The Fall of Jerusalem Recounted
Jer 52:1 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years. His mother’s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah; she was from Libnah.
Jer 52:2 He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, just as Jehoiakim had done.
Jer 52:3 It was because of the LORD’s anger that all this happened to Jerusalem and Judah, and in the end he thrust them from his presence. Now Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.
Jer 52:4 So in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. They encamped outside the city and built siege works all around it.
Jer 52:5 The city was kept under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.
Jer 52:6 By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat.
Jer 52:7 Then the city wall was broken through, and the whole army fled. They left the city at night through the gate between the two walls near the king’s garden, though the Babylonians were surrounding the city. They fled toward the Arabah,
Jer 52:8 but the Babylonian army pursued King Zedekiah and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his soldiers were separated from him and scattered,
Jer 52:9 and he was captured. He was taken to the king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath, where he pronounced sentence on him.
Jer 52:10 There at Riblah the king of Babylon killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes; he also killed all the officials of Judah.
Jer 52:11 Then he put out Zedekiah’s eyes, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon, where he put him in prison till the day of his death.
The Temple Burned
Jer 52:12 On the tenth day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan commander of the imperial guard, who served the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem.
Jer 52:13 He set fire to the temple of the LORD, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burned down.
Jer 52:14 The whole Babylonian army, under the commander of the imperial guard, broke down all the walls around Jerusalem.
Jer 52:15 Nebuzaradan the commander of the guard carried into exile some of the poorest people and those who remained in the city, along with the rest of the craftsmen and those who had deserted to the king of Babylon.
Jer 52:16 But Nebuzaradan left behind the rest of the poorest people of the land to work the vineyards and fields.
Jer 52:17 The Babylonians broke up the bronze pillars, the movable stands and the bronze Sea that were at the temple of the LORD and they carried all the bronze to Babylon.
Jer 52:18 They also took away the pots, shovels, wick trimmers, sprinkling bowls, dishes and all the bronze articles used in the temple service.
Jer 52:19 The commander of the imperial guard took away the basins, censers, sprinkling bowls, pots, lampstands, dishes and bowls used for drink offerings—all that were made of pure gold or silver.
Jer 52:20 The bronze from the two pillars, the Sea and the twelve bronze bulls under it, and the movable stands, which King Solomon had made for the temple of the LORD, was more than could be weighed.
Jer 52:21 Each pillar was eighteen cubits high and twelve cubits in circumference; each was four fingers thick, and hollow.
Jer 52:22 The bronze capital on top of one pillar was five cubits high and was decorated with a network and pomegranates of bronze all around. The other pillar, with its pomegranates, was similar.
Jer 52:23 There were ninety-six pomegranates on the sides; the total number of pomegranates above the surrounding network was a hundred.
The People Exiled to Babylon
Jer 52:24 The commander of the guard took as prisoners Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest next in rank and the three doorkeepers.
Jer 52:25 Of those still in the city, he took the officer in charge of the fighting men, and seven royal advisers. He also took the secretary who was chief officer in charge of conscripting the people of the land, sixty of whom were found in the city.
Jer 52:26 Nebuzaradan the commander took them all and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah.
Jer 52:27 There at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, the king had them executed. So Judah went into captivity, away from her land.
Jer 52:28 This is the number of the people Nebuchadnezzar carried into exile: in the seventh year, 3,023 Jews;
Jer 52:29 in Nebuchadnezzar’s eighteenth year, 832 people from Jerusalem;
Jer 52:30 in his twenty-third year, 745 Jews taken into exile by Nebuzaradan the commander of the imperial guard. There were 4,600 people in all.
Jehoiachin Released from Prison
Jer 52:31 In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the year Awel-Marduk became king of Babylon, on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month, he released Jehoiachin king of Judah and freed him from prison.
Jer 52:32 He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat of honor higher than those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon.
Jer 52:33 So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king’s table.
Jer 52:34 Day by day the king of Babylon gave Jehoiachin a regular allowance as long as he lived, till the day of his death.
1 Zedekiah rebelled. 4 Jerusalem is besieged and taken. 8 Zedekiah’s sons killed, and his own eyes put out. 12 Nebuzar-adan burned and spoiled the city. 24 He carried away the captives. 31 Evil-Merodach advanced Jehoiachin.
The Fall of Jerusalem Recounted
Jer 52:1 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years. His mother’s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah; she was from Libnah.
