Zedekiah's vain reliance upon Egypt gives some flesh to the Psalm's exhortation: "Trust not in princes!" How often we too fall into the trap of looking for solutions from mere mortals, ever as fickle and unreliable as Egypt of old.
Yet there is One Prince we can trust. We saw Him confessed in today's second reading: "This is Jesus, King of the Jews." Here is no mere mortal. Here is the Son of God who refuses to come down from the cross because He is determined not to save Himself, but us. He is forsaken that we might never be. He dies that we might live. He lives that we might never die!
On a totally different tact: Note again at the end of the second reading the reference to a Mary who is "Mother of James and Joseph." Nor can this be the Blessed Virgin, for she did not stand "looking on from a distance" as this woman did, but beneath the very cross itself (John 19); and it would be exceedingly odd for the Holy Evangelist to refer to her (were she the Blessed Mother) in any other way than "His" or "Jesus'" mother. I'm happy to note that TLSB picks up on this: "Possibly Mary the wife of Clopas, a sister to Mary the mother of Jesus."
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