Jehoiakim, the wicked
king, and all his royal house, might be driven out into slavery;
Jerusalem might become a heap of ruins and corpses; the fair land of
Judaea, and the village where he was bred, might become thorns, and
thistles, and heaps of stones; the vineyard which he loved, the
little estate at Anathoth which had belonged to him, might be trodden
down by the stranger, and he himself die in a foreign land; around
him might be nothing but sin and decay, before him nothing but
despair and ruin: yet still there was hope, joy, everlasting
certainty for that poor, childless, captive old man; for he had found
out that the Lord still lived, the Lord still reigned. He could not
lie; he could not forget his people. Could a mother forget her
sucking child? No. When the Jews turned to Him, He would still have
mercy. His punishment of them was a sign that he still cared for
them. If He had forgotten them, He would have let them go on
triumphant in their iniquity. No. All these afflictions were meant
to chasten them, teach them, bring them back to Him. It would be
good for them, an actual blessing to them, to be taken away into
captivity in Babylon. It might be hard to believe, but it must be
true. The Lord of Israel, the Saviour-God, who had been caring for
them so long, rising up early and sending His prophets to them,
pleading with them as a father with his child, He would have mercy;
He would teach them, in sorrow and slavery, the lesson they were too
rebellious and hard-hearted to learn in prosperity and freedom: that
the Lord was their righteousness, and that there was no other name
under heaven which could save them from the plague, and from the
famine, from the swords of the Chaldeans, or from the division, and
oppression, and brutishness, and manifold wickedness, which was their
ruin.
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