SINS OF THE RULING CLASSES WHICH BROUGHT DOWN THE JUDGMENT OF GOD (2Chronicles 36:14-16). (Comp. with this passage 2Kings 17:7-23.)

(14) The chiefs.--The princes.

Transgressed very much.--Committed manifold unfaithfulness.

After all the abominations . . .--See Ezekiel 8:5-18; where "the princes of the priests and the people" are specially singled out in 2Chronicles 36:11; 2Chronicles 36:16. The twenty-five men of the latter verse are the High Priest and the heads of the twenty-four courses of priests. (Comp. also Jeremiah 32:32, sea).

His Messengers.--The prophets (2Kings 17:13).

Verse 14. - This, with the following three verses, may be regarded as the formal and final indictment of the people of Judah, and may be compared with that of Israel (2 Kings 17:6-23). All the chief of the priests (see 1 Chronicles 24:1, 3-19). The heads of the twenty-four courses there spoken of, with the high priest added, sum up the twenty-five men of Ezekiel 8:16, the entire of which chapter may well be read with the present history, and its description of the culminating pitch of wickedness of king, priests, and people.

36:1-21 The ruin of Judah and Jerusalem came on by degrees. The methods God takes to call back sinners by his word, by ministers, by conscience, by providences, are all instances of his compassion toward them, and his unwillingness that any should perish. See here what woful havoc sin makes, and, as we value the comfort and continuance of our earthly blessings, let us keep that worm from the root of them. They had many times ploughed and sowed their land in the seventh year, when it should have rested, and now it lay unploughed and unsown for ten times seven years. God will be no loser in his glory at last, by the disobedience of men. If they refused to let the land rest, God would make it rest. What place, O God, shall thy justice spare, if Jerusalem has perished? If that delight of thine were cut off for wickedness, let us not be high-minded, but fear.Moreover, the chief of the priests, and of the people, transgressed very much after all the abominations of the Heathens,.... The priests, and even the chief of them, who should have instructed the people in the duties of religion, and retained them in the pure worship of God, these were the ringleaders of idolatry, who led the people to commit all the idolatries of the Heathens round about them; and of the people, all ranks and degrees of them were corrupted with them; this was their case in several of the preceding reigns, and now a little before the destruction of them:

and polluted the house of the Lord, which he had hallowed in Jerusalem; the temple dedicated to his worship there; this they defiled, by setting up idols in it.