named Zedekiah) king in the place of Jeconiah his uncle, and suffered him to enjoy all the rights and honours of royalty, on the express condition of his holding them, not as an independent sovereign, but as tributary to the king of Babylon. All this was quite a gratuitous act ; and it lay Zedekiah under the strongest obligations to fulfil towards his benefactor all the engagements that he had entered into, more especially as they were confirmed by a solemn oath. But Zedekiah, unmindful of his oaths, sought the aid of the king of Egypt, that so he might be delivered from what he considered as a disgraceful vassalage, and enjoy a sovereignty independent and uncon- trolled. This treachery is represented by God under the image of a twig, cropt off a lofty cedar by a great eagle, and planted by him in a fruitful field, and growing so as to be highly respectable, though in- ferior in grandeur to the parent stock. This young cedar, dissatisfied with its state, spreads its roots towards another great eagle, (the king of Egypt,) in hopes that through his influence it shall attain a far greater eminence and fertility. But God, whose oath was thereby violated, declared, that the attempt should not prosper, but that, on the contrary, the perjured monarch, who was thus described, should bring ruin, irreparable ruin, on his own heada. From hence it might be supposed, that David's throne should never be re-established ; but God promises, under precisely the same figure that had been em- ployed to represent these things, that he will restore the kingdom of David, partly under Zerubbabel, but principally under the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ; and that, instead of being ever subverted, like the Jewish polity, or the kingdoms of this world, it shall stand for ever and ever, a glorious monument of his power and truth,
a This was preached within about three weeks of Buonaparte being sent to St. Helena. The extraordinary resemblance between his fate and Zedekiah's, as well as of the grounds and occasions of it, cannot fail to strike the attentive reader, who compares them toge- ther. See ver. 18 — 21.
c c 2