Page 74 - The Prophet-statesman a Drama of Daniel

So pressed was the city of Jerusalem on all sides that there was great suffering and
much starvation. In the eleventh year of his reign, Zedekiah, the King of Judah,
attempted to make an escape out of Jerusalem through the Chaldean lines. He was at

first successful, but when his flight and its direction were discovered, he was hotly
pursued by Chaldean cavalry and overtaken in the plains of Jericho and put under arrest.
Nebuchadnezzar made a hasty trip to Hamath in Syria in order to be in closer touch with
the Judean campaign, but still close enough to his own capital to keep in touch with

events there. When the mounted detachments of Nebuzar-Adan captured Zedekiah and
his sons who were accompanying him, the general of the armies ordered that they be
taken north to appear before Nebuchadnezzar in Riblah of Hamath.

When they were brought before the king, Nebuchadnezzar was in a stormy mood.
He execrated Zedekiah for his perfidy and weakness in surrendering to the will of the
Jewish nationalists to start a rebellion, and in not heeding the warnings of the Prophet
Jeremiah. He summarily ordered the execution of Zedekiah’s two sons in his presence

and then ordered that both of his eyes be thrust out with red-hot irons, and that he be
taken to Babylon in chains.

Meantime, the city of Jerusalem had been almost totally destroyed by the

Babylonian armies and the temple of Solomon completely razed. This day in the month
of Tebeth, B.C. 587, marked the beginning of the period of Jerusalem’s desolation.

The excellent Nebuzar-Adan was the unwilling agent of this work of destruction.

In his dealing with Judah and Jerusalem, and in a certain amount of personal contact
with Jeremiah the prophet, he had come to feel even more profoundly than his royal
master, that they were a unique people, but that they had violated their covenant relation
with their great God and that the victory of the Chaldean armies over them was due to

the fact that their Jehovah had withdrawn His hand from helping them.

After the conquest of the city, Nebuzar-Adan sought out the prophet Jeremiah, and
treated him with the greatest consideration, and spoke to him as follows: “The Lord thy

God hath pronounced this evil upon this place. Now the Lord hath brought it, and done
according as He hath said: because ye have sinned against the Lord, and have not
obeyed His voice, therefore this thing is come upon you. And now, behold, I loose thee

this day from the chains which were upon thine hand. If it seem good unto thee to come
with me into Babylon, come; and I will look well unto thee: but if it seem ill hold, all
the land is before thee: whither it seemeth good and convenient for thee to go, thither
go.”

He deported many of the poor of the people to Babylon to be household slaves and
left also a number to till the soil and keep the vineyards. He set up Gedaliah, the son of