Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Vers. 4-20. The eradication of idolatry. — According to 2 Chron. xxxiv. 3-7, this had already begun, and was simply continued and carried to completion after the renewal of the covenant. — Vers. 4-14. In Jerusalem and Judah. Ver. 4. The king commanded the high priest and the other priests, and the Levites who kept the door, to remove from the temple everything that had been made for Baal and Asherah, and to burn it in the valley of Kidron. ™V®[} V.!?.3, sacerdotes secundi ordinis (Vulg., Luth., etc.), are the common priests as distinguished from ^lan \r\hr\, the high priest. The Eabbins are wrong in their explanation vicarii summi sacerdotis, according to which Thenius would alter the text and read 1^3 for *3Hb. H^n *)$&, the keepers of the threshold, are the Levites whose duty it was to watch the temple, as in ch. xxii. 4 (cf. 1 Chron. xxiii. 5). Dvsrrta (alles Zeug, Luth.), i.e. all the apparatus, consisting of altars, idols, and other things, that had been provided for the worship of Baal and Astarte. Josiah had these things burned, according to the law in Deut. vii. 25, and that outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron valley. The tfflp T\\vy& (fields of Kidron) are probably to be sought for to the north-east of Jerusalem, where the Kidron valley is broader than between the city and the Mount of Olives, and spreads out into a basin of considerable size, which is now cultivated and contains plantations of olive and other fruit-trees (Rob. Pal. L p. 405). " And he had their dust carried to Bethel," i.e. the ashes of the wooden objects which were burned, and the dust of those of stone and metal which were ground to powder, to defile the idolatrous place of worship at Bethel as the chief seat of idolatry and false worship. — Ver. 5. " He abolished the high priests." B'1"!*?3 are also mentioned in Hos. x. 5 and Zeph. i. 4: they were not idolatrous priests or prophets of Baal, but priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to offer incense upon the altars of the high places; for they are distinguished from the idolatrous priests, or those who burnt incense to Baal, the sun, etc. In Hos. x. 5 the priests appointed in connection with the golden calf at Bethel are called D*"iDD; and in Zeph. i. 4 the D^ied are not exclusively idolatrous priests, but such as did service sometimes for Jehovah, who had been degraded into a Baal, and sometimes to actual idols. Now as D^nb who burnt incense upon high places are also mentioned in ver. 8, we must understand by the Dnoa non-Levitical priests, and by the D^ro in ver. 8 Levitical priests who were devoted to the worship on the high places. The primary signification of *wb is disputed. In Syriac the word signifies the priest, in Hebrew spurious priests, probably from

■UD3 in the sense of to bring together, or complete, as the performers of sacrifice, like ephoav, the sacrificer (Dietr.); whereas the connection suggested by Hitzig (on Zeph.) with 1£=>, to be unbelieving, in the opposite sense of the religious, is very farfetched, and does not answer either to the Hebrew or the Syriac use of the word.1 The singular iBP^ is striking inasmuch as if the impcrf. c. Vav rel. were a continuation of WO, we should expect the plural, " and who had burnt incense," as it is given in the Chaldee. The LXX., Vulg., and Syr. have rendered "^p?, from which TOW has probably arisen by a mistake in copying. In the following clause, " and those who had burnt incense to Baal, to the sun and to the moon," etc., Baal is mentioned as the deity worshipped in the sun, the moon, and the stars (see at ch. xxi. 3). TOHO, synonymous with nr.-rp in Job xxxviii. 32, does not mean the twenty-eight naxatra, or Indian stations of the moon,2 but the twelve signs or constellations of the zodiac, which were regarded by the Arabs as mcndzil, i.e. station-houses, in which the sun took up its abode in succession when describing the circuit of the year (cf. Ges. Thes. p. 869, and Delitzsch on Job xxxviii. 32). — Ver. 6. The image of Asherah (n"lKfcn = 'an pds, ch. xxi. 3, 7), which Manasseh placed in the temple and then removed after his return from Babylon (2 Chron. xxxiii. 15), but which Amon had replaced, Josiah ordered to be burned and ground to powder in the valley of Kidron, and the dust to be thrown upon the graves of the common people. FJ5, from P\T\, to make fine, to crush, refers to the metal covering of the image (see at Ex. xxxii. 10). Asa had already had an idol burned in the Kidron valley (1 Kings xv. 13), and Hezekiah had ordered the idolatrous abominations to be taken out of the city and carried thither (2 Chron. xxix. 16); so that the valley had already been defiled. There was a burial-place there for Dyn T^, i.e. the common people (cf. Jer. xxvi. 23), who had no graves of their own, just as at the present day the burial-ground

1 In any case the derivation from 103, to be black (Ges. Thes. p. 693), and the explanation given by Furst from vi occultandi magicasque, h. e. arcanas et reconditas artes exercendi, and others given in Iken's Dissertatt. theol. philol. i. diss. 12, are quite untenable.

of the Jews there lies to the north of Kcfr Sihvdn. Josiah ordered the ashes to be cast upon these graves, probably in order to defile them as the graves of idolaters. — Ver. 7. *fi3 tPBhjfcl, the houses (places of abode) of the paramours (for D^snpn see at 1 Kings xiv. 24), were probably only tents or huts, which were erected in the court of the temple for the paramours to dwell in, and in which there were also women who wove tent-temples (0^3) for Asherah (see at ch. xvii. 30).1 — Ver. 8. All the (Levitical) priests he sent for from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem, and defiled the altars of the high places, upon which they had offered incense, from Geba to Beersheba, i.e. throughout the whole kingdom. Geba, the present Jeba, about three hours to the north of Jerusalem (see at Josh, xviii. 24), was the northern frontier of the kingdom of Judah, and Beersheba (Birseba: see the Comm. on Gen. xxi. 31) the southern frontier of Canaan. It is evident from ver. 9 that E^nb are Levitical priests. He ordered them to come to Jerusalem, that they might not carry on illegal worship any longer in the cities of Judah. He then commanded that the unlawful high places should be defiled throughout the whole land, for the purpose of suppressing this worship altogether. He also destroyed " the altars of the high places at the gates, (both that) which was at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, (and also that) which was at the left of every one (entering) by the city gate." The two clauses beginning with "IKW contain a more precise description of D^V^l1 rtBf. The gate of Joshua the governor of the city is not mentioned anywhere else, but it was probably near to his home, i.e. near the citadel of the city; but whether it was the future gate of Gennath, as Thenius supposes, or some other, it is impossible to determine. This also applies to the opinion that "^V? "W is the valley gate or Joppa gate (Thenius) as being the gate of greatest traffic; for the traffic through the northern or Ephraim gate was certainly not less. PiKDEHW &&, at the left of every one, sc. going into the city. — Ver. 9.

1 On this worship Movers has the following among other remarks (Phdu. i. p. 686): " The mutilated Gallus (KHp) fancies that he is a woman: negant se viros esse... mulieres se volunt credi (Finnic.). He lives in close intimacy with the women, and they again are drawn towards the Galli by peculiar affection." He also expresses a conjecture " that the women of Jerusalem gave themselves up in honour of the goddess in the tents of the Galli which were pitched in the temple circle, on which account the a5>3 TriD went to the temple treasury."

