John Gill Commentary Jeremiah 52

Zedekiah [was] one and twenty years old when he began to reign, &c.] Whose name was Mattaniah; and who was set on the throne by the king of Babylon, in the room of his brother's son Jehoiachin, (2 Kings 24:17 2 Kings 24:18); and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; so that he was thirty two years of age when he was taken and carried captive into Babylon: and his mother's name [was] Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah; see (2 Kings 24:18).

And he did [that which was] evil in the eyes of the Lord Though we do not read of any idolatry he was guilty of; yet he was disobedient to the word of the Lord, and did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet of the Lord, that spoke in his name; and particularly he rebelled against the king of Babylon, and violated the oath he made to him, (2 Chronicles 36:12 2 Chronicles 36:13) ;

according to all that Jehoiakim had done an elder brother of his, who reigned after Josiah, and before Jehoiachin.

For through the anger of the Lord it came to pass in Jerusalem
and Judah
Or, "besides the anger of the Lord [that] was in", or "against Jerusalem and Judah" ^F14 ; for their many sins and transgressions committed against him: till he has cast them out from his presence ;
out of the land of Judea; out of Jerusalem, and the temple, where were the symbols of his presence; so the Targum, ``till he removed them from the land of the house of his Shechinah;'' or majesty.

that Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon :
acted a very perfidious part, and broke a solemn covenant made with him by an oath, which was highly displeasing to God, and resented by him; the oath being made in his name, and by one that professed to worship him: this was an additional sin to those of the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem, which provoked the Lord to anger. According to our version the sense is, that because of the anger of the Lord for the sins of the Jews, God suffered Zedekiah to rebel against the king of Babylon, that so he might be provoked to come against them, and take vengeance on them; or for his former sins he suffered him to fall into this, to his own and his people's ruin.

FOOTNOTES:

• F14: (hwhy Pa le yk) "nam praeter iram Jehovae, quae fuit contra Hierosolymam", Schmidt.

And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign Of Zedekiah's reign: in the tenth month, in the tenth [day] of the month ; the month Tebet, which answers to part of December and part of January; hence the fast of the tenth month, on account of the siege of Jerusalem, (Zechariah 8:19) ; [that] Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon came, he, and all his army , against Jerusalem ;

from which it appears that he came in person with his army at first to Jerusalem; but, during the siege, or some part of it, retired to Riblah; perhaps upon the news of the king of Egypt's coming to the assistance of the Jews:

and pitched against it ; or encamped against it: and built forts against it round about ; wooden towers, as Jarchi and Kimchi explain it; from which they could shoot their arrows and cast their stones.

So the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of King
Zedekiah .
] The siege continued about eighteen months; from the tenth day of the tenth month, in the ninth of Zedekiah's reign, to the ninth day of the fourth month, in the eleventh year of his reign; as follows: