God placed the judgment and correction of His people before the honor of His name. The defeat and destruction of His people would sacrifice His reputation in the eyes of His people and the people of every nation. He judged them anyway. That is no different than the apparent defeat when God’s Son hung on the cross, and when He died a criminal’s death and was buried to end all hope of salvation through Him. It only looked like defeat.
King Zedekiah didn’t believe that God would judge him even after Jeremiah explicitly told him that God would indeed judge him and the entire nation. He thought that because he had escaped deportation two earlier times, he was favored enough to avoid judgment completely. His fate seems horrible: the last thing he saw before the Babylonians put his eyes out was his loved ones slaughtered. You can bet they didn’t use anything to dull the pain when they put his eyes out, either. He marched to Babylon in shackles with those wounds fresh. He had been mistaken about knowing God’s mind. He was ridiculously obtuse in his refusal to believe; can you believe his asking Jeremiah to pray to God on his behalf? Do you know anyone so obtuse about the truth of God’s word? Do you know anyone who is so convinced that he knows God’s mind that he believes God won’t do what He says He will do? Such people won’t escape judgment, any more than Zedekiah did.
Others believed Jeremiah’s warnings, but not enough to act on them. Such belief amounted to disbelief, for the results it produced.
These examples are warnings for us, according to I Corinthians 10:11 and 12. So if we think we are standing firm, we’d better be careful so that we don’t fall.