" Only the priests of the high places did not sacrifice,.... but ate unleavened bread in the midst of their brethren." The?]X is connected with ver. 8: Josiah did not allow the priests, whom he had brought out of the cities of Judah to Jerusalem, to offer sacrifice upon the altr.r of Jehovah in the temple, i.e. to perform the sacrificial service of the law, though he did allow them " to eat that which was unleavened," i.e. to eat of the sacred altar-gifts intended for the priests (Lev. vi. 9, 10 and 22); only they were not allowed to consume this at a holy place, but simply in the midst of their brethren, i.e. at home in the family. They were thus placed on a par with priests who were rendered incapable of service on account of a bodily defect (Lev. xxi. 17-22). — Ver. 10. He also defiled the place of sacrifice in the valley of Benhinnom, for the purpose of exterminating the worship of Moloch. Moloch's place of sacrifice is called npnn> ag au object of abhorrence, or one to be spat at (p^fi: Job xvii. 6), from ppn, to spit, or spit out (cf. Koediger in Ges. thes. p. 1497, where the other explanations are exploded).1 On the valley Bne or Bcn-Hlnnom, at the south side of Mount Zion, see at Josh. xv. 8. — Ver. 11. He cleared away the horses dedicated to the sun, and burned up the chariots of the sun. As the horses were only cleared away (^38*1), whereas the chariots were burned, we have not to think of images of horses (Selden, de Diis Syr. ii. 8), but of living horses, which were given to the sun, i.e. kept for the worship of the sun. Horses were regarded as sacred to the sun by many nations, viz. the Armenians, Persians, Massagetse, Ethiopians, and Greeks, and were sacrificed to it (for proofs see Bochart, Hieroz. i. lib. ii. c. 10); and there is no doubt that the Israelites received this worship first of all from LTpper Asia, along with the actual sunworship, possibly through the Assyrians. " The kings of Judah " are Ahaz, Manasseh, and Amon. These horses were hardly kept to be offered to the sun in sacrifice (Bochart and others), but, as we must infer from the " chariots of the sun," were used for processions in connection with the worship of the sun, probably, according to the unanimous opinion of the Babbins, to

1 Jerome (on Jer. vii. 31) says: Thophet, quse est in valle Jiliorum Enom, ilium locum signijicat, qui Siloe fontibus irrigator et est amcenus atque nemorosus, hodieque hortorum prxbet delicias. From the name Gehinuom the Rabbins formed the name Yiivv*, Gehenna (Matt. v. 22, 29, etc.), with special reference to the children burnt here to Moloch, to signify hell and hell-lire.

drive and meet the rising sun. The definition '" 1V3 N3B " from the coming into the house of Jehovah," i.e. near the entrance into the temple, is dependent upon WU, "they had given (placed) the horses of the sun near the temple entrance/' nSKO"?**, " in the cell of Nethanmelech." p£ does not mean at the cell, i.e. in the stable by the cell (Thenius), because the ellipsis is too harsh, and the cells built in the court of the temple were intended not merely as dwelling-places for the priests and persons engaged in the service, but also as a depot for the provisions and vessels belonging to the temple (Neh. x. 38 sqq.; 1 Chron. ix. 26). One of these depots was arranged and used as a stable for the sacred horses. This cell, which derived its name from Nethanmelech, a chamberlain (D<,~!p), of whom nothing further is known, possibly the builder or founder of it, was DHT1B3, in the Pharvars. BnriQ, the plural of "N"]3, is no doubt identical with 131Q in 1 Chron. xxvi. 18. This was the name given to a building at the western or hinder side of the outer temple-court by the gate SJialleket at the ascending road, i.e. the road which led up from the city standing in the west into the court of the temple (1 Chron. xxvi. 16 and 18). The meaning of the word "niD is uncertain. Gesenius (thes. p. 1123) explains it by porticus,

(Proben, p. 347), on the other hand, supposes it to be " a separate spot resembling a suburb," because in the Talmud P"ma signifies suburbia, loca urbi vicinia. — Ver. 12. The altars built upon the roof of the aliyah of Ahaz were dedicated to the host of heaven (Zeph. i. 5; Jer. xix. 13, xxxii. 29), and certainly built by Ahaz; and inasmuch as Hezekiah had undoubtedly removed them when he reformed the worship, they had been restored by Manasseh and Amon, so that by " the kings of Judah " we are to understand these three kings as in ver. 11. We are unable to determine where the HvJ[, the upper chamber, of Ahaz really was. But since the things spoken of both before and afterwards are the objects of idolatry found in the temple, this aliyah was probably also an upper room of one of the buildings in the court of the temple (Thenius), possibly at the gate, which Ahaz had built when he removed the outer entrance of the king into the temple (ch. xvi. 18), since, according to Jer. xxxv. 4, the buildings at the gate had upper stories. The altars built by Manasseh in the two courts of the temple (see ch. xxi. 5) Josiah destroyed,

DtSto pW, " and crushed them to powder from thence," and cast their dust into the Kidron valley. PJ, not from pi, to run, but from Pf), to pound or crush to pieces. The alteration proposed by Thenius into H.*l, he caused to run and threw = he had them removed with all speed, is not only arbitrary, but unsuitable, because it is impossible to see why Josiah should merely have hurried the clearing away of the dust of these altars, whereas HTJ, to pound or grind to powder, was not superfluous after K™, to destroy, but really necessary, if the dust was to be thrown into the Kidron. p5Tl is substantially equivalent to PJ3 in ver. 6. — Vers. 13, 14. The places of sacrifice built by Solomon upon the southern height of the Mount of Olives (see at 1 Kings xi. 7) Josiah defiled, reducing to ruins the monuments, cutting down the Asherah idols, and filling their places with human bones, which polluted a place, according to Num. xix. 16. Ver. 14 gives a more precise definition of Nftp in ver. 13 in the form of a simple addition (with Vav cop). WIBton-tfl, mountain of destruction (not unctionis = niwon, llashi and Cler.), is the southern peak of the Mount of Olives, called in the tradition of the Church mons offcnsionis or scandali (see at 1 Kings xi. 7). For nuso and D*i£« see at 1 Kings xiv. 23. Doipo are the places where the Mazzeboth and Asherim stood by the altars that were dedicated to Baal and Astarte, so that by defiling them the altar-places were also defiled.

Vers. 15-20. Extermination of idolatry in Bethel and the cities of Samaria. — In order to suppress idolatry as far as possible, Josiah did not rest satisfied with the extermination of it in his own kingdom Judah, but also destroyed the temples of the high places and altars and idols in the land of the former kingdom of the ten tribes, slew all the priests of the high places that were there, and burned their bones upon the high places destroyed, in order to defile the ground. The warrant for this is not to be found, as Hess supposes, in the fact that Josiah, as vassal of the king of Assyria, had a certain limited power over these districts, and may have looked upon them as being in a certain sense his own territority, a power which the Assyrians may have allowed him the more- readily, because they were sure of his fidelity in relation to Egypt. For we cannot infer that Josiah was a vassal of the Assyrians from the imprisonment and release of Manasseh by the king of Assyria, nor is there any historical evidence whatever to prove it. The only reason that ran have induced Josiah to do this, must have been that after the dissolution of the kingdom of the ten tribes he regarded himself as the king of the whole of the covenant-nation, and availed himself of the approaching or existing dissolution of the Assyian empire to secure the friendship of the Israelites who were left behind in the kingdom of the ten tribes, to reconcile them to his government, and to win them over to his attempt to reform; and there is no necessity whatever to assume, as Thenius does, that he asked permission to do so of the newly arisen ruler Nabopolassar. For against this assumption may be adduced not only the improbability that Nabopolassar would give him any such permission, but still more the circumstance that at a still earlier period, even before Nabopolassar became king of Babylon, Josiah had had taxes collected of the inhabitants of the kingdom of Israel for the repairing of the temple (2 Chron. xxxiv. 9), from which we may see that the Israelites who were left behind in the land were favourably disposed towards his reforms, and were inclined to attach themselves in religious matters to Judah (just as, indeed, even the Samaritans were willing after the captivity to take part in the building of the temple, Ezra iv. 2 sqq.), which the Assyrians at that time were no longer in a condition to prevent. — Ver. 15. "Also the altar at Bethel, 'the high place which Jeroboam had made — this altar also and the high place he destroyed." It is grammatically impossible to take n»3 n as an accusative of place (Thenius); it is in apposition to nsp?n, serving to define it more precisely: the altar at Bethel, namely the high place; for which we have afterwards the altar and the high place. By the appositional n»an the altar at Bethel is described as an illegal place of worship. " He burned the n&?," i.e. the buildings of this sanctuary, ground to powder everything that was made of stone or metal, i.e. both the altar and the idol there. This is implied in what follows: " and burned Asherah," i.e. a wooden idol of Astarte found there, according to which there would no doubt be also an idol of Baal, a HZLlfD of stone. The golden calf, which had formerly been set up at Bethel, may, as Hos. x. 5, 6 seems to imply, have been removed by the Assyrians, and, after the settlement of heathen colonists in the land, have been supplanted by idols of Baal and Astarte (cf. ch. xvii. 29). — Vers. 16 sqq. In order to desecrate this idolatrous site for all time, Josiah had human bones taken out of the graves that were to be found upon the mountain, and burned upon the altar, whereby the prophecy uttered in the reign of Jeroboam by the prophet who came out of Judah concerning this idolatrous place of worship was fulfilled; but he spared the tomb of that prophet himself (cf. 1 Kings xiii. 26-32). The mountain upon which Josiah saw the graves was a mountain at Bethel, which was visible from the lamali destroyed. r>5V, a sepulchral monument, probably a stone erected upon the grave. H3/W: " so they rescued (from burning) his bones (the bones of the prophet who had come from Judah), together with the bones of the prophet who had come from Samaria," i.e. of the old prophet who sprang from the kingdom of the ten tribes and had come to Bethel (1 Kings xiii. 11). «3 ihbffb in antithesis to flWD Nil denotes simply descent from the land of Samaria.1 — Vers. 19, 20. All the houses of the high places that were in the (other) cities of Samaria Josiah also destroyed in the same way as that at Bethel, and offered up the priests of the high places upon the altars, i.e. slew them upon the altars on which they had offered sacrifice, and burned men's bones upon them (the altars) to defile them. The severity of the procedure towards these priests of the high places, as contrasted with the manner in which the priests of the high places in Judah were treated (vers. 8 and 9), may be explained partly from the fact that the Israelitish priests of the high places were not Levitical priests, but chiefly from the fact that they were really idolatrous priests.

