6 Then the chiefs of Israel and the king made themselves low and said, The Lord is upright.
Then Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron, and said to them, I have done evil this time: the Lord is upright, and I and my people are sinners.
So the Lord has been watching over this evil and has made it come on us: for the Lord our God is upright in all his acts which he has done, and we have not given ear to his voice.
Make yourselves low in the eyes of the Lord and you will be lifted up by him.
But he gives more grace. So that the Writings say, God is against the men of pride, but he gives grace to those who make themselves low before him.
I say to you, This man went back to his house with God's approval, and not the other: for everyone who makes himself high will be made low and whoever makes himself low will be made high.
I will go back to my place till they are made waste; in their trouble they will go after me early and will make search for me.
The Lord is upright; for I have gone against his orders: give ear, now, all you peoples, and see my pain, my virgins and my young men have gone away as prisoners.
Even to this day their hearts are not broken, and they have no fear, and have not gone in the way of my law or of my rules which I gave to you and to your fathers.
Then Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh, and said to him, This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: How long will you be lifted up in your pride before me? let my people go so that they may give me worship.
The Lord is true: the cords of the evil-doers are broken in two.
He makes a song, saying, I did wrong, turning from the straight way, but he did not give me the reward of my sin.
He did not make himself low before the Lord, as his father Manasseh had done, but went on sinning more and more.
And the prayer which he made to God, and how God gave him an answer, and all his sin and his wrongdoing, and the places where he made high places and put up pillars of wood and images, before he put away his pride, are recorded in the history of the seers.
And crying out to the Lord his God in his trouble, he made himself low before the God of his fathers,
But then, Hezekiah, in sorrow for what he had done, put away his pride; and he and all Jerusalem made themselves low, so that the wrath of the Lord did not come on them in Hezekiah's life-time.
If there is no food in the land, or if there is disease, or if the fruits of the earth are damaged through heat or water, locust or worm; if their towns are shut in by their attackers; whatever trouble, whatever disease there may be: Whatever prayer or request for your grace is made by any man, or by all your people Israel, whatever his trouble may be, whose hands are stretched out to this house: Give ear in heaven your living-place, acting in mercy; and give to every man whose secret heart is open to you, the reward of all his ways; for you, and you only, have knowledge of the hearts of all the children of men:
And Adoni-zedek said, Seventy kings, whose thumbs and great toes had been cut off, got broken meat under my table: as I have done, so has God done to me in full. And they took him to Jerusalem, and he came to his end there.
And they will have grief for their sins and for the sins of their fathers, when their hearts were untrue to me, and they went against me; So that I went against them and sent them away into the land of their haters: if then the pride of their hearts is broken and they take the punishment of their sins,
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on 2 Chronicles 12
Commentary on 2 Chronicles 12 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 12
This chapter gives us a more full account of the reign of Rehoboam than we had before in Kings and it is a very melancholy account. Methinks we are in the book of Judges again; for,
2Ch 12:1-12
Israel was very much disgraced and weakened by being divided into two kingdoms; yet the kingdom of Judah, having both the temple and the royal city, both the house of David and the house of Aaron, might have done very well if they had continued in the way of their duty; but here we have all out of order there.
2Ch 12:13-16
The story of Rehoboam's reign is here concluded, much as the story of the other reigns concludes. Two things especially are observable here:-