Babylonis. (continued)
JOHN CALVIN
been willing to accept a foreigner. He might indeed have set one of his own governors over the whole country; and he might also have made a king of one of the chief men of the land, but he saw that anything of this kind would have been greatly disliked.
He therefore deemed it enough to take away Jeconiah, and to put in his place one who had not much power nor much wealth, and who was to be his tributary, as the case was with Zedekiah. But in course of time Zedekiah increased in power, so that he was at peace in his own kingdom. We also know that he was set over neighboring countries, as Nebuchadnezzar thought it advantageous to bind him to himself by favors. This fourth year then might well be deemed the beginning of his reign, for during three years things were so disturbed, that he possessed no authority, and hardly dared to ascend the throne. This then is the most probable opinion. 193
He says afterwards, that Hananiah spoke to him in the presence of the priests and of the whole people 194 Hananiah ought at least to have been touched and moved when he heard Jeremiah speaking, he himself had no proof of his own call; nay, he was an impostor, and he knew that he did nothing but deceive the people, and yet he audaciously persisted in his object, and, as it were, avowedly obtruded himself that he might contend with the Prophet, as though he carried on war with God. He said, Broken is the yoke of the king of Babylon, that is, the tyranny by which he has oppressed the people shall be shortly broken. But he alluded to the yoke which Jeremiah had put on, as we shall presently see. The commencement of his prophecy was, that there was no reason for the Jews to dread the present power of the king of Babylon, for God would soon overthrow him. They could not have entertained hope of restoration, or of a better condition, until that monarchy was trodden under foot; for as long as the king of Babylon bore rule, there was no hope that he would remit the tribute, and restore to the Jews the vessels of the Temple. Hananiah then began with this, that God would break the power of the king of Babylon, so that he would be constrained, willing or unwilling, to let the people free, or that the people would with impunity extricate themselves from the grasp of his power. He then adds, ---
Jeremiah 28:3
3. Within two full years will I bring again into this place the vessels of the LORD'S house, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away from this place, and carried
193Gataker mentions various attempted solutions of this difficulty, the one stated here; another, that eleven years, the extent of his reign, being divided into three parts, the three first and the beginning of the fourth might be deemed the beginning of his reign; and a third, which he prefers, that the fourth year refers not to Zedekiah, but to the Sabbatical year, it was the fourth in that cycle; and it appears that according to chronologers the destruction of Jerusalem happened on a Sabbatical year, the fourth in the eighteenth jubilee. In this case the first year of Zedekiah being the fourth after a Sabbath-year, his eleventh would correspond with the next period of their kind, allowance being made as to the commencement of the year in which he began to reign. Blayney adopts the second solution. Perhaps it would be best to take "beginning," as Scott does, as meaning the early or former part of his reign.
194Hananiah was, as some think, a priest, for Gibeon in the tribe of Benjamin was one of the cities allotted to the priests; he was, no doubt, by profession, a prophet, he is so called throughout by Jeremiah. There was among the Jews, from early times, an order of men called prophets; they were not all endued with the gift of prophecy, but were trained up in seminaries for the purpose, to be the interpreters of the law and teachers of the people. See 1 Samuel 19:20; 2 Kings 2:3; 6:1. Hananiah was probably a prophet of this kind, and was on this account called a prophet by Jeremiah; but he appears here in another character, as a prophet endued with the spirit of prophecy. The scribes in the New Testament seem to have been the teaching prophets of the Old.