The City Burns, but the Final King Is Fed

The tenth day of the tenth month, in January 588 or 587 BC depending on the chronology, became a fast day in exile, the fast of the tenth month in Zechariah 8:19, still kept as the Tenth of Tevet. Ezekiel was told to record that very day (Ezekiel 24:1–2). “Forts” are probably siege towers or a surrounding wall.

A siege of about eighteen months, with a pause when the Egyptian army approached and the Babylonians briefly withdrew (Jeremiah 37:5–11). During that lull Jeremiah tried to leave the city and was arrested as a deserter.

“The fourth month” is supplied from Jeremiah 52:6; the Hebrew here says only “on the ninth of the month”. Lamentations 4:10 speaks of mothers boiling their own children in this famine, the curse of Deuteronomy 28:53–57 come true.

The gate between two walls lay at the south end of the city, near the pool of Siloam and the king's garden, leading to the Kidron. “The plain” is the Arabah, the Jordan valley, so Zedekiah was running east toward Ammon or the desert.

The plains of Jericho are where Israel first camped after crossing the Jordan under Joshua (Joshua 4:13; 5:10). The last king of Judah is captured on the very ground where the conquest of the land began.

“Gave judgment upon him” is literally “spoke judgments with him”, a formal trial of a rebel vassal. Zedekiah had sworn loyalty to Nebuchadnezzar by the LORD (2 Chronicles 36:13), so he was tried as an oath breaker.

Blinding was an Assyrian and Babylonian punishment for rebels. Two prophecies meet here: Jeremiah said Zedekiah would see the king of Babylon eye to eye (Jeremiah 34:3), and Ezekiel said he would be brought to Babylon yet not see it (Ezekiel 12:13). Both proved true.

The seventh of the fifth month, a month after the breach. Jeremiah 52:12 gives the tenth; the later Jewish fast of Tisha b'Av on the ninth commemorates this burning. Nebuzaradan's title, rab tabbachim, means chief of the slaughterers or cooks, an old title for the royal bodyguard.

“Every great man's house” narrows “all the houses” to the mansions of the leading families, the ones worth burning. Excavations in the City of David have found a burnt layer from 586 BC with arrowheads and a room now called the Burnt Room.

Breaking the walls meant the city could not be held against anyone. Nehemiah, some 140 years later, found them still in ruins, with the gates burned (Nehemiah 1:3; 2:13).

Three groups are deported: those left in the city, the deserters who had gone over to Babylon (Jeremiah 38:19 shows Zedekiah afraid of them), and the rest of the populace. Jeremiah 52:29 numbers this deportation at 832 persons from Jerusalem.

The land was given to the poor. Jeremiah 39:10 adds that Nebuzaradan handed them vineyards and fields, turning the dispossessed into landholders at the moment the landowners were taken.

The two bronze pillars, the ten wheeled stands and the great sea were cast by Hiram of Tyre for Solomon in the Jordan valley (1 Kings 7:13–46). They had been too heavy to remove in 597, when only gold was taken; now they are broken up for scrap.

Pots for carrying away ashes, shovels for clearing the altar, snuffers for the lamps, and dishes for incense: the ordinary equipment of daily sacrifice. The list reads like a clerk's inventory, ending the temple's service item by item.

“Of gold, in gold, and of silver, in silver” means whatever was gold was taken as gold, whatever silver as silver, the metal sorted by kind. The vessels were valued as metal, not as sacred objects.

The bronze was “without weight”, too much to weigh, the phrase used of Solomon's own bronze in 1 Kings 7:47. The same observation marks both the making and the unmaking of the temple furnishings.

The capital here is three cubits, where 1 Kings 7:16 gives five; Jeremiah 52:22 also has five, so the smaller figure may be a scribal slip, or it may omit the lily work. The pillars were named Jachin and Boaz, “he establishes” and “in him is strength”.

Seraiah the chief priest was the grandson of Hilkiah, who found the book of the law, and the ancestor of Ezra the scribe (Ezra 7:1). Zephaniah the second priest had carried messages between Zedekiah and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 21:1; 37:3).

“Five men of them that were in the king's presence” were royal advisers; Jeremiah 52:25 says seven. The “principal scribe of the host” kept the muster rolls, the army's records of eligible men, which made him a key official of war.

Nebuchadnezzar remained at Riblah in Syria throughout the siege and never came to Jerusalem for the end. Captured leaders were brought to him there, as Zedekiah had been in verse 6.

The executed number seventy two in all, counting the verses before. The last sentence of the verse matches 17:23, the sentence that closed Israel's exile, nearly word for word; the parallel between the two kingdoms is complete.

Gedaliah's father Ahikam protected Jeremiah from execution (Jeremiah 26:24), and his grandfather Shaphan read the law to Josiah (22:10). A seal impression found at Lachish reads “belonging to Gedaliah who is over the house”, possibly this man.

Mizpah, a few miles north of Jerusalem, had been Samuel's assembly place (1 Samuel 7:5–6) and now became the administrative centre. A seal found at Tell en-Nasbeh, likely Mizpah, reads “belonging to Jaazaniah servant of the king”, possibly the officer named here.

Gedaliah's counsel is exactly Jeremiah's: serve the king of Babylon and live (Jeremiah 27:12). The oath gave the captains a guarantee of safety under the new order.

Ishmael's descent from Elishama, a royal line, suggests he resented a non-Davidic governor. Jeremiah 40:14 says the king of Ammon sent him, and that Gedaliah refused to believe a warning. The murder is still mourned in the Jewish fast of Gedaliah.

Jeremiah 42–43 records that the people asked Jeremiah for a word, were told to stay, and went to Egypt anyway, taking the prophet with them. Deuteronomy 28:68 had threatened exactly this, a return to Egypt, as the last of the covenant curses.

Evil-merodach is the Babylonian Amel-Marduk, “man of Marduk”; the Hebrew form does not mean evil. The date, 561 BC, was his accession year. To lift the head is an idiom for release or favour, used of Pharaoh's cupbearer in Genesis 40:13.

“Spake kindly” is literally “spoke good things”, the language used of a treaty or covenant relationship. Other captive kings at Babylon included rulers of Tyre and Ashkelon, known from Babylonian administrative lists.

Changing garments marks a change of status, as when Joseph left prison, was shaved and changed his clothing before Pharaoh (Genesis 41:14). Eating at the king's table recalls Mephibosheth eating bread continually at David's table (2 Samuel 9:7, 13), the same phrase.

“All the days of his life” closes the book, repeated from verse 29. Jehoiachin's grandson Zerubbabel would lead exiles home to rebuild the temple (Ezra 3:2; 1 Chronicles 3:17–19), though the Book of 2 Kings stops before any return.