11 And he put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him with chains of brass; and the king of Babylon carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death.
12 And in the fifth month, on the tenth of the month, which was in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzar-adan, captain of the body-guard, who stood before the king of Babylon, came unto Jerusalem;
13 and he burned the house of Jehovah, and the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem; and every great [man's] house he burned with fire.
14 And all the army of the Chaldeans, that were with the captain of the body-guard, broke down all the walls of Jerusalem round about.
15 And Nebuzar-adan the captain of the body-guard carried away captive of the poorest sort of the people, and the rest of the people that were left in the city, and the deserters that had deserted to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the multitude.
16 But Nebuzar-adan the captain of the body-guard left of the poor of the land for vinedressers and for husbandmen.
17 And the brazen pillars that were in the house of Jehovah, and the bases, and the brazen sea that was in the house of Jehovah, the Chaldeans broke up, and carried all the brass thereof to Babylon.
18 The pots also, and the shovels, and the knives, and the bowls, and the cups, and all the vessels of brass wherewith they ministered, they took away.
19 And the basons and the censers, and the bowls, and the pots, and the candlesticks, and the cups, and the goblets, that which was of gold in gold, and that which was of silver in silver, the captain of the body-guard took away.
20 The two pillars, the one sea, and the twelve brazen oxen that formed the bases, which king Solomon had made for the house of Jehovah: for the brass of all these vessels there was no weight.
21 And as to the pillars: the height of one pillar was eighteen cubits, and a line of twelve cubits encompassed it; and the thickness thereof was four fingers: it was hollow.
22 And the capital upon it was brass, and the height of the one capital [was] five cubits; and the network and the pomegranates, upon the capital round about, all of brass; and similarly for the second pillar, and the pomegranates.
23 And there were ninety-six pomegranates on the [four] sides; all the pomegranates upon the network were a hundred round about.
24 And the captain of the body-guard took Seraiah the chief priest, and Zephaniah the second priest, and the three doorkeepers.
25 And out of the city he took a eunuch that was set over the men of war, and seven men of them that were in the king's presence, who were found in the city, and the scribe of the captain of the host, who enrolled the people of the land. And sixty men of the people of the land that were found in the midst of the city.
26 And Nebuzar-adan the captain of the body-guard took them, and brought them to the king of Babylon to Riblah;
27 and the king of Babylon smote them, and put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath. Thus Judah was carried away captive out of his land.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Jeremiah 52
Commentary on Jeremiah 52 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 52
History is the best expositor of prophecy; and therefore, for the better understanding of the prophecies of this book which relate to the destruction of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah, we are here furnished with an account of that sad event. It is much he same with the history we had 2 Ki. 24 and 25, and many of the particulars we had before in that book, but the matter is here repeated and put together, to give light to the book of the Lamentations, which follows next, and to serve as a key to it. That article in the close concerning the advancement of Jehoiachin in his captivity, which happened after Jeremiah's time, gives colour to the conjecture of those who suppose that this chapter was not written by Jeremiah himself, but by some man divinely inspired among those in captivity, for a constant memorandum to those who in Babylon preferred Jerusalem above their chief joy. In this chapter we have,
Jer 52:1-11
This narrative begins no higher than the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah, though there were two captivities before, one in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the other in the first of Jeconiah; but probably it was drawn up by some of those that were carried away with Zedekiah, as a reproach to themselves for imagining that they should not go into captivity after their brethren, with which hopes they had long flattered themselves. We have here,
Jer 52:12-23
We have here an account of the woeful havoc that was made by the Chaldean army, a month after the city was taken, under the command of Nebuzaradan, who was captain of the guard, or general of the army, in this action. In the margin he is called the chief of the slaughter-men, or executioners; for soldiers are but slaughter-men, and God employs them as executioners of his sentence against a sinful people. Nebuzaradan was chief of those soldiers, but, in the execution he did, we have reason to fear he had no eye to God, but he served the king of Babylon and his own designs, now that he came into Jerusalem, into the very bowels of it, as captain of the slaughter-men there. And,
Jer 52:24-30
We have here a very melancholy account,
Jer 52:31-34
This passage of story concerning the reviving which king Jehoiachin had in his bondage we had likewise before (2 Ki. 25:27-30), only there it is said to be done on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month, here on the twenty-fifth; but in a thing of this nature two days make a very slight difference in the account. It is probable that the orders were given for his release on the twenty-fifth day, but that he was not presented to the king till the twenty-seventh. We may observe in this story,