; which difficulty may be solved, without supposing different copies, or any error: he might set out from Riblah on the seventh day, and come to Jerusalem on the tenth; or he might come thither on the seventh, and not set fire to the city till the tenth; or, if he set fire to it on the seventh, it might be burning to the tenth, before it was wholly consumed. The Jews (t) account for it thus,
"strangers entered into the temple, and ate in it, and defiled it, the seventh and eighth days; and on the ninth, towards dark, they set fire to it; and it burned and continued all that whole day, as it is said, Jer 6:4;''
R. Johanan was saying, if I had been in that generation, I should have fixed on that day, for the greatest part of the temple was burnt on that day. The authors of the Universal History say (u) it was on Wednesday the eleventh of the fourth month, answering to our twenty seventh of July; but, according to the express words of the text, the city was broke up on the ninth of the fourth month, and burnt on the tenth day of the fifth month; and which was, according to Bishop Usher (w), the twenty seventh of August, on a sabbath day, and in the year of the world 3416, and before Christ 588; and is placed by them in the same years; and by Mr. Whiston (x) in 589; and by Mr. Bedford (y) in the year 587. This was a month after the taking of the city.
(s) "qui setit coram rege", Schmidt. (t) T. Bab. Taanith, fol. 29. 1. (u) Vol 4. p. 189. & vol. 21. p. 61. (w) Annales Vet. Test. p. 131. (x) Chronological Tables, cent. 10. (y) Scripture Chronology, p 684.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 11. He put out the eyes of Zedekiah]…
Verse 11. He put out the eyes of Zedekiah] See Clarke on Jer 39:7.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Put him in prison ... - Not found in…
Put him in prison ... - Not found in 2 Kings, for in the contemporaneous history what befell Zedekiah at Riblah would alone be known. It was no doubt added by the same hand which inserted the account of the deportations to Babylon.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain jer 52:11Eze 12:13 : "I will bring him to…
jer 52:11Eze 12:13 : "I will bring him to Babylon . . . yet shall he not see it."
prison--literally, "the house of visitations," or "punishments," that is, where there was penal work enforced on the prisoners, such as grinding. Hence the Septuagint renders it "the house of the mill." So Samson, after his eyes were put out, "ground" in the Philistine prison-house (Jdg 16:21).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 11. he put out the eyes] See on Jer_34:3,…
11. he put out the eyes] See on Jer_34:3, and Jer_39:7.
and put him in prison till the day of his death] an addition to the narrative in 2 Kgs.
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prison] lit. the house of visitations, i.e. of punishment. The LXX render mill, of which rendering there is also a trace in Jer_39:7 in that Version; an indication perhaps of a tradition on the subject.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (11) And put him in prison till the day…
(11) And put him in prison till the day of his death.—This also is an additional detail not mentioned in 2 Kings 25, and its absence is probably due to the fact that that was the earlier narrative of the two. The word for “prison” is a peculiar one, and differs from that in Jer_52:31. Literally it means “house of visitation,” and this may imply either stricter custody, or more severe punishment in addition to imprisonment. The LXX. renders it by “house of the mill,” as though Zedekiah, after he had been blinded, had been made to do slave work like that of Samson. Possibly this was merely an inference from Lam_5:13. Such treatment of captive kings was, however, quite in keeping with the character of Assyrian and Chaldæan rulers. Thus Assur-bani-pal boasts that he placed a king of Arabia in chains, and bound him with the dogs, and caused him to be kept in one of the great gates of Nineveh (Records of the Past, i. p. 93). So Darius, in the Behistun inscription, boasts of having taken a rebel king of Sagartia, cut off his nose and ears, and kept him chained at his door (Records of the Past, i. p. 119).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain In prison; literally, in the house of custody.
In prison; literally, in the house of custody.
Zedekiah"s fate.
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Here is a triple bondage the bondage of blindness, fetters, and imprisonment. Truly a dreadful doom! Look
I AT THE CAUSE OF IT.
1. The cause so far as it lies in his own conduct. There was no need for him to accept a throne as viceroy for Babylon, but, having done so, he had entered into an implied covenant. No wonder that the King of Babylon took special care to stamp such conduct in a peculiar way.
2. The cause so far as it lies in the notions of the time. Zedekiah was treated, not only vindictively, but savagely. The meaning must have been to humiliate him, to make the iron enter into his very soul. What a difference Christianity has made in the treatment of conquered foes! The change has Come very slowly, but it is real and stable. One cannot imagine the time returning when a captured enemy would be deprived of his eyesight.
