James Nisbet's Church Pulpit Commentary
Jeremiah 39:7
NON-ACCEPTANCE OF CHASTISEMENT
‘Moreover he put out Zedekiah’s eyes.’
What are the speakings of this ‘Moreover’ to us? It says to us—
I. Reject not limited chastisement or trial, for you know not how wide God may remove those bounds when it comes upon you as something rejected by you, but inflicted, whether you will or no, by Him.
II. Be sure that God will carry out His own way.—He has never yet been conquered by man.
III. If we reject what God thus ordains, we are laying up for ourselves a long period of sad thought, peopled with sad memories.—Zedekiah could now do nothing but think sadly over the past; it may be over the terrible sights which he had last seen. Acceptance would have saved this terrible experience.
IV. God has terrible reserves of chastening dealings.—He can replace ‘yokes of wood’ (chapter 28) with ‘yokes of iron.’ That which the palmer worm has left, the locust will devour.
V. We must leave it to God to take care of us, when leading us either into discipline or chastisement.—This is generally one of the very last thoughts which would occur to us in such circumstances.
—Rev. P. B. Power.
Illustration
‘What a doom! The sons of the king were killed before his eyes, and it was the last sight that the king saw on earth. Zedekiah was blinded, and loaded with chains, and carried away to Babylon, and there he remained in prison till he died. There is a Jewish tradition that he was set to work in a mill. The king, in chains, toiled with the common slave. It makes us recall the dark lot of Samson, and read the glorious lines of Milton on it—
“Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves.
Yet stay, let me not rashly call in doubt
Divine prediction; what if all foretold
Had been fulfilled but through my own default?” ’