Setting Up to Knock Down
The great English statesman, John Bright, once playfully suggested that the appointment of a certain gentleman to the Chief Secretaryship of Ireland was intended as a punishment to that country for some of its offences. What was thus said half in jest a sacred writer states here in all seriousness: “That such a prince as Zedekiah was raised to the throne was itself a token of divine displeasure, for his character was such as to hasten the final catastrophe,”—that which came to pass was “through the anger of the Lord.”