Today’s text describes an end in which God’s mercy leads towards a new beginning.

2 Chronicles 36 deals quickly with the last four kings of Judah: Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah, an undistinguished series of rulers who preside over the final collapse of Judah. During their reigns, Judah comes under Egyptian and then Babylonian domination. The end comes when Zedekiah’s foolish rebellion against Babylon leads to the capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple.

Zedekiah does great evil, refusing to listen to the prophet Jeremiah’s warnings and hardening his heart against God (2 Chronicles 36:12–13). Priests and people commit ever greater acts of unfaithfulness, defiling the temple by their practices. God is always willing to restore His people when they repent (7:14). He sends prophets to warn His people, but they are ignored and mocked (36:14–16).

Judgment falls (vv. 17–20). God sends the king of Babylon, and many in Jerusalem are killed. The temple is plundered and then burned, along with much else. Jerusalem’s walls are demolished, and those who survive are taken into exile in Babylon.

The temple and temple worship have been major themes throughout Chronicles. In this last chapter, the Chronicler describes the plunder (vv. 7, 10) and final destruction of Solomon’s temple (vv. 18–19).

This account of Judah’s final collapse is much shorter than that in 2 Kings 24–25. It is forceful and sermon-like at points, but also strikingly brief. No sooner has the Chronicler told us of the exile of the people to Babylon, than he goes on to describe how the exile came to an end: the exiles were slaves in Babylon “until the kingdom of Persia came to power” (2 Chronicles 36:20).

The exile leads to a new beginning. The people go into exile, but not forever. The exile allows the land to “enjoy its sabbath rests”, but it does not lie desolate for ever (v. 21). This is as foretold in Leviticus 26:34–45. Jeremiah, too, prophesied exile, but stated that it would be limited to 70 years (Jeremiah 29:10–14); Cyrus’ decree permitting the exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple fulfils that prophecy (2 Chronicles 36:22–23). Everything happens in accordance with “the word of the Lord”.

The Chronicler’s post-exilic contemporaries could reflect that the reason they were now back in the land was that God, unlike His often faithless people, keeps His promises.

What of the future? The Chronicler says very little about his own day, let alone the future, but his last words remind us that fresh starts are always possible with God: “Any of his people among you may go up, and may the Lord their God be with them” (v. 23). That was a word for the Chronicler’s audience, encouraging them to continue the work of resettling and rebuilding.

And it is a word that we, who know how God’s promise to David was fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ, can confidently take to heart (Romans 1:3–6; 1 Corinthians 15:58).

See also 2 Kings 23:31–25:30.