Zedekiah. Verses 1–27, 31–34 are almost identical with 2 Kings 24:18–25:21, 27–30 (see comments there). This chapter was probably added to show the complete historical fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecies concerning the downfall of Judah.
At the time of the greatest crisis in her history, Judah had the misfortune of finding her leadership in the hands of a young, inexperienced, and vacillating king.
Hamutal. Zedekiah was a half-brother of Jehoiakim (see 2 Kings 23:36), but a full brother of Jehoahaz (see 2 Kings 23:31), who years before had been taken from the throne by Necho II of Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar’s great rival.
Jer 52:2 He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, just as Jehoiakim had done.
Jer 52:3 It was because of the LORD’s anger that all this happened to Jerusalem and Judah, and in the end he thrust them from his presence. Now Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.
Lord’s anger. This statement is not to be taken as meaning that Zedekiah’s rebellion against Babylon was the work of an angry God who desired thereby to bring destruction upon Judah. The perfidy of the Jewish king was of his own choice.
Zedekiah rebelled. See on 2 Kings 24:20. The young and inexperienced Zedekiah faced problems that would have overwhelmed many a ruler of stancher character and greater sagacity than he. He was placed upon the throne, not by legal succession, but by a dominant foreign power that held the rightful king, with many of the national leaders, in exile.
He was surrounded by nations eager to revolt against Babylon and likewise eager for his adherence to their cause. His counsels were torn by strife between the pro-Babylonian party encouraged by Jeremiah and a popular nationalism backed by false prophets. He was continually intrigued by the phantom hope that Egypt might rescue his country from Babylonian oppression.
Jer 52:4 So in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. They encamped outside the city and built siege works all around it.
The siege of Jerusalem probably began Jan. 15, 588 b.c. (see on ch. 39:1), and lasted till July 18, 586 b.c., a period of two years and a half. However, the city was not under attack continuously for the entire time. At some point during the campaign the army of Apries, king of Egypt (Pharaoh-hophra, ch. 44:30), advanced toward Palestine, whereupon the Babylonians temporarily withdrew (see ch. 37:5–11).
Against Jerusalem. The present siege differed from the previous invasions in that it was now Nebuchadnezzar’s intention to destroy the nation. Past invasions of Judah had greatly diminished both the territory and the population of the country. One authority estimates that the number of people in the country had decreased by at least half to a pitiful total of perhaps 150,000 (W. F. Albright, The Biblical Archaeologist, IX:1 [February, 1946], p. 4). Now the Babylonians attacked “all the cities of Judah that were left,” including Lachish and Azekah (see on ch. 34:7).
Jer 52:5 The city was kept under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.
Jer 52:6 By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat.
Jer 52:7 Then the city wall was broken through, and the whole army fled. They left the city at night through the gate between the two walls near the king’s garden, though the Babylonians were surrounding the city. They fled toward the Arabah,
Broken through. That is, a breach was made in the wall. The context seems to indicate that resistance collapsed because of famine.
Jer 52:8 but the Babylonian army pursued King Zedekiah and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his soldiers were separated from him and scattered,
Jericho. Zedekiah may have fled in the direction of the Jordan valley with the intention of escaping into Transjordan, where the Moabites and Ammonites were located. Earlier in his reign these nations had sought Zedekiah’s allegiance in a coalition against the Babylonians (see ch. 27:3).
Jer 52:9 and he was captured. He was taken to the king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath, where he pronounced sentence on him.
Jer 52:10 There at Riblah the king of Babylon killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes; he also killed all the officials of Judah.
Jer 52:11 Then he put out Zedekiah’s eyes, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon, where he put him in prison till the day of his death.
Put out eyes. Prisoners were commonly blinded by piercing the eyeballs with the point of a spear. Besides enduring the torture involved in the losing of his eyesight, Zedekiah suffered the mental anguish of having to remember throughout the rest of his life, as the last thing he ever beheld, the fearful sight of the execution of his sons.
The Temple Burned
Jer 52:12 On the tenth day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan commander of the imperial guard, who served the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem.
Tenth day. That is, Aug. 17 or 18, 586 b.c. Two events are mentioned for this date: (1) Nebuzar-adan came into Jerusalem, and (2) he burned the Temple and many other buildings. According to 2 Kings 25:8, the parallel account, he arrived on the 7th of the month (Aug. 14 or 15, 586 b.c.).
