2 Kings 23:26 - Exposition

Notwithstanding the Lord turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath. It was too late, not for God to forgive upon repentance, but for the nation to repent sincerely and heartily. Sin had become engrained in the national character. Vain were the warnings of Jeremiah, vain were his exhortations to repentance ( Jeremiah 3:12-14 , Jeremiah 3:22 ; Jeremiah 4:1-8 ; Jeremiah 7:3-7 , etc.), vain his promises that, if they would turn to God, they would be forgiven and spared. Thirty years of irreligion and idolatry under Manasseh had sapped the national vigor, and made true repentance an impossibility. How weak and half-hearted must have been the return to God towards the close of Manasseh's reign, that it should have had no strength to resist Amon, a youth of twenty-two, but should have disappeared wholly on his accession! And how far from sincere must have been the present conformity to the wishes of Josiah, the professed renewal of the covenant (verse 3), and revival of disused ceremonies (verses 21-23)! Jeremiah searched in vain through the streets of Jerusalem to find a man that executed judgment, or sought the truth ( Jeremiah 5:1 ). The people had "a revolting and rebellious heart; they were revolted and gone" ( Jeremiah 5:23 ). Not only idolatry, but profligacy ( Jeremiah 5:1 ) and injustice and oppression everywhere prevailed ( Jeremiah 5:25-28 ). "From the least to the greatest of them, every one was given to covetousness" ( Jeremiah 6:13 ); even the prophets and the priests "dealt falsely" ( Jeremiah 6:13 ), The state of things was one which necessarily brought down the Divine judgment, and all that Josiah's efforts could do was a little to delay it. Wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal. Manasseh's provocations lived in their consequences. God's judgment upon Israel was not mere vengeance for the sins that Manasseh had committed, or even for the multitudinous iniquities into which he had led the nation ( 2 Kings 21:9 ). It was punishment rendered necessary by the actual condition of the nation—the condition whereto it had been reduced by Manasseh's evil doings.