II AT A CONTRAST IMMEDIATELY SUGGESTED. One cannot but think of Samson, whose external condition was exactly that of Zedekiah, blinded, fettered, and imprisoned. Reduced to this state the Philistines reckoned he was impotent. Zedekiah really was impotent; he seems to have gone on to the day of his death in monotonous submission to what he felt necessity. But it was only necessity because he made it so. The worst limitations our fellow men can put on us may become in certain conditions like an easily snapped thread. Zedekiah might have risen above all these insults and pains. Perhaps he did rise. It is well for us to recollect how God has placed the essential liberty of every individual in his own hands. Y.
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The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain He put out the eyes of Zedekiah.
Jer_52:11
He put out the eyes of Zedekiah.
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Zedekiah the prisoner
Here is no mystery. A wicked man, unfaithful to a very sacred trust, ending his days in darkness and a prison (Psa_37:35). The son of the good Josiah, whose name suggests thoughts of early piety and godly patriotism, degenerate, idolatrous, and in the end eyeless and captive, pining away years of monotonous misery in a Babylonish dungeon--it is all according to that law which God has stamped on the world, Your sin will find you out. It has been said of him that he was a man not so much bad at heart as weak in will. He was one of those unfortunate characters, it has been said, frequent in history, like our own Charles I. and Louis XVI. of France, who find themselves at the head of affairs during a great crisis, without having the strength of character to enable them to do what they know to be right, and whose infirmity becomes moral guilt. That he was weak in will and purpose we see in the manner in which he surrendered Jeremiah to the princes who sought his life (Jer_38:3). But he was bad at heart likewise. His heart was not right towards the Lord God of his father--self and the world and idols were the objects of his affection, and after them he would go. Warning succeeded warning in vain. For eleven years the struggle lasted between this wicked prince and the voice which came to him from the God of heaven. And the Jerusalem of his day may be described as the Sodom of an earlier day--
Long warned, long spared, till her whole heart was foul,
And fiery vengeance on its clouds came nigh.
Vengeance came in another form than that in which it fell on those cities over whose ashes the waves of the Dead Sea now roll, and yet scarcely less terrible. The Babylonian siege lasted sixteen months (53:4), and the miseries of Jerusalem were only less than those endured in the siege by the Roman Titus, seven centuries after. The calamities which befell the royal family are recorded with an undisguised bluntness (verses8-11). What a catalogue of horrors! But all in keeping with the character of the people. They had been described to the very life at an earlier stage of the ministry of Jeremiah (Jer_6:22-23). This witness is true. The very stones, stones carved with their own hands, have been disinterred from the grave of ages, to bear testimony to the truth of the histories and prophecies of the Bible. Instead of being ashamed of the barbarities in which they indulged, the Assyrians (and in this we need make no distinction between the Assyrians and the Chaldeans) gloried in them, and employed the arts of sculpture and painting to perpetuate the memory of their cruel deeds. On the relics of their civilisation, now exhibited in our own museums and places of public resort, we find cities which have surrendered represented as given up to indiscriminate slaughter and the flames. The kings themselves took part in perpetrating the cruelties which are brought to light by recently discovered sculptures. On one of these sculptures a king is represented as thrusting out the eyes of a kneeling captive with his own spear, and holding with his own hand the cord which is inserted into the lips and nostrils of this and two other prisoners. The spirit which possessed the Assyrians and Babylonians may be traced through later ages in the same lands. One of the best of the Roman emperors, Valerian, was taken prisoner in battle in the third century by a Persian king, who detained him in hopeless bondage, and paraded him in chains, invested with the imperial purple, as a constant spectacle of fallen greatness, to the multitude. Whenever the proud conqueror mounted his horse, he placed his foot upon the neck of the Roman emperor Nor was this all for when Valerian sank under the weight of his shame and grief, his corpse was flayed, and the skin, stuffed with straw, was preserved for ages in the most celebrated temple of Persia. Would that such things as these could he told only of Eastern lands! But Western story is full of them likewise. The conflicts of the Moors and so-called Christians in Spain, from the eighth century, the age of Moorish conquest, to the sixteenth, the age of their final expulsion from Europe, contains histories of cruelty, perhaps, to be rivalled nowhere else--cruelty in which the so-called Christian luxuriated as much as his Moslem enemy. This spirit attained its highest point of intensity and barbarity in the same land in the Inquisition, strangely called the Holy Office, by which sheer torture was invoked to root out Judaism, and every form and shade of Christianity except that of the Roman