(4) Broken up.--Comp. 2 Chronicles 32:1. A breach was made in the wall with battering-rams, such as are depicted in the Assyrian sculptures. The Chaldaeans forced their entry on the north side of the city, i.e., they took the Lower City (2 Kings 22:14). This is clear from Jeremiah 39:3, where it is said that, after effecting an entrance, their generals proceeded to assault "the middle gate," i.e., the gate in the north wall of Zion, which separated the upper from the lower city. (See also 2 Kings 14:13.)
All the men of war fled.--The Hebrew here is defective, for it wants a verb, and mention of the king is implied by what follows. (See Jeremiah 39:4; Jeremiah 52:7.) A comparison of these parallels suggests the reading: "And Zedekiah king of Judah and all the men of war fled, and went out of the city by night," &c.
By the way of the gate between (the) two walls which is (was) by the king's garden.--This gate lay at the south end of the Tyrop?on, i.e., the glen between Ophel and Zion; and is the same as "the Gate of the Fountain" (Nehemiah 3:15). The two walls were necessary for the protection of the Pool of Siloam and the water supply; besides which the point was naturally weak for purposes of defence. Whether "the king's garden" was within or without the double wall is not clear, probably the latter, as Thenius supposes.
Now the Chaldees . . . round about.--An indication that even by this route the king and his warriors had to break through the enemy's lines, as the city was completely invested. (Corap. Ezekiel 12:12.)
And the king went.-- Some MSS. and the Syriac, and they went. (So Jeremiah 52:7; a correction, after the mention of the king had fallen out of the text.)
Verse 4. - And the city was broken up; rather, brown into; i.e. a breach was made in the walls. Probably the breach was on the north side of the city, where the ground is nearly level (see Ezekiel 9:2). According to Josephus ('Ant. Jud.,' 10:8. § 2), the enemy entered through the breach about midnight. And all the men of war - i.e., all the soldiers who formed the garrison - fled by night by the way of the gate between two walls; rather, between the two walls, as in Jeremiah 52:7. As the enemy broke in on the north, the king and garrison quitted the city on the south by a gate which opened into the Tyropoeon valley, between the two walls that guarded the town on either side of it. Which is by the king's garden. The royal gardens were situated near the Pool of Siloam, at the mouth of the Tyrepoeon, and near the junction of the Hinnom with the Kidron valley (see Josephus, 'Ant. Jud.,' 7:11). (Now the Chaldees were against the city round about.) The town, i.e., was guarded on all sides by Chaldean troops, so that Zedekiah and his soldiers must either have attacked the line of guard, and broken through it, or have slipped between two of the blockading pests under cover of the darkness. As no collision is mentioned, either here or in Jeremiah, the latter seems the more probable supposition. And the king went the way toward the plain; literally, and he 'went. The writer supposes that his readers will understand that the king left the city with his troops; and so regards "he went" as sufficiently intelligible. Jeremiah 52:7 has "they went. By "the plain" (literally, "the Arabsh") the valley of the Jordan is intended, and by "the way" to it the ordinary road from Jerusalem to Jericho.
25:1-7 Jerusalem was so fortified, that it could not be taken till famine rendered the besieged unable to resist. In the prophecy and Lamentations of Jeremiah, we find more of this event; here it suffices to say, that the impiety and misery of the besieged were very great. At length the city was taken by storm. The king, his family, and his great men escaped in the night, by secret passages. But those deceive themselves who think to escape God's judgments, as much as those who think to brave them. By what befell Zedekiah, two prophecies, which seemed to contradict each other, were both fulfilled. Jeremiah prophesied that Zedekiah should be brought to Babylon, Jer 32:5; 34:3; Ezekiel, that he should not see Babylon, Eze 12:13. He was brought thither, but his eyes being put out, he did not see it.
And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign,.... Of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah. From hence to the end of 2 Kings 25:7, the account exactly agrees with Jeremiah 52:4.
All the men of war fled.--The Hebrew here is defective, for it wants a verb, and mention of the king is implied by what follows. (See Jeremiah 39:4; Jeremiah 52:7.) A comparison of these parallels suggests the reading: "And Zedekiah king of Judah and all the men of war fled, and went out of the city by night," &c.
By the way of the gate between (the) two walls which is (was) by the king's garden.--This gate lay at the south end of the Tyrop?on, i.e., the glen between Ophel and Zion; and is the same as "the Gate of the Fountain" (Nehemiah 3:15). The two walls were necessary for the protection of the Pool of Siloam and the water supply; besides which the point was naturally weak for purposes of defence. Whether "the king's garden" was within or without the double wall is not clear, probably the latter, as Thenius supposes.
Now the Chaldees . . . round about.--An indication that even by this route the king and his warriors had to break through the enemy's lines, as the city was completely invested. (Corap. Ezekiel 12:12.)
And the king went.-- Some MSS. and the Syriac, and they went. (So Jeremiah 52:7; a correction, after the mention of the king had fallen out of the text.)
The way toward the plain.--The Arabah, or valley of the Jordan (Joshua 11:2; 2 Samuel 2:29).