of his land come" (for the empire continued for three lives or successions, until the Babylonian measure of iniquity and oppression was fulfilled in the reign of Belthazar, when the Medes and Persians were to retaliate upon them the hard slavery of Israel); "and then," continues the prophet, "many nations and great Kings shall serve themselves of him," &c. Jer. xxvii. 6,7. that is, they shall enslave his people, in the same manner that he and his two successors enslaved and oppressed other nations: rendering slavery for slavery.
In the same chapter Zedekiah is also mentioned by name as king of Judah (Jer. xxvii. 1 to 3,) several years before he received the name of Zedekiah; so that neither he himself, whose proper name was Mattaniah, nor any other person could possibly know, in the beginning of Jehoiakim's reign, what particular person was then signified by the name of Zedekiah; for even Nebuchadnezzar himself, who afterwards gave him that name, was not king of Babylon when the prophecy was delivered, as I have already remarked. But after this foreign conqueror had really appointed a king of Judah, and given him the name of Zedekiah, the name foretold by the prophet, such an extraordinary circumstance would add unquestionable authority to the truth of Jeremiah's mission, and would render Zedekiah and his courtiers inexcusable, as they really were, for rejecting the earnest and repeated remonstrances of that prophet.
This timely prediction, therefore, in the reign of Jehoiakim, with the internal proofs which it contained, concerning the necessity of Zedekiah's submission to the Babylonian yoke, seems to have been absolutely necessary to enable the prophet to confute the many false prophets, diviners, dreamers, &c. (see 9th verse) who were, afterward, in Zedekiah's reign, publicly employed to excite the people to shake off the Babylonian yoke.
The prophet was also forewarned in the beginning of Jehoiakim's reign, as the same chapter testifies, that the Kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Zidon would send messengers to a "Zedekiah king of Judah; all which kings,