Church. The appliances of rude barbarians, like American Indians, and of civilised barbarians, like Assyrians and Chaldeans, are not to compare with the appliances which the Inquisition perfected through its ages of murder. But to return to the Babylonish cruelties on the person and family of the Hebrew king. The King of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. How many or how old they were, we are not told. The father being now only two-and-thirty years old, his sons must have been boys. And ungodly as the father was, there is no sign in his life of any want of natural affection, while there is sign of his sensibility to the sufferings of others. To put his sons to death before his eyes was an act of wanton cruelty, designed to give him the utmost possible pain. Then were put to death the princes of Judah, who must now recall with bitterness, if not with repentance, their long and obstinate resistance to the Divine counsels, and their own hard-hearted attempt on the life of the prophet Jeremiah. His sons dead, and the princes dead, the king himself must now submit to the cruel sentence of his conqueror--a sentence more barbarous than death itself. His eyes were put out. The process is revealed to us in a bas-relief, to which I have already referred, in which the conquering king is digging out the eyes of the conquered king with a spear. The King of Babylon may have done this with his own hands to the King of Judah, or by the hands of another. In either ease the conquered had no alternative but to submit. And thus blinded he is carried to the prison on the banks of the Euphrates in which he must end his days. Two predictions were thus fulfilled--one by Jer_32:5, addressed to the king m person, and one by Eze_12:13, who was with the captives which had been carried to Babylon some years before. The Word of the Lord was not broken. The King of Judah saw the King of Babylons eyes with his eyes, but it was the last vision which his eyes saw. The city of Babylon he saw not, though he was doomed to be imprisoned in it and to die there. When Zedekiah reached Babylon, there was already a King of Judah imprisoned there. His nephew, the son of his elder brother Jehoiakim, had been dethroned, as we have seen, after a brief reign of three months and ten days, and had been carried into exile with many of his princes and subjects (Jer_29:1-32.). That he was still alive when his uncle and successor, blind and childless, arrived in the city of their enemy, we know--for the last sentences of the Book of Jeremiah tell us what befell him many years later. One wonders whether the two dethroned Kings of Judah, uncle and nephew, ever met in the land of their imprisonment, and had opportunity of talking over the events which had involved them in so great a disaster. If they had, did they curse the God of their fathers, or did they learn, as some of these fathers had done in the day of their adversity, to humble themselves and seek forgiveness? Their great predecessor, Solomon, in dedicating the temple which Babylon had now ]aid waste, had prayed (1Ki_8:46-50). Imagine Jehoiakim reading these words out of the book of the law to his blind uncle Zedekiah. Imagine them recalling the history of the great-grandfather of the elder of them--how Manasseh had done evil exceedingly; how the King of Assyria had bound him with fetters and carried him to Babylon; and how, when he was in affliction, he besought the Lord (2Ch_33:12). Thus encouraged to repent and seek forgiveness, the royal prisoners may have bent the knee together before the throne of the heavenly grace, and pied the promises which had been given so often to the penitent. And if they presented thus the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart in their prison-house, we know that mercy was not withheld. We find one little word which encourages hope. There shall he be till I visit him, saith the Lord (32:5). God visits men with judgment; but this He had done to Zedekiah before he reached his prison in Babylon. God visits men with favour, with compassion, with restoring mercy: was it thus He said He should visit Zedekiah in Babylon I doubt not that the words until I visit him were meant to be indefinite and obscure, but were meant at the same time to give assurance to the king that in Babylon he should not be beyond the reach of God, whether for good or evil. Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide in secret places, that I shall not see him, saith the Lord? (Jer_23:23-24.) Jehovah was a God at hand in Jerusalem, but equally a God in Babylon afar off. The throne of Judah was exposed to His eye, but equally so the most secret place in the Babylonish prison. And God would visit Zedekiah in his exile and prison. This assurance might be a terror or a joy. If the king hoped that, being in Babylon, he was now away from the presence of Jehovah and under the rule of other gods, and had nothing more to fear, let him know that Jehovah should visit him even there. If he feared that, being in Babylon, he should be beyond the reach of the mercy of the God of his fathers, let him know, to his hearts joy, that Jehovah should visit him even in that far-off land. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
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Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 52:11 The last sentence of the verse is an…
52:11 The last sentence of the verse is an addition to the 2 Kgs 25 text.
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