It is possible to harmonize these dates by assuming that the captain entered the city on the 7th and Jer 51:41 “How Sheshak will be captured, the boast of the whole earth seized! How desolate Babylon will be among the nations! burned the Temple on the 10th. The possibility of a scribal error is less likely than the correctness of both dates. There would have had to be a considerable interval for removing the treasures from the city before the destruction. Another possibility is that the conflagration lasted for three days.
Nineteenth year. The change in dating introduced here, from a reckoning in terms of Zedekiah’s reign to one according to Nebuchadnezzar’s, is a tacit admission that the rulership had passed from the Judean to the Babylonian king. Modern scholars depend upon similar changes in the date lines of ancient tablets and other documents for much of their information regarding the approximate dates on which new Mesopotamian kings began their reigns.
Jer 52:13 He set fire to the temple of the LORD, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burned down.
The destruction of the Temple and other public buildings was not a result of the siege, but a deliberate act of the Babylonians, carried out one month after the fall of the city.
Jer 52:14 The whole Babylonian army, under the commander of the imperial guard, broke down all the walls around Jerusalem.
On vs. 14–23 see on 2 Kings 25:10–17.
The People Exiled to Babylon
Jer 52:24 The commander of the guard took as prisoners Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest next in rank and the three doorkeepers.
The chief priest. Not only the political leaders, but the religious heads of the nation as well, were destroyed. Only a short time prior to this, Zephaniah, the second priest, had heard Jeremiah predict the death of Jerusalem’s leaders (ch. 21:1, 7).
Jer 52:25 Of those still in the city, he took the officer in charge of the fighting men, and seven royal advisers. He also took the secretary who was chief officer in charge of conscripting the people of the land, sixty of whom were found in the city.
Jer 52:26 Nebuzaradan the commander took them all and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah.
Jer 52:27 There at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, the king had them executed. So Judah went into captivity, away from her land.
Jer 52:28 This is the number of the people Nebuchadnezzar carried into exile: in the seventh year, 3,023 Jews;
The seventh year. This verse presumably describes a summer campaign in 598 (see on Jer. 52:29), the year preceding the captivity of Jehoiachin, which was in the 8th year, 597 (2 Kings 24:12).
Jer 52:29 in Nebuchadnezzar’s eighteenth year, 832 people from Jerusalem;
The eighteenth year. This was the year preceding the capture of Jerusalem (Jer. 52:12), presumably in the summer of 587. The customary campaigning season was the spring and summer (see on 2 Sam. 11:1). Some scholars have assumed that this 18th year is the time of the fall of the city, and that Jer. 52:12 supplies an erroneous date, but there is no reason to assume a contradiction.
Verse 30 records an additional captivity in the 23rd year, which is not mentioned elsewhere. Obviously, then, there is no reason to doubt that in the 7th and 18th years numbers of Jews were taken also. Inasmuch as annual campaigns were common at that time, captives were doubtless taken frequently and repeatedly. The capture of 832 persons in the 18th year must not, therefore, be equated with the major captivity of the 19th year.
The record of the various deportations does not state whether the figures given represent the number of those who began the journey into exile or of those who survived the rigorous trip and arrived in Babylon.
According to the records of ancient history the usual result of such deportations was that the ultimate survivors represented only a fraction of those who began the forced march. Thus if the records of the number of captives refer to the ones who actually arrived in Babylon, we must believe that a great many more were initially made captives by Nebuchadnezzar, but died before they reached Babylon.
On the other hand, if the numbers given refer to those who set out in chains (see ch. 40:4) into exile, how pitifully small must have been the various groups who arrived at Babylon.
Jer 52:30 in his twenty-third year, 745 Jews taken into exile by Nebuzaradan the commander of the imperial guard. There were 4,600 people in all.
Jehoiachin Released from Prison
Jer 52:31 In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the year Awel-Marduk became king of Babylon, on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month, he released Jehoiachin king of Judah and freed him from prison.
Jer 52:32 He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat of honor higher than those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon.
Jer 52:33 So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king’s table.
Jer 52:34 Day by day the king of Babylon gave Jehoiachin a regular allowance as long as he lived, till the day of his death.
34. Continual diet. Rations issued to Yaukin (Jehoiachin), king of Judah, and his sons are mentioned on Babylonian records of 592 b.c., only a few years after his exile began. He was evidently free at first, but was later placed in prison, where he remained presumably until Evil-Merodach freed him and assigned him a food allowance until his death.