THE tongue and pen of Jeremiah have ceased, but his earnest words, spoken fearlessly during and shortly after the last years of the kingdom of Judah remain with us. That his messages concerning the people of Israel and the surrounding nations were not believed, is testimony both to the faithfulness of God, and the hardness and folly of the human heart. Jeremiah never had an honored place on earth, nor indeed have many of God’s servants; his reward will be seen in the corning day.
Chapter 52 to verse 27, is almost an exact copy of 2 Kings, from chapter 24:18 to chapter 25:21. Nebuchadnezzar in 2 Kings is Nebuchadnezzar in Jeremiah; the Chaldean spelling is Nabu-kudurri uzur, but the name as given in the Old Testament is evidently that used by the Jews. It is quite common in our times for the spelling and pronunciation we apply to foreign names, to differ from the spelling and pronunciation used by the people whose language they are.
The account in Jeremiah 52 includes, what the passage in 2 Kings does not, that the king of Babylon slaughtered all the princes of Judah in Riblah (verse 10), and that he put Zedekiah in prison till the day of his death (verse 11). There are also more details in verses 19 to 23 than 2 Kings gives, and minor differences in two or three places.
Verses 28 to 30 are not found elsewhere. The number carried away by Nebuchadneezzar on his first visit to Jerusalem, in B. C. 606, when Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah were taken to Babylon (Daniel 1:1-6) is not given.
“The seventh year” was B. C. 599, the date of what is called the “great captivity”; Ezekiel was among the captives taken at that time, and Zedekiah was then made king of Judah, ruling over the poor of the land that were left.
The “eighteenth year” marked the end of the siege that closed Judah’s history as a nation, when Jerusalem was destroyed.
The “twenty-third year” is not mentioned elsewhere, and we must conclude that the taking of captives at that time was a feature of Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Egypt, foretold in chapter 46, which took place about this time.
The number of captives taken by Nebuchadnezzar is surprisingly small, if it be read as the number of the people of Judah whose lives were spared at the end of hostilities. About fifty thousand returned after the proclamation of Cyrus (see Ezra 2:64, 65), and these were by no means all of the Jews in Babylon; five hundred thousand men of Judah are mentioned in 2 Samuel 24:9. Though war and famine and pestilence must have had no small effect on the population, yet it must be evident that the number of peons named in verses 29 and 30 can only he those seized at Jerusalem, and a much larger number were taken from other towns and the countryside.
Verses 31 to 34 are similar to verses 27 to 30 of 2 Kings 25. Evil-merodach was a son of Nebuchadnezzar who reigned only two years. Perhaps the dealings of God with his father, which are recorded by Daniel, made such an impression upon him that he resolved to treat the Jews kindly, and as a part of this purpose he took Jehoiachin out of prison and favored him above the other subject kings in Babylon. For Zedekiah there was no relief; he finished his life in prison; against him was the breaking of a promise made in Jehovah’s name to Nebuchadnezzar, while Jehoiachin had reigned only three months (2 Kings 24:8), and was probably too young (18) at that time to plan nitwit mischief against the great king; he would be 55 by the time he left his prison.
ML-06/02/1935