Vers. 21-23. Hie passover is very briefly noticed in our account, and is described as such an one as had not taken place since the days of the judges. Ver. 21 simply mentions the appointment of this festival on the part of the king, and the execution of the king's command has to be supplied. Ver. 22 contains a remark concerning the character of the passover. In 2 Chron. xxxv. 1-19 we have a very elaborate description of it. What distinguished this passover above every other was, (1) that " all the nation," not merely Judah and Benjamin, but i Vers. 16-18 are neither an interpolation of the editor, i.e. of the author of our books of Kings (Staehelin), nor an interpolation from a supplement to the account in 1 Kings xiii. 1-32 (Thenius). The correspondence between the D:i in ver. 15 and the Ml in ver. 18 does not require this assumption; and the pretended discrepancy, that after Josiah had already reduced the altar to ruins (ver. 15) he could not possibly defile it by burning human bones upon it (ver 16) is removed by the very natural solution, that rOTBn in ver. 16 does not mean the altar itself, but the site of the altar that had been destroyed.

also the remnant of the ten tribes, took part in it, or, as it is expressed in 2 Chron. xxxv. 18, " all Judah and Israel;" (2) that it was kept in strict accordance with the precepts of the Mosaic book of the law, whereas in the passover instituted by Hezekiah there were necessarily many points of deviation from the precepts of the law, more especially in the fact that the feast had to be transferred from the first month, which was the legal time, to the second month, because the priests had not yet purified themselves in sufficient numbers and the people had not yet gathered together at Jerusalem, and also that even then a number of the people had inevitably been allowed to eat the passover without the previous purification required by the law (2 Chron. xxx. 2, 3, 17-20). This is implied in the words, " for there was not holden such a passover since the days of the judges and all the kings of Israel and Judah." That this remark does not preclude the holding of earlier passovers, as Thenius follows De Wette in supposing, without taking any notice of the refutations of this opinion, was correctly maintained by the earlier commentators. Thus Clericus observes: " I should have supposed that what the sacred writer meant to say was, that during the times of the kings no passover had ever been kept so strictly by every one, according to all the Mosaic laws. Before this, even under the pious kings, they seem to have followed custom rather than the very words of the law; and since this was the case, many things were necessarily changed and neglected." Instead of " since the days of the judges who judged Israel," we find in 2 Chron. xxxv. 1 8, " since the days of Samuel the prophet," who is well known to have closed the period of the judges.

Vers. 24—30. Conclusion of Josiah's reign. — Ver. 24. As Josiah had the passover kept in perfect accordance with the precepts of the law, so did he also exterminate the necromancers, the teraphim and all the abominations of idolatry, throughout all Judah and Jerusalem, to set up the words of the law in the book of the law that had been found, i.e. to carry them out and bring them into force. For rrinxn and B^Jnjn see at ch. xxi. 6. D^Din, penates, domestic gods, which were worshipped as the authors of earthly prosperity and as oracular deities (see at Gen. xxxi. 19). &y!?3 and O^P, connected together, as in Deut. xxix. 16, as a contemptuous description of idols in general. — In ver. 2 5 the account of the efforts made by Josiah to restore the true worship of Jehovah closes with a general verdict concerning his true piety. See the remarks on this point at ch. xviii. 5. He turned to Jehovah with all his heart, etc.: there is an evident allusion here to Deut. vi. 5. Compare with this the sentence of the prophet Jeremiah concerning his reign (Jer. xxii. 15, 16). — Ver. 26. Nevertheless the Lord turned not from the great fierceness of His wrath, wherewith He had burned against Judah on account of all the provocations " with which Manasseh had provoked Him." With this sentence, in which ^]K yy to forms an unmistakeable word-play upon '"?$ 3B> 18PK, the historian introduces the account not merely of the end of Josiah's reign, but also of the destruction of the kingdom of Judah. Manasseh is mentioned here and at ch. xxiv. 3 and Jer. xv. 4 as the person who, by his idolatry and his unrighteousness, with which he provoked God to anger, had brought upon Judah and Jerusalem the unavoidable judgment of rejection. It is true that Josiah had exterminated outward and gross idolatry throughout the land by his sincere conversion to the Lord, and by his zeal for the restoration of the lawful worship of Jehovah, and had persuaded the people to enter into covenant with its God once more; but a thorough conversion of the people to the Lord he had not been able to effect. For, as Clericus has correctly observed, " although the king was most religious, and the people obeyed him through fear, yet for all that the mind of the people was not changed, as is evident enough from the reproaches of Jeremiah, Zephaniah, and other prophets, who prophesied about that time and a little after." With regard to this point compare especially the first ten chapters of Jeremiah, which contain a resume of his labours in the reign of Josiah, and bear witness to the deep inward apostasy of the people from the Lord, not only before and during Josiah's reform of worship, but also afterwards. As the Holy One of Israel, therefore, God could not forgive any more, but was obliged to bring upon the people and kingdom, after the death of Josiah, the judgment already foretold to Manasseh himself (ch. xxi. 12 sqq.). — Ver. 2 7. The Lord said: I will also put away Judah (in the same manner as Israel: cf. ch, xvii. 20, 23) from my face, etc. "W?*fr expresses the divine decree, which was announced to the people by the prophets, especially Jeremiah and Zephaniah. — Vers. 29 and 30: compare 2 Chron. xxxv. 20-24. The predicted catastrophe was brought to pass by the expedition of Necho the king of Egypt against Assyria. " In his days (i.e. towards the end of Josiah's reign) Pharaoh Necho the king of Egypt went up against the king of Asshur to the river Euphrates." Necho (nb: or to?, 2 Chron. xxxv. 20, Jer. xlvi. 2; called Ne^aco by Josephus, Manetho in Jul. Afric., and Euseb., after the LXX.; and New by Herod, ii. 158, 159, iv. 42, and Diod. Sic. i. 33; according to Brugsch, hist. oVEg. i. p. 252, Nekaou) was, according to Man., the sixth king of the twenty-sixth (Saitic) dynasty, the second Pharaoh of that name, the son of Psammetichus i. and grandson of Necho I.; and, according to Herodotus, he was celebrated for a canal which he proposed to have cut in order to connect the Nile with the Bed Sea, as well as for the circumnavigation of Africa (compare Brugsch, I.e., according to whom he reigned from 611 to 595 B.C.). Whether " the king of Asshur" against whom Necho marched was the last ruler of the Assyrian empire, Asardanpal (Sardanapal), Saracus according to the monuments (see Brandis, Ueber den Gewinn, p. 55; M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Assurs, pp. 110 sqq. and 192), or the existing ruler of the Assyrian empire which had already fallen, Nabopolassar the king of Babylon, who put an end to the Assyrian monarchy in alliance with the Medes by the conquest and destruction of Nineveh, and founded the Chaldaean or Babylonian empire, it is impossible to determine, because the year in which Nineveh was taken cannot be exactly decided, and all that is certain is that Nineveh had fallen before the battle of Carchemish in the year 606 B.C. Compare M. v. Niebuhr, Gesch. Assurs, pp. 109 sqq. and 203, 204. — King Josiah went against the Egyptian, and " he (Necho) slew him at Megiddo when he saw him," i.e. caught sight of him. This extremely brief notice of the death of Josiah is explained thus in the Chronicles: that Necho sent ambassadors to Josiah, when he was taking the field against him, with an appeal that he would not fight against him, because his only intention was to make war upon Asshur, but that Josiah did not allow himself to be diverted from his purpose, and fought a battle with Necho in the valley of Megiddo, in which he was mortally wounded by the archers. What induced Josiah to oppose with force of arms the advance of the Egyptian to the Euphrates, notwithstanding the assurance of Necho that he had no wish to fight against Judah, is neither to be sought for in the fact that Josiah was dependent upon Babylon, which is at variance with history, nor in the fact that the kingdom of Judah had taken possession of all the territory of the ancient inheritance of Israel, and Josiah was endeavouring to restore all the ancient glory of the house of David over the surrounding nations (Ewald, Gesch. iii. p. 707), but solely in Josiah's conviction that Judah could not remain neutral in the war which had broken out between Egypt and Babylon, and in the hope that by attacking Necho, and frustrating his expedition to the Euphrates, he might be able to avert great distress from his own land and kingdom.1

This battle is also mentioned by Herodotus (ii. 159); but he calls the place where it was fought Mdy&oXov, i.e. neither Migdol, which was twelve Eoman miles to the south of Pelusium (Forbiger, Hdb. d. altcn Geogr. ii p. 695), nor the perfectly apocryphal Magdala or Migdal Zebaiah mentioned by the Talmudists (Reland, Pal. p. 898, 899), as Movers supposes. We might rather think with Ewald {Gesch. iii. p. 708) of the present Mcjdel, to the south-east of Acca, at a northern source of the Kishon, and regard this as the place where the Egyptian camp was pitched, whereas Israel stood to the east of it, at the place still called Rummane, at Hadad-Rimmon in the valley of Megiddo, as Ewald assumes {Gesch. iii. p. 708). But even this combination is overthrown by the fact that Rummane, which lies to the east of el Mejdel at the distance of a mile and threequarters (geogr.), on the southern edge of the plain of Buttauf, cannot possibly be the Hadad-Rimmon mentioned in Zech. xii. 11, where king Josiah died after he had been wounded in the battle. For since Megiddo is identical with the Roman Legio, the present Lejun, as Robinson has proved (see at Josh. xii. 21), and as is generally admitted even by C. v. Raumer {Pal. p. 447, note, ed. 4), Hadad-Rimmon must be the same as the village of Riimmuni {Rummane), which is three-quarters of an hour to the

fectly correct policy. Nineveh was falling (if not already fallen), and the Syrian princes, both those who had remained independent, like Josiah, and also the vassals of Asshur, might hope that, after the fall of Nineveh, they would succeed in releasing Syria from every foreign yoke. How wellfounded this hope was, is evident from the strenuous exertions which Nabukudrussur was afterwards obliged to make, in order to effect the complete subjugation of Syria. It was therefore necessary to hinder at any price the settlement of -the Egyptians now. Even though Necho assured Josiah that he was not marching against him (2 Chron. xxxv. 21), Josiah knew that if once the Egyptians were lords of Coele-Syria, his independence would be gone."

south of Lejun, where the Scottish missionaries in the year 1839 found many ancient wells and other traces of Israelitish times (V. de Velde, R. i p. 2 6 7; Memoir, pp. 3 3 3, 3 3 4). But this Bummane is four geographical miles distant from el Mcjdel, and Megiddo three and a half, so that the battle fought at Megiddo cannot take its name from el Mejdel, which is more than three miles off. The Magdolon of Herodotus can only arise from some confusion between it and Megiddo, which was a very easy thing with the Greek pronunciation MayeSSco, without there being any necessity to assume that Herodotus was thinking of the Egyptian Migdol, which is called Magdolo in the Itin. Ant. p. 171 (cf. Brugsch, Geogr. Inschriften altdgypt Denkmaler, i. pp. 261, 262). If, then, Josiah went to Megiddo in the plain of Esdrelom to meet the king of Egypt, and fell in with him there, there can be no doubt that Necho came by sea to Palestine and landed at Acco, as des Vignoles (Chronol. ii. p. 427) assumed.1 Eor if the Egyptian army had marched by land through the plain of Philistia, Josiah would certainly have gone thither to meet it, and not have allowed it to advance into the plain of Megiddo without fighting a battle. — Ver. 30. The brief statement, " his servants carried him dead from Megiddo and brought him to Jerusalem," is given with more minuteness in the Chronicles: his servants took him, the severely wounded king, by his own

1 This is favoured by the account in Herodotus (ii. 159), that Nccho built ships: TpiYipag cti piv WX rf) (Sown QofhuooYi... cti Zs iv ru ' Apocfiiu xohiru (triremes in septentrionale et australe mare mittendas. Biihr) — kui Tuvryat re £%c6&to \v Tw oeour;' kocI ~2vpoiat m^ri 6 Natus avy*$0Lhuv eu MayooAa iutKnas; from which we may infer that Necho carried his troops by sea to Palestine, and then fought the battle on the land. M. v. Niebuhr (Gesch. p. 365) also finds it very improbable that Necho used his fleet in this war; but he does not think it very credible " that he embarked his whole army, instead of marching them by the land route so often taken by the Egyptian army, the key of which, viz. the land of the Philistines, was at least partially subject to him," because the faxccot; (ships of burden) required for the transport of a large army were hardly to be obtained in sufhcient numbers in Egypt. But this difficulty, which rests upon mere conjecture, is neutralized by the fact, which M. Duncker (Gesch. i. p. 618) also adduces in support of the voyage by sea, namely, that the decisive battle with the Jews was fought to the north-west of Jerusalem, and when the Jews were defeated, the way to Jerusalem stood open for their retreat. Movers (Phoniz. ii. 1, p. 420), who also imagines that Necho advanced with a large land-army towards the frontier of Palestine, has therefore transferred the battle to Magdolo on the Egyptian frontier; but he does this by means of the most arbitrary interpretation of the account given by Herodotus.

command, from his chariot to his second chariot, and drove him to Jerusalem, and he died and was buried, etc. Where he died the Chronicles do not affirm; the occurrence of HDJ1 after the words " they brought him to Jerusalem," does not prove that he did not die till he reached Jerusalem. If we compare Zech. xii. 11, where the prophet draws a parallel between the lamentation at the death of the Messiah and the lamentation of Hadad- Rimmon in the valley of Megiddo, as the deepest lamentation of the people in the olden time, with the account given in 2 Chron. xxxv. 25 of the lamentation of the whole nation at the death of Josiah, there can hardly be any doubt that Josiah died on the way to Jerusalem at Hadad-Rimmon, the present Rummane, to the south of Lejun (see above), and was taken to Jerusalem dead. — He was followed on the throne by his younger son Jehoahaz, whom the people (D?? DV, as in ch. xxi. 24) anointed king, passing over the elder, Eliakim, probably because they regarded him as the more able man.

Vers. 31-35. Reign of Jehoahaz (cf. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 1-4). — Jehoahaz, called significantly by Jeremiah (xxii. 11) Shall inn, i.e. " to whom it is requited," reigned only three months, and did evil in the eyes of the Lord as all his fathers had done. The people (or the popular party), who had preferred him to his elder brother, had apparently set great hopes upon him, as we may judge from Jer. xxii. 10—12, and seem to have expected that his strength and energy would serve to avert the danger which threatened the kingdom on the part of Necho. Ezekiel (ch. xix. 3) compares him to a young lion which learned to catch the prey and devoured men, but, as soon as the nations heard of him, was taken in their pit and led by nose-rings to Egypt, and thus attributes to him the character of a tyrant disposed to acts of violence; and Josephus accordingly (Ant. x. 5, 2) describes him as acre/3?)? kcli /Jbiapos rov rpbirov. — Ver. 33. " Pharaoh Necho put him in fetters (VTOK3) at Riblah in the land of Hamath, when he had become king at Jerusalem." In 2 Chron. xxxvi. 3 we have, instead of this, " the king of Egypt deposed him pnWJ) at Jerusalem." The Masoretes have substituted as Kcri "^ptpp, " away from being king," or " that he might be no longer king," in the place of *pjp?, and Thenius and Bertheau prefer the former, because the LXX. have tov /jltj ftaaiXeveLv not in our text only, but in the Chronicles also; but they ought not to have appealed to the Chronicles, inasmuch as the LXX. have not rendered the Hebrew text there, but have simply repeated the words from the text of the book of Kings. The Kcri is nothing more than an emendation explaining the sense, which the LXX. have also followed. The two texts are not contradictory, but simply complete each other: for, as Clericus has correctly observed, " Jehoahaz would of course be removed from Jerusalem before he was cast into chains; and there was nothing to prevent his being dethroned at Jerusalem before he was taken to Eiblah." We are not told in what way Necho succeeded in getting Jehoahaz into his power, so as to put him in chains at Eiblah. The assumption of J. D. Michaelis and others, that his elder brother Eliakim, being dissatisfied with the choice of Jehoahaz as king, had recourse to Necho at Eiblah, in the hope of getting possession of his father's kingdom through his instrumentality, is precluded by the fact that Jehoahaz would certainly not have been so foolish as to appear before the enemy of his country at a mere summons from Pharaoh, who was at Eiblah, and allow him to depose him, when he was perfectly safe in Jerusalem, where the will of the people had raised him to the throne. If Necho wanted to interfere with the internal affairs of the kingdom of Judah, it would never have done for him to proceed beyond Palestine to Syria after the victory at Megiddo, without having first deposed Jehoahaz, who had been raised to the throne at Jerusalem without any regard to his will. The course of events was therefore probably the following: After the victory at Megiddo, Necho intended to continue his march to the Euphrates; but on hearing that Jehoahaz had ascended the throne, and possibly also in consequence of complaints which Eliakim had made to him on that account, he ordered a division of his army to march against Jerusalem, and while the main army was marching slowly to Eiblah, he had Jerusalem taken, king Jehoahaz dethroned, the land laid under tribute, Eliakim appointed king as his vassal, and the deposed Jehoahaz brought to his headquarters at Eiblah, then put into chains and transported to Egypt; so that the statement in 2 Chron. xxxvi. 3, "he deposed him at Jerusalem," is to be taken quite literally, even if Necho did not come to Jerusalem in propria pcrsond, but simply effected this through the medium of one of his generals.1 Biblali has been preserved in the miserable village of Bible, from ten to twelve hours to the S.S.W. of Hums (Emesa) by the river el Ahsy (Orontes), in a large fruitful plain of the northern portion of the Bekaa, which was very well adapted to serve as the camping ground of Necho' s army as well as of that of Nebuchadnezzar (ch. xxv. 6, 20, 21), not only because it furnished the most abundant supply of food and fodder, but also on account of its situation on the great caravan-road from Palestine by Damascus, Emesa, and Hamath to Thapsacus and Carchemish on the Euphrates (cf. Kob. Bill Res. pp. 542-546 and 641). — In the payment imposed upon the land by Necho, one talent of gold (c. 25,000 thalers: £3750) does not seem to bear any correct proportion to 100 talents of silver (c. 250,000 thalers, or £37,500), and consequently the LXX. have 100 talents of gold, the Syr. and Arab. 10 talents; and Thenius supposes this to have been the original reading, and explains the reading in the text from the dropping out of a * (= 10), though without reflecting that as a rule the number 10 would require the plural Dn33. — Ver. 34. From the words " Necho made Eliakim the son

1 Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 720) also observes, that " Necho himself may have been in Jerusalem at the time for the purpose of installing his vassal:" this, lie says, " is indicated by the brief words in 2 Kings xxiii. 33, 34, and nothing can be found to say against it in other historical sources; " though he assumes that Jehoahaz had allowed himself to be enticed by Necho to go to Riblah into the Egyptian camp, where he was craftily put into chains, and soon carried off as a prisoner to Egypt. — We should have a confirmation of the taking of Jerusalem by Necho in the account given by Herodotus (ii. 159): ftiTcc li ty.v (Actxnv (i.e. after the battle at Megiddo) Kulvrtv iro'hiv rijg Ivp'anz lovactv psy*- *yiv eJXe, if any evidence could be brought to establish the opinion that by Kotlvris we are to understand Jerusalem. But although what Herodotus says (iii. 5) concerning YLetlvrtg does not apply to any other city of Palestine so well as to Jerusalem, the use of the name Kttlvng for Jerusalem has not yet been sufficiently explained, since it cannot come from HBTlpi the holy city, because the w of this word does not pass into n in any Semitic dialect, and the explanation recently attempted by Bbttcher (iV. ex. Krit. Aehrenlese, ii. pp. 119 sqq.) from the Aramsean NJVin, the renewed city (new-town), is based upon many very questionable conjectures. At the same time so much is certain, that the view which Hitzig has revived (de Cadyti urbe Herod. Gott. 1829, p. 11, and Urgeschichte der Philister, pp. 96 sqq.), and which is now the prevalent one, viz. that KaluTi; is Gaza, is exposed to some well-founded objections, even after what Stark (Gaza, pp. 218 sqq.) has adduced in its favour. The description which Herodotus gives (iii. 5) of the land-road to Egypt: *to 3>o/i//- x*i{ piftpt wpusv ruv KctlvTiof woKiqi;, % taxi Ivpuu rav TLct'KciioTivuu xctteouti/W of Josiah king in the 'place of his father Josiah," it follows that the king of Egypt did not acknowledge the reign of Jehoahaz, because he had been installed by the people without his consent. " And changed his name into Jehoiakim." The alteration of the name was a sign of dependence. In ancient times princes were accustomed to give new names to the persons whom they took into their service, and masters to give new names to their slaves (cf. Gen. xli. 45, Ezra v. 14, Dan. i. 7, and Havernick on the last passage). — But while these names were generally borrowed from heathen deities, Eliakim, and at a later period Mattaniah (xxiv. 1 7), received genuine Israelitish names, Jehoiakim, i.e. " Jehovah will set up," and ZidJciyahu, i.e. * righteousness of Jehovah;" from which we may infer that Necho and Nebuchadnezzar did not treat the vassal kings installed by them exactly as their slaves, but allowed them to choose the new names for themselves, and simply confirmed them as a sign of their supremacy. Eliakim altered his name into Jehoiakim, i.e. El (God) into Jehovah, to set the allusion to the establishment of the kingdom, which is implied in the name, in a still more definite relation to Jehovah the covenant God, who had promised to establish the seed of David (2 Sam. vii. 14), possibly with an ctiro Se Kochvrto;, toCoy; ^ohioc, (<y? tfiol dOKiii) IctpVcuv ov 7iroKhu iXoMroovog, utto roLvrnc roc, ipnopioi rot \%\ QcthoiooYis piffli 'Iyivvoov iroktos ion tov 'Apxfiiov' does not apply to Gaza, because there were no commercial towns on the sea-coast between the district of Gaza and the town of Yenysus (the present Khan Yunas); but between the district of Jerusalem and the town of Yenysus there were the Philistian cities Ashkelon and Gaza, which Herodotus might call toc e/x7r6pioi tov ' Apocfilov, whereas the comparison made between the size of Kadytis and that of Sardes points rather to Jerusalem than to Gaza. Still less can the datum in Jer. xlvii. 1, " before Pharaoh smote Gaza," be adduced in support of Gaza. If we bear in mind that Jeremiah's prophecy (ch. xlvii.) was not uttered before the fourth year of Jehoiakim's reign, and therefore that Pharaoh had not smitten Gaza at that time, supposing that this Pharaoh was really Necho, it cannot have been till after his defeat at Carchemish that Necho took Gaza on his return home. Ewald, Hitzig, and Graf assume that this was the case; but, as M. v. Niebuhr has correctly observed, it has '* every military probability " against it, and even the incredibility that " a routed Oriental army in its retreat, which it evidently accomplished in one continuous march, notwithstanding the fact that on its line of march there were the strongest positions, on the Orontes, Lebanon, etc., at which it might have halted, should have taken the city upon its flight." And, lastly, the name Kxlvrt; does not answer to the name Gaza, even though the latter was spelt Gazatu in early Egyptian (Brugsch, Geograph. Inschr. ii. p. 32), since the v (//) of the second syllable still remains unexplained.

intentional opposition to the humiliation with which the royal house of David was threatened by Jeremiah and other prophets. — " But Jehoahaz he had taken (npp, like n^ in ch. xxiv. 12), and he came to Egypt and died there " — when, we are not told. — In ver. 35, even before the account of Jehoiakim's reign, we have fuller particulars respecting the payment of the tribute which ISTecho imposed upon the land (ver. 33), because it was the condition on which he was appointed king. — * The gold and silver Jehoiakim gave to Pharaoh; yet (J\& =but in order to raise it) he valued (TTJQ as in Lev. xxvii. 8) the land, to give the money according to Pharaoh's command; of every one according to his valuation, he exacted the silver and gold of the population of the land, to give it to Pharaoh Necho." b|3, to exact tribute, is construed with a double accusative, and P'K te"]y3 placed first for the sake of emphasis, as an explanatory apposition to Yl$\ QV'ns.

Ver. 36-ch. xxiv. 7. Reign of Jehoiakim (cf. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 5-8). — Jehoiakim reigned eleven years in the spirit of his ungodly forefathers (compare ver. 37 with ver. 32). Jeremiah represents him (ch. xxiL 13 sqq.) as a bad prince, who enriched himself by the unjust oppression of his people, " whose eyes and heart were directed upon nothing but upon gain, and upon innocent blood to shed it, and upon oppression and violence to do them" (compare ch. xxiv. 4 and Jer. xxvi. 22, 23). Josephus therefore describes him as rrjv cpvaiv aBitcos kclI fcatcovpyos, Kal fii]Te irpos Geov 6a los, f^VT6 frpoi avOpcoTrov? iirieiitr)*; (Ant. x. 5, 2). The town of Rumali, from which his mother sprang, is not mentioned anywhere else, but it has been supposed to be identical with Aruma in the neighbourhood of Shechem (Judg. ix. 41).

Ch. xxiv. ver. 1. "In his days Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babel, came up; and Jehoiakim became subject to him three years, then he revolted from him again." "mo"]?!^ Nebuchadnezzar, or "HTKTrarn, Nebuchadrezzar (Jer. xxi. 2, 7, xxii. 25, etc.), Na/3ov)(p8ov6o-op (LXX.), Na/3ov^oSov6aopo<; (Beros. in Jos. c. Ap. i. 20, 21), Nafio/coSpoG-opos (Strabo, xv. 1, 6), upon the Persian arrow-headed inscriptions at Bisutun Nabhukudracara (according to Oppert, composed of the name of God, Nabhu (Nebo), the Arabic kadr, power, and zar or sar, prince), and in still other forms (for the different forms of the name see M. v.

Niebuhrs Gesch. pp. 41, 42). He was the son of Nabopolassar, the founder of the Chaldsean monarchy, and reigned, according to Berosus (Jos. I.e.), Alex. Polyh. (Eusebii Chron. arm. i. pp. 44, 45), and the Canon of PtoL, forty-three years, from 605 to 562 B.C. With regard to his first campaign against Jerusalem, it is stated in 2 Chron. xxxvi. 6, that " against him (Jehoiakim) came up Nebuchadnezzar, and bound him with brass chains, to carry him (isvin?) to Babylon;" and in Dan. i. 1, 2, that " in the year three of the reign of Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar came against Jerusalem and besieged it; and the Lord gave Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, into his hand, and a portion of the holy vessels, and he brought them (the vessels) into the land of Shinar, into the house of his god," etc. Bertheau (on Chr.) admits that all three passages relate to Nebuchadnezzar's first expedition against Jehoiakim and the first taking of Jerusalem by the king of Babylon, and rejects the alteration of to^rtp, " to lead him to Babylon" (Chr.), into a7rrjyayev avrov (LXX.), for which Thenius decides in his prejudice in favour of the LXX. He has also correctly observed, that the chronicler intentionally selected the infinitive with b, because he did not intend to speak of the actual transportation of Jehoiakim to Babylon. The words of our text, " Jehoiakim became servant C1?^) to him," i.e. subject to him, simply affirm that he became tributary, not that he was led away. And in the book of Daniel also there is nothing about the leading away of Jehoiakim to Babylon. Whilst, therefore, the three accounts agree in the main with one another, and supply one another's deficiencies, so that we learn that Jehoiakim was taken prisoner at the capture of Jerusalem and put in chains to be led away, but that, inasmuch as he submitted to Nebuchadnezzar and vowed fidelity, he was not taken away, but left upon the throne as vassal of the king of Babylon; the statement in the book of Daniel concerning the time when this ^vent occurred, which is neither contained in our account nor in the Chronicles, presents a difficulty when compared with Jer. xxv. and xlvi. 2, and different attempts, some of them very constrained, have been made to remove it. According to Jer. xlvi. 2, Nebuchadnezzar smote Necho the king of Egypt at Carchemish, on the Euphrates, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. This year is not only called the first year of Nebuchadnezzar in Jer. xxv. 1, but is represented by the prophet as the turning-point of the kingdom of Judah by the announcement that the Lord would bring His servant Nebuchadnezzar upon Judah and its inhabitants, and also upon all the nations dwelling round about, that he would devastate Judah, and that these nations would serve the king of Babylon seventy years (Jer. xxv. 9-11). Consequently not only the defeat of Necho at Carchemish, but also the coming of Nebuchadnezzar to Judah, fell in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and not in the third. To remove this discrepancy, some have proposed that the time mentioned, " in the fourth year of Jehoiakim" (Jer. xlvi. 2), should be understood as relating, not to the year of the battle at Carchemish, but to the time of the prophecy of Jeremiah against Egypt contained in ch. xlvi., and that Jer. xxv. should also be explained as follows, that in this chapter the prophet is not announcing the first capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, but is proclaiming a year after this the destruction of Jerusalem and the devastation of the whole land, or a total judgment upon Jerusalem and the rest of the nations mentioned there (M. v. Nieb. Gesch. pp. 86, 87, 371). But this explanation is founded upon the erroneous assumption, that Jer. xlvi. 3-12 does not contain a prediction of the catastrophe awaiting Egypt, but a picture of what has already taken place there; and it is only in a very forced manner that it can be brought into harmony with the contents of Jer. xxv.1 We mast rather take " the year three of the reign of Jehoiakim" (Dan. i. 1) as the extreme terminus a quo of Nebuchadnezzar's coming, i.e. must understand the statement thus: that in the year referred to Nebuchadnezzar commenced the expedition against Judah, and smote Necho at Carchemish at the commencement of the fourth year of Jehoiakim (Jer. xlvi. 2), and then, following up this victory, took Jerusalem in the same year, and made Jehoiakim tributary, and at the same time carried off to Babylon a portion of the sacred vessels, and some young men of royal blood as hostages, one of whom was Daniel (2 Chron. xxxvi. 7; Dan. i. 2 sqq.). The fast mentioned in Jer. xxxvi. 9, which took place in the fifth year

1 Still less tenable is the view of Hofmann, renewed by Ziindel (Krit. Unterss. iib. d. Abfassungszeit des B. Daniel, p. 25), that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem in the third year of Jehoiakim, and that it was not till the following, or fourth year, that he defeated the Egyptian army at Carchemish, because so long as Pharaoh Necho stood with his army by or in Carchemish, on the Euphrates, Nebuchadnezzar could not possibly attempt to pass it so as to effect a march upon Jerusalem.

of Jehoiakim, cannot be adduced in disproof of this; for extraordinary fast-days were not only appointed for the purpose of averting great threatening dangers, but also after severe calamities which had fallen upon the land or people, to expiate His wrath by humiliation before God, and to invoke the divine compassion to remove the judgment that had fallen upon them. The objection, that the godless king would hardly have thought of renewing the remembrance of a divine judgment by a day of repentance and prayer, but would rather have desired to avoid everything that could make the people despair, falls to the ground, with the erroneous assumption upon which it is founded, that by the fast-day Jehoiakim simply intended to renew the remembrance of the judgment which had burst upon Jerusalem, whereas he rather desired by outward humiliation before God to secure the help of God to enable him to throw off the Chaldaean yoke, and arouse in the people a religious enthusiasm for war against their oppressors. — Further information concerning this first expedition of Nebuchadnezzar is supplied by the account of Berosus, which Josephus (Ant. x. 11, and c. Ap. i. 19) has preserved from the third book of his Chaldaean history, namely, that when Nabopolassar received intelligence of the revolt of the satrap whom he had placed over Egypt, Ccele-Syria, and Phoenicia, because he was no longer able on account of age to bear the hardships of war, he placed a portion of his army in the hands of his youthful son Nebuchadnezzar and sent him against the satrap. Nebuchadnezzar defeated him in battle, and established his power over that country again. In the meantime Nabopolassar fell sick and died in Babylon; and as soon as the tidings reached Nebuchadnezzar, he hastened through the desert to Babylon with a small number of attendants, and directed his army to follow slowly after regulating the affairs of Egypt and the rest of the country, and to bring with it the prisoners from the Jews, Syrians, Phoenicians, and Egyptian tribes, and with the heavily-armed troops. So much, at any rate, is evident from this account, after deducting the motive assigned for the war, which is given from a Chaldaean point of view, and may be taken as a historical fact, that even before his father's death Nebuchadnezzar had not only smitten the Egyptians, but had also conquered Judah and penetrated to the borders of Egypt. And there is no discrepancy between the statement of Berosus, that Nebuchadnezzar was not yet king, and the fact that in the hiblical books he is called king proleptically, became he marched against Judah with kingly authority.

Vers. 2-7. To punish Jehoiakim' s rebellion, Jehovah sent hosts of Chaldaeans, Aramaeans, Moabites, and Ammonites against him and against Judah to destroy it (il^xnp). Nebuchadnezzar was probably too much occupied with other matters relating to his kingdom, during the earliest years of his reign after his father's death, to be able to proceed at once against Jehoiakim and punish him for his revolt.1 He may also have thought it a matter of too little importance for him to go himself, as there was not much reason to be afraid of Egypt since its first defeat (cf. M. v. Niebuhr, p. 375). He therefore merely sent such troops against him as were in the neighbourhood of Judah at the time. The tribes mentioned along with the Chaldaeans were probably all subject to Nebuchadnezzar, so that they attacked Judah at his command in combination with the Chaldaean tribes left upon the frontier. How much they effected is not distinctly stated; but it is evident that they were not able to take Jerusalem, from the fact that after the death of Jehoiakim his son was able to ascend the throne (ver. 6). — The sending of these troops is ascribed to Jehovah, who, as the supreme controller of the fate of the covenant-nation, punished Jehoiakim for his rebellion. For, after the Lord had given Judah into the hands of the Chaldreans as a punishment for its apostasy from Him, all revolt from them was rebellion against the Lord. " According to the word of Jehovah, which He spake by His servants the prophets," viz. Isaiah, Micah, Habakkuk, Jeremiah, and others. — Vers. 3, 4. m *B"vJ! ^]K: " only according to the mouth (command) of Jehovah did this take place against Judah," i.e. for no other reason than because the Lord had determined to put away Judah from before His face because of Manasseh's sins (cf. ch. xxi. 12-16, and xxiii. 27). "And Jehovah would not

1 Compare the remarks of M. v. Niebuhr on this point (Gesch. pp. 208, 209) and his summary at p. 209: " Nebuchadnezzar had enough to do in Babylon and the eastern half of his kingdom, to complete the organization of the new kingdom, to make the military roads to the western half of the kingdom along the narrow valley of the Euphrates and through the desert, and also to fortify them and provide them with watering stations and every other requisite, to repair the damages of the Scythian hordes and the long contest with Nineveh, to restore the shattered authority, and to bring Arabs and mountain-tribes to order. All this was more important than a somewhat Tiore rapid termination of the Egyptian war and the pacification of Syria."

forgive," even if the greatest intercessors, Moses and Samuel, had come before Him (Jer. xv. 1 sqq.), because the measure of the sins was full, so that God was obliged to punish according to His holy righteousness. We must repeat 3 from the preceding words before si?3n di. — Ver. 6. " Jehoiakim lay down to (fell asleep with) his fathers, and Jehoiachin his son became king in his stead." That this statement is not in contradiction to the prophecies of Jer. xxii. 19:" Jehoiakim shall be buried like an ass, carried away and cast out far away from the gates of Jerusalem," and xxxvi. 30: "no son of his shall sit upon the throne of David, and his body shall lie exposed to the heat by day and to the cold by night," is now generally admitted, as it has already been by J. D. Michaelis and Winer. But the solution proposed by MiGhaelis, Winer, and M. v. Niebuhr {Gesch. p. 376) is not sufficient, namely, that at the conquest of Jerusalem, which took place three months after the death of Jehoiakim, his bones were taken out of the grave, either by the victors out of revenge for his rebellion, or by the fury of the people, and cast out before the city gate; for Jeremiah expressly predicts that he shall have no funeral and no burial whatever. We must therefore assume that he was slain in a battle fought with the troops sent against him, and was not buried at all; an assumption which is not at variance with the words, * he laid himself down to his fathers," since this formula does not necessarily indicate a peaceful death by sickness, but is also applied to king Ahab, who was slain in battle (1 Kings xxii. 40, cf. 2 Kings xxii. 20).1 — And even though his son Jehoiachin ascended the throne after his father's death and maintained his position for three months against the Chaldseans, until at length he fell into their hands and was carried away alive to Babylon, the prophet might very truly describe this short reign as not sitting upon the throne of David (cf. Graf on Jer. xxii. 19). — To the death of Jehoiakim there is appended the notice in ver. 7, that the king of Egypt did not go out of his own land any more, because the king of Babylon had taken away everything that had belonged to the king of Egypt,

1 The supposition of Ewald (Gesch. iii. p. 733), that Jehoiakim was enticed out of the capital by a stratagem of the enemy, and taken prisoner, and because he made a furious resistance was hurried off in a scuffle and mercilessly slaughtered, is at variance with the fact that, according to ver. 10, it was not till after his death that the army of the enemy advanced to the front of Jerusalem and commenced the siege.

from the brook of Egypt to the river Euphrates. The purpose of this notice is to indicate, on the one hand, what attitude Necho, whose march to the Euphrates was previously mentioned, had assumed on the conquest of Judah by the Chaldeeans, and on the other hand, that under these circumstances a successful resistance to the Chaldeans on the part of Judah was not for a moment to be thought of.

Vers. 8-17 (cf. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 9 and 10). Jehoiachin, P?^ or psi1 (Ezek. i. 2), i.e. he whom Jehovah fortifies, called ^Jff. in 1 Chron. iii. 16, 17, and Jer. xxvii. 20, xxviii. 4, etc., and VtKff in Jer. xxii. 24, 28, xxxvii. 1, probably according to the popular twisting and contraction of the name Jehoiachin, was eighteen years old when he ascended the throne (the eight years of the Chronicles are a slip of the pen), and reigned three months, or, according to the more precise statement of the Chronicles, three months and ten days, in the spirit of his father. Ezekiel (xix. 5—7) describes him not only as a young lion, who learned to prey and devoured men, like Jehoahaz, but also affirms of him that he knew their (the deceased men's) widows, i.e. ravished them, and destroyed their cities, — that is to say, he did not confine his deeds of violence to individuals, but extended them to all that was left behind by those whom he had murdered, viz. to their families and possessions; and nothing is affirmed in Jer. xxii. 24 and 28 respecting his character at variance with this. His mother Nchushta was a daughter of Elnathan, a ruler of the people, or prince, from Jerusalem (Jer. xxvi. 22, xxxvi. 12, 25). — Ver. 10. "At that time," i.e. when Jehoiachin had come to the throne, or, according to 2 Chron. xxxvi. 10, " at the turn of the year," i.e. in the spring (see at 1 Kings xx. 22), the servants (generals) of Nebuchadnezzar marched against Jerusalem, and the city was besieged. The Keri w is substantially correct, but is an unnecessary alteration of the Chethib »"w, since the verb when it precedes the subject is not unfrequently used in the singular, though before a plural subject (cf. Ewald, § 316, a). The '33 na$ are different from the DHH3 of ver. 2. As the troops sent against Jehoiakim had not been able to conquer Judah, especially Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar sent his generals with an army against Jerusalem, to besiege the city and take it. — Ver. 11. During the siege he came himself to punish Jehoiakim's revolt in the person of his successor. — Ver. 12. Then Jehoiachin went out to the king of Babylon to yield himself up to him, because he perceived the impossibility of holding the city any longer against the besiegers, and probably hoped to secure the favour of Nebuchadnezzar, and perhaps to retain the throne as his vassal by a voluntary submission. Nebuchadnezzar, however, did not show favour any more, as he had done to Jehoiakim at the first taking of Jerusalem, but treated Jehoiachin as a rebel, made him prisoner, and led him away to Babylon, along with his mother, his wives (ver. 15), his princes and his chamberlains, as Jeremiah had prophesied (ch. xxii. 24 sqq.), in the eighth year of his (Nebuchadnezzar's) reign. The reference to the king's mother in vers. 12 and 15 is not to be explained on the ground that she still acted as guardian over the king, who was not yet of age (J. D. Mich.), but from the influential position which she occupied in the kingdom as ny?$n (Jer. xxix. 2: see at 1 Kings xiv. 21). The eighth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar is reckoned from the time when his father had transferred to him the chief command over the army to make war upon Necho, according to which his first year coincides with the fourth year of Jehoiakim (Jer. xxv. 1). As Nebuchadnezzar acted as king, so far as the Jews were concerned, from that time forward, although he conducted the war by command of his father, this is always reckoned as the point of time at which his reign commenced, both in our books and also in Jeremiah (cf. ch. xxv. 8; Jer. xxxii. 1). According to this calculation, his reign lasted forty-four years, viz. the eight years of Jehoiakim and the thirty-six years of Jehoiachin's imprisonment, as is evident from ch. xxv. 27. — Ver. 13. Nebuchadnezzar thereupon, that is to say, when he had forced his way into the city, plundered the treasures of the temple and palace, and broke the gold off the vessels which Solomon had made in the temple of Jehovah. Y?.P, to cut off, break off, as in ch. xvi. 1 7, i.e. to bear off the gold plates. Nebuchadnezzar had already taken a portion of the golden vessels of the temple away with him at the first taking of Jerusalem in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and had placed them in the temple of his god at Babylon (2 Chron. xxxvi. 7; Dan. i. 2). They were no doubt the smaller vessels of solid gold, — basins, scoops, goblets, knives, tongs, etc., — which Cyrus delivered up again to the Jews on their return to their native land (Ezra i. 7 sqq.). This time he took the gold off the larger vessels, which were simply plated with that metal, such as the altar of burnt-offering, the table of shew-bread and ark of the covenant, and carried it away as booty, so that on the third conquest of Jerusalem, in the time of Zedekiah, beside a few gold and silver basins and scoops (ch. xxv. 1 5) there were only the large brazen vessels of the court remaining (ch. xxv. 13-17; Jer. xxvii. 18 sqq.). The words, " as Jehovah had spoken," refer to ch. xx. 17 and Isa. xxxix. 6, and to the sayings of other prophets, such as Jer. xv. 13, xvii. 3, etc. — Vers. 14-16. Beside these treasures, he carried away captive to Babylon the cream of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, not only the most affluent, but, as is evident from Jer. xxiv., the best portion in a moral respect. In ver. 14 the number of those who were carried off is simply given in a general form, according to its sum-total, as 10,000; and then in vers. 15 and 16 the details are more minutely specified. " Ail Jerusalem " is the whole of the population of Jerusalem, which is first of all divided into two leading classes, and then more precisely defined by the clause, " nothing was left except the common people," and reduced to the cream of the citizens. The king, queen-mother, and king's wives being passed over and mentioned for the first time in the special list in ver. 15, there are noticed here D'nfrrr;^ and s)nn '"Jiaa?b, who form the first of the leading classes. By the WW are meant, according to ver. 15, the 0^19* chamberlains, i.e. the officials of the king's court in general, and by v*K H.?? (" the mighty of the land ") all the heads of the tribes and families of the nation that were found in Jerusalem; and under the last the priests and prophets, who were also carried away, according to Jer. xxix. 1, with Ezekiel among them (Ezek. i. 1), are included as the spiritual heads of the people. The P^nn ^"ii33 are called <*nn *KOg in ver. 16; their number was 7000. The persons intended are not warriors, but men of property, as in ch. xv. 20. The second class of those who were carried away consisted of i^njps, all the workers in stone, metal, and wood, that is to say, masons, smiths, and carpenters; and ifDBH, the locksmiths, including probably not actual locksmiths only, but makers of weapons also. There is no need for any serious refutation of the marvellous explanation given of "*j|DD "by Hitzig (on Jer. xxiv. 1), who derives it from Dp and "tt, and supposes it to be an epithet applied to the remnant of the Canaanites, who had been made into tributary labourers, although it has been adopted by Thenius and Graf, who make them into artisans of the foreign socagers. H^r"0^ nH=H{rJ7"n^ (c^- XXY- ^)> ^e Poor PeoplQ of tlie land, i.e. the lower portion of the population of Jerusalem, from whom Nebuchadnezzar did not fear any rebellion, because they possessed nothing (Jer. xxxix. 10), i.e. neither property (money nor other possessions), nor strength and ability to organize a revolt. The antithesis to these is formed by the nonpp W 0^133, the strong or powerful men, who were in a condition to originate and carry on a war; for this category includes all who were carried away, not merely the thousand workmen, but also the seven thousand ^nn W2X, and the king's officers and the chiefs of the nation, whose number amounted to two thousand, since the total number of the exiles was ten thousand. There is no special allusion to warriors or military, because in the struggle for the rescue of the capital and the kingdom from destruction every man who could bear arms performed military service, so that the distinction between warriors and non-warriors was swept away, and the actual warriors are swallowed up in the ten thousand. Babel is the country of Babylonia, or rather the Babylonian empire. — Ver. 1 7. Over the lower classes of the people who had been left behind Nebuchadnezzar placed the paternal uncle of the king, who had been led away, viz. Mattaniah, and made him king under the name of Zedekiah. He was the youngest son of Josiah (Jer. i. 3, xxxvii. 1); was only ten years old when his father died, and twenty-one years old when he ascended the throne; and as the uncle of Jehoiachin, who being only a youth of eighteen could not have a son capable of reigning, had the first claim to the throne. Instead of i^R, his uncle, we have in 2 Chron. xxxvi. 10 WTC, hjs brother, i.e. his nearest relation. On the change in the name see at ch. xxiii. 34. The name *nJi?TO, i.e. he who has Jehovah's righteousness, was probably chosen by Mattaniah in the hope that through him or in his reign the Lord would create the righteousness promised to His people.

CHAP. XXIV