In Zedekiah's reign Judah bottomed out spiritually. The king refused to humble himself before either Yahweh or Nebuchadnezzar even though God repeatedly sent messages and messengers urging him to do so. Hardness of heart now characterized the Davidic king as it had characterized the Pharaoh of the Exodus. God humbled this king against his will as He had previously humbled that Pharaoh.
The last verses of this section are very sermonic (vv. 14-21). Yet the Chronicler did not set them off as a sermon but caused them to flow out of what he had said about Zedekiah. The writer gave reasons for the conquest of Jerusalem and the exile of the Israelites. The burning of the temple symbolized the end of God's glory and presence among His people in the land that He had given them to occupy.
"What constitutes the greatest evil for the Chronicler--and it is a theme that is taken up elsewhere in the Bible--is not wrongdoing in and of itself, but wrongdoing in defiance of the clear knowledge of what is right (Mark 12:1-2; Luke 16:31; Isa. 1:2f.)."103
"The real tragedy of the exile was not the removal of the people nor even the utter destruction of the city and the temple. It was the departure of their God from their midst, an absence symbolized in one of Ezekiel's visions by the movement of the Shekinah from the temple to the summit of the Mount of Olives (Ezek. 11:23)."104
God had descended on the temple in a cloud. Now He left it in smoke. Had the Chronicler ended here there would have been little hope for the future. He justified God's treatment of His vice-regent amply. The returned exiles could not accuse Yahweh of being unfair or impatient. Rather His grace stands out, though it had now run out.
"The fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. meant the loss of the three major mainstays of Israelite life: temple, monarchy, and land."105
