In Second Kings, chapter twenty-three, verse twenty-six, despite the moral leadership of Josiah and his spiritual revival and reforms, Judah had declined so far as a nation that deep and lasting national change was no longer possible. Judgment against Judah only postponed the people and the priests who were evil at heart. However, after the death of Josiah, spiritual and moral degeneration occurred rapidly, and God was obliged to destroy the kingdom.
It was too late, not for God to forgive upon repentance but for the nation to repent sincerely and heartily. Sin had become engrained in the national character. Vain were the warnings of Jeremiah, with exhortations to repentance, vain his promises that, if they would turn to God, they would be forgiven and spared. Thirty years of irreligion and idolatry under Manasseh had sapped the national vigor and made true repentance an impossibility. How weak and half-hearted must have been the return to God towards the close of Manasseh’s reign that it should have had no strength to resist Amon, a youth of twenty-two, but should have disappeared wholly on his accession! And how far from sincere must have been the present conformity to the wishes of Josiah, the professed renewal of the covenant, and revival of disused ceremonies.
Jeremiah searched in vain through the streets of Jerusalem to find a man who executed judgment or sought the truth. The people had “a revolting and rebellious heart; they were revolted and gone,” as in Jeremiah five, verse twenty-three. Not only idolatry but recklessness in Jeremiah five, verse one, and injustice and oppression everywhere prevailed as in Jeremiah five, twenty-five through twenty-eight. “From the least to the greatest of them, everyone was given to covetousness” as in Jeremiah six, verse thirteen; even the prophets and the priests “dealt falsely” in Jeremiah six, verse thirteen. The state of things necessarily brought down the Divine judgment, and all that Josiah’s efforts could do was a little to delay it. Wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah because of all the provocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal with his evil doings.