and thereby occasioned a further command respecting those kings, viz. that the prophet should "make for them yokes of iron (Jer. xxviii. 13,)" it seems most probable that the wooden yokes first ordered had not then been sent to them; and, consequently, that the messengers of those kings had not as yet arrived at Jerusalem, for, un-doubtedly, the prophet would obey the divine command as soon as he had the proper opportunity of doirg so; and as Zedekiah went to Babylon in the same year (see Jer. li. 59,) it is likely the messengers did not arrive, nor he rebel, till the year following. Nevertheless, in that year (the fourth of Zedekiah) the prophet declared the message to Zedekiah himself, which he had before been charged to send to the other kings:—"I spake also" (says he in ch. xxvii. ver. 12,) "to Zedekiah king of Judah according to all these words" (that is, "according to all these words" which precede in the same chapter respecting the yokes, and which had been revealed in the reign of Jehoiakim) "saying, bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him, and his people, and live. Why will ye die, thou, and thy people, by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, as the Lord hath spoken against the nation that will not serve the king of Babylon?" &c. See ver. 12 and 13. The Almighty had laid upon all the other nations of Palestine and Syria the same fatal necessity, either to submit to a foreign yoke, or die! So that we have here a very remarkable example of God's vengeance and retribution upon several wicked and corrupt nations which regarded not the eternal laws of God!—They must either serve the king of Babylon, or be destroyed;—there was no alternative!—be destroyed "by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, as the Lord hath spoken" (compare the 13th verse with the 8th) "until I have consumed them by his hand," that is by the hand of the Babylonian conqueror, the appointed instrument of God's temporal vengeance:—and the God of armies (יהוה צבאוה) hath in all ages raised up some powerful scourges of this kind to punish wicked and ungrateful nations with fire and sword, and
