IN this chapter, history is stated. The great eagle of verse 3 was Nebuchadnezzar, head of the Babylonian empire. The description given carries with it the thought of great power and glory (great wings, long wings or pinions, rich in many colors). (See Isaiah 13:19), He came to Lebanon and took the highest branch of the cedar.
Lebanon’s cedars express, in Scripture, the loftiness of man, and here the house of David, the royal line of Judah, is meant, subjected however (because of their departure from God) to the Gentile power. By the “highest branch” is meant Jehoiachin ({vi 10128-10136}2 Kings 21:8-16), the young man who succeeded to the throne of Judah on the death of his father Jehoiakim, but was quickly carried away to Babylon.
Verses 5 and 6 refer to Nebuchadnezzar’s making Zedekiah (Jehoiakim’s brother, and uncle of Jehoiachin) king of Judah, giving him rule at Jerusalem over what remained of the people. At that time, or earlier still, when Jehoiakim became king ({vi 19598-19612}Jeremiah 27:1-15) God sent word through Jeremiah to the kings of Judah and the neighboring countries that they should acknowledge Nebuchadnezzar’s overlordship. For some years Zedekiah yielded tribute to the ruler of Babylon, but afterward he rebelled (2 Chronicles 36:13), to his own utter undoing.
There was another great eagle with great wings it was Egypt — and the vine of verse 6 (Zedekiah) bent her roots toward him, shot forth her branches tard him. Zedekiah was courting the favor of the Egyptians, in order that he might break the yoke of Babylon, to whose king he had sworn to be faithful, by an oath in the name of Jehovah. Neither his oath nor the word of God to him, directing him to be subject to Nebuchadnezzar, weighed very much in Zedekiah’s mind. God, however, is not mocked, and Zedekiah, in a few years reaped as he had sown. Verses 9 and 10 foretell the end of his kingdom, which might have cautioned and been blessed, had he feared God and kept covenant with Nebuchadnezzar (verse 8).
In verse 12, for “is come”, read “came.” Verses 13 to 15 add to what is told elsewhere concerning the cause of Nebuchadnezzar’s warring against Jerusalem ({vi 119442;119733;119803}Jeremiah 21, 32, 34, and 39). It was the breaking of a promise, sworn to in the name of Jehovah the God of Israel, that so angered the king of Babylon that he determined to put an end to Jerusalem, destroying the city, and that he put out the eyes of his unfaithful servant Zedekiah after slaughtering his sons.
It was the judgment of God, through Nebuchadnezzar as its instrument, which fell upon this son of David (verses 16-21). Pharaoh might sally forth with a mighty army (verse 17, and Jeremiah 37:5) to help Zedekiah, but a mightier Power than Pharaoh’s or Babylon’s had decreed the outcome of this war. God’s oath he had despised; God’s covenant he had broken; for the king of Judah had promised the idolater of Babylon in the name of his God, and Nebuchadnezzar naturally put confidence in such a promise. Judgment must therefore begin at the house of God, for He will be sanctified in all that come nigh Him.
Verses 22 to 24 again bring forward the bright, the blessed prospect that will yet be Israel’s. The “highest branch of the high cedar” is none other than the Messiah Himself, rightfully ruling over a clean-hearted, renewed Israel, The high tree of man’s sinful pride will have been brought down, and the humble will be exalted; the “green tree” under which the power of Satan had flourished will be gone, and the “dry tree”, the desolate, will flourish in that day.
“I Jehovah have spoken and will do it” (N.T.) fitly closes the promiseful last verses of the chapter.
ML-09/29/1935