Jeremiah 52; Psalm 74 & 79

Jeremiah 52

 The Siege of Jerusalem, as it is called, took place in 587 B.C. It lasted eighteen months, then Jerusalem was utterly destroyed. Zedekiah tried to escape and was caught by the Babylonians, chained and imprisoned until the day of his death. It is unknown how long he was incarcerated.

Zedekiah, the last king of Judah! Yet, not a good name to name your child after.  For young Zed, "Did evil in the sight of the Lord." He started his reign in his early 20s and only reigned 11 years, so he did not have a lot of wisdom, nor experience.  Yet THIS is not what destroyed him and Jerusalem. It was his idolatry, insolence, and his foolish choices. He ignored what Jeremiah warned him about and this is his demise. Plus, God had had enough. These hard-hearted people just were blind and selfish to God's truth.

Interestingly, his original name was Mattaniah; but when Nebuchadnezzar placed him on the throne as the successor to Jehoiachin, he changed his name to Zedekiah. 

So in doing some research about this chapter, I found a very interesting board game that was released in November, 2013 called, Promised Land 1250-587 B.C., that has great reviews on www.boardgamegeek.com website.

Nebuzaradan, the captain of the Babylonian guard was the one, with his army, to finally raid and then raze the last of Jerusalem. Before it was completely annihilated, the bronze pillars from the Temple were broken. These 2 pillars were actually named, Boaz and Jachin (or Yakin).

Since the making of these was intricately described in 1 and 2 Kings, I wondered what is the significance of the pillars?

http://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com states: "According to Strong’s definition, Yakin יָכִין means He will establish. While Boaz who was an ancestor of David means quickness בֹּ֫עַז . However, as the meaning of Boaz is uncertain in Hebrew it would be better to follow the Septuagint where according to Barne’s Notes on the Bible in the margin reference is translated Boaz Ἰσχύς as ‘Strength.’ “The meaning was probably "God will establish in strength" the temple and the religion connected with it.” In the New Testament, we find an allusion to a pillar in Revelation: Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God (Revelation 3:12) In 1 Timothy 3:15 the church is called “the pillar and foundation of the truth”. So we further have the idea of an unmovable church fully established in grace by faith in Messiah, who is the ‘truth’ or a pillar of truth extending from heaven down to earth. Christ Himself is that pillar of truth, and the church is also, on account of it as being his extended body on earth. This seems to be the meaning of these two pillars. Having two of them, rather than one, might be representing the dual nature of Messiah in that by his flesh He was established into his ministry, and by His divinity He was strong to perform it.  In summary these two pillars, ‘established in strength’ represent the God-Man by whom, as a pillar of truth, the entire church is established and enabled to perform the entire rule of worship for which that church was built. From the very beginning in the ancient Hebrew temple, to the invisible and unmovable church of today and tomorrow, we sing praises to our God forever and ever. The very gates of hell can’t prevail against us. Psalm 74     This psalm plainly describes the destruction of Jerusalem. We see many psalms written by king David, but there were some written by Asaph.  Yet the writer of this psalm was not the Asaph of other psalms because, according to one scholar: "It is impossible that the Asaph who wrote this psalm was the same Asaph who was a contemporary of David’s, unless it was written prophetically. It is probable that this was a later Asaph or possibly a descendant of Asaph."In other words, there were a few Asaph's who wrote psalms.  It's notable that the writer of this Psalm seemed to have a victim mentality.  He believes that this annihilation happened because bad people hated the Jews.  However, it's clear that it happened because the Jews as a whole had forsaken the Lord and the Lord brought judgment upon them.  This is God's judgment on them for their idolatry. Three great quotes from Andrew Wommack's study sum up the final verses of this psalm: "Those who conquered Jerusalem completely destroyed all the beautiful carvings. What a shame that it was the Jews who caused all this to happen by their forsaking God. This is similar to people today whose lives are ruined and they blame God. God didn’t destroy their lives; they did it to themselves." "They hadn’t listened to the prophets the Lord had sent who had warned them of this coming judgment. But here, after they had sealed their fate, they were ready to listen. That’s the way it usually is. When people fail after ignoring God’s instructions, they suddenly become all ears and can’t understand why they aren’t hearing from the Lord. They are just reaping what they have sown." "Asaph was pleading with the Lord on the basis of His love for His people to stop this judgment. Because of God’s great love, He didn’t give the Jews all the judgment that was due to them, and there was great grace and favor on the Jews even in their exile, as exhibited in Esther being the queen and Daniel and the three Hebrew children being rulers under Nebuchadnezzar."   Psalm 79 There really isn't much difference in these two psalms. Asaph is again pleading with God to look at the destruction of Jerusalem, take pity on HIS people, and then destroy those who were doing such evil.   "This is describing a terrible situation. The nation had been conquered, God’s temple was desecrated, and the city of God had been turned into rubble. How could this happen? It certainly wasn’t because God failed. It was actually the judgment of God upon His people because they had forsaken Him. It was exactly as His Word promised it would be if they turned to other gods." But the best new for us today is that we are instructed in God's Word that we aren’t going to reap God’s judgment as the nation of Israel did here. God placed all of His judgment that we deserve on Jesus, and He will never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).