His original name had been Maffaniah, which was changed to Zedekiah by Nebuchadnezzar when he car- ried off his nephew Jehoiachin to Babylon, and left him on the throne of Jerusalem. Zedekiah was but twenty- one years old when he was thus placed in charge of an impoverished kingdom, and a city which, though still strong in its natural and artificial impregnability, was bereft of well-nigh all its defenders. But Jerusalem might have remained the head of the Babylonian prov- ince of Judah, and the Temple of Jehovah continued standing, had Zedekiah possessed wisdom and firmness enough to remain true to his allegiance to Babylon. This, however, he could not do (Jer. xxxviii, 5). His history is contained in the short sketch of the events of his reign given in 2 Kings xxiv, 17-xxv, 7, and, with some trifling variations, in Jer. xxxix, 1-7 ; Iii, 1-11, to- gether with the still shorter summary in 2 Chron. xxxvi, 10, etc. ; and also in Jer. xxi,*cxiv, xxvii, xxviii, xxix, xxxii, xxxiii, xxxiv, xxxvii, xxxviii (being the chap- ters containing the prophecies delivered bj' this prophet during this reign, and his relation of various events more or less affecting Zedekiah), and Ezek. xvi, 11-21. To, these it is important to add the narrative of Josephus (^«^ X, 7, 1-8, 2), which is partly constructed by com- parison of the documents enumerated above, but also seems to contain ijiformation derived from other and independent sources. From these it is evident that Zedekiah was a man not so much bad at heart as weak in will. He was one of those unfortunate characters, frequent in history, like Charles I of England and Louis XYI of France, who find themselves at tlie head of af- fairs 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. The princes of his court, as he himself pathetically ad- mits in his interview with Jeremiah, described in ch. xxxviii, had him completelj' under their influence. "Against them," he complains, "it is not the king that can do anything." He was thus driven to disregard the counsels of the prophet, which, as the event proved, were perfectly sound ; and he who might have kept the fragments of the kingdom of Judah together, and main- tained for some generations longer the worship of Je- hovah, brought final ruin on his country, destruction on the Temple, death to his family, and a cruel torment and miserable captivity on himself.
It is evident from Jer. xxvii (in ver. 1 Jehoiakim's name is a copyist's error for that of Zedekiah) and
xxviii (apparently the earliest prophecies delivered during this reign) that the earlier portion of Zedeki- ah's reign was marked by an agitation throughout the whole of Syria against the Babylonian yoke. Jerusa- lem seems to have taken the lead, since in the fourtli year of Zedekiah's reign we find ambassadors from all the neighboring kingdoms — Tyre, Sidon, Edom, and Moab — at his court, to consult as to the steps to be taken. This happened either during the king's ab- sence or immediately after his return from Babylon, whither he had gone on some errand, the nature of which is not named, but whicli may have been an attempt to blind the eyes of Nebuchadnezzar to his contemplated revolt (Jer. li, 59). The project was attacked by Jere- miah with the strongest statement of the folh' of such a course — a statement corroborated by the very material fact that a man of Jerusalem named llananiah, who had opposed him with a declaration in the name of Jehovah, that the spoils of the Temple should be restored within two years, had died; in accordance with Jeremiah's pre- diction, within -two months of its delivery. This, and perhaps also the impossibility of any real alliance be- tween Judah and the surrounding nations, seems to have put a stop, for the time, to the anti-Babylonian movement. On a man of Zedekiah's temperament the sudden death of Hananiah must have produced a strong impression ; and we may without improbability accept this as the time at which he procured to be made in silver a set of the vessels of the Temple to replace the golden plate carried off with his predecessor by Nebu- chadnezzar (Bar. i, 8).
The first act of overt rebellion of which any record survives was the formation of an alliance with Egj-pt, of itself equivalent to a declaration of enmity with Bab- ylon. In fact, according to the statement of Chron- icles and Ezekiel, with the expansion of Josephus, it was in direct contravention of the oath of allegiance in the name of Elohim by which Zedekiah was bound by Nebuchadnezzar — namely, that he would keep the kingdom for Nebuchadnezzar, make no innovation, and enter into no league with Egypt (Ezek. xvii, 13; 2 Chron. xxxvi, 13; Joseph. Ant. x, 7, 1). As a nat- ural consequence, it brought on Jerusalem an immedi- ate invasion of the Chaldfeans. The mention of this event in the Bible, though sure, is extremely slight, and occurs only in Jer. xxxiv, 21; xxxvii, 5-11, and Ezek. xvii, 15-20; but Josephus (x, 7, 3) relates it more fully, and gives (probably by conjecture) the date of its occurrence as the eighth year of Zedekiah. Prob- ably, also, the denunciations of an Egyptian alliance contained in Jer. ii, 18, 36, have reference to the same time. It appears that Nebuchadnezzar, being made aware of Zedekiah's defection, either by the non-pay- ment of the tribute or by other means, at once sent an army to ravage Judtea. This was done, and the whole country was reduced, except Jerusalem and two strong places in the western plain, Lachish and Aze- kah, which still held out (Jer. xxxiv, 7). In the panic which followed the appearance of the Chaldasans, Zed- ekiah succeeded in inducing the princes and other in- habitants of Jerusalem to abolish the odious custom which prevailed of enslaving their coiuitrymen. A sol- emn rite (ver. 18), recalling in its form that in which the original covenant of the nation had been made with Abram (Gen. xv, 9, etc.), was performed in the Temple (Jer. xxxiv, 15), and a crowd of Israelites of both sexes found themselves released from slavery.