(19) They burnt the house of God.—2Kings 25:9.

Brake down the wall . . .—Jeremiah 39:8; 2Kings 25:9-10.

And destroyed all the goodly vessels.—Literally, And all her delightsome vessels were for destroying (lĕhashchîth). (Comp. Isaiah 64:11): “all our pleasant things are laid waste.” 2Kings 25:13 speaks of the breaking-up of the great vessels of the Temple, for the sake of carrying off their material more easily.

Servants to him and his sons . . . kingdom Of Persia.—A fulfilment of Jeremiah’s prophecy concerning Nebuchadnezzar: “And all nations shall serve him, and his son, and his son’s son, until the time of his own land come” (Jeremiah 27:7). Comp. also Isaiah’s word to Hezekiah (2Kings 20:18.)

36:1-21 The ruin of Judah and Jerusalem came on by degrees. The methods God takes to call back sinners by his word, by ministers, by conscience, by providences, are all instances of his compassion toward them, and his unwillingness that any should perish. See here what woful havoc sin makes, and, as we value the comfort and continuance of our earthly blessings, let us keep that worm from the root of them. They had many times ploughed and sowed their land in the seventh year, when it should have rested, and now it lay unploughed and unsown for ten times seven years. God will be no loser in his glory at last, by the disobedience of men. If they refused to let the land rest, God would make it rest. What place, O God, shall thy justice spare, if Jerusalem has perished? If that delight of thine were cut off for wickedness, let us not be high-minded, but fear.The fearful slaughter took place at the capture of the city, in the courts of the temple itself (Ezekiel 9:6-7; compare Lamentations 2:7, Lamentations 2:20). 13. who had made him swear by God—Zedekiah received his crown on the express condition of taking a solemn oath of fealty to the king of Babylon (Eze 17:13); so that his revolt by joining in a league with Pharaoh-hophra, king of Egypt, involved the crime of perjury. 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 judgments 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. It resulted in the burning of the temple, with, most probably, the ark, and in the overthrow of the kingdom of Judah (see on [480]2Ki 25:1-7; [481]Eze 12:13; [482]Eze 17:16). No text from Poole on this verse.

And they burnt the house of the Lord,.... The temple; of which, and what follows in this verse; see Gill on Jeremiah 52:13; see Gill on Jeremiah 52:14. And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof.