Welcome to part two of Dr. S. Michael Wilcox, Jeremiah chapters 30 through 36 and the Book of Lamentations.

You mentioned Zedekaya. Could you tell our audience who Zedekaya is and why they've probably heard that name before?

Yeah, let's make that Book of Mormon connection there.

Okay, yeah, Zedekaya, and then I'll do another connection for you in the Book of Mormon.

Zedekaya is the name we know. Number one, it's fairly easy to pronounce in terms of kings of Judah because he's the king when Lehigh is prophesined.

So the Book of Mormon begins in Jeremiah.

So the world of Jeremiah is Lehigh's world, it's Lament of Lemiels world, it's Nephi and Sam's world. So it's Saraya.

There is again, we go to the politics. Jeremiah wasn't treated very well. If we just talk about his life, he's put in the stocks. We already know that you talked about that last time in chapters 11 and 12 of Jeremiah.

There's a plot to assassinate him because politically he's not giving the message the king and the court want to hear.

Now the king at the time is a man named Jehovah Keem with a K. He is not too fond of Jeremiah. In 11 and 12, there's a plot against his life.

And he goes to the Lord complaining to buy in the Lord says, well, Fervent Sakes, if you can't handle this, let me tell you something even worse, your own family is plotting against you.

It's kind of hard for him. He's accused of treason in chapter 37. He's walking out of Jerusalem because nobody's listening to him. So he walks out of Jerusalem, he accused him of treason and throw him in a dungeon.

And I do want to look at that. I don't know if we want to do it now when he's in the dungeon. So Jehovah Keem doesn't listen to Jeremiah and the Babylonians come the first time and they killed Jehovah Keem and throw him his body out of the walls of Jerusalem.

And they pick his son to be the new ruler, kind of a puppet king. And the son's name is Jehovah Keem, CHI-M. And then the king of Babylon says, oh my gosh, I killed his father and maybe he'll rebel against me. Maybe that's not a good idea. I better go back and put somebody else in charge.

And so they go back and Jehovah Keem instead of fighting doesn't want his people. He's a good man doesn't want his people to be destroyed.

So he opens the gates of Jerusalem, let's the Babylonians in and he's taken into captivity with his mother and now the Babylonians choose another member of the royal family, name Zedekiah to be the ruler. So Zedek, he's 21. He's a young man.

He is really a puppet of the Babylonians. He's supposed to rule for them. He's a weak person. He vacillates between Jeremiah's words and the false prophets words. And I think we ought to do something about the false prophets here for just a second.

He vacillates between the two of them. Chapter 37 verse 1, kings Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, reigned instead of Joachim.

Yeah, you'll see that. And this is in Josephus. It's just not in Jeremiah. Josephus makes a little planar. If you read the story of Jeremiah in Josephus and Zedekiah in Jehovah Keem, this whole period, Ezekiel is prophesying at the same time Jeremiah is in

Babylon. He's prophesying. He's been taken captive. He's a young man when he goes. And he prophesies that Zedekiah will never see Babylon. Jeremiah prophesies that Zedekiah will be taken captive into Babylon.

He tells that to him face up. Sometimes Zedekiah secretly asks Jeremiah for counsel because he's afraid of the other powers that be.

Politics always does that. And Zedekiah goes to Jeremiah and says, tell me the truth. And he says, if you don't submit to the Babylonians, they're going to take you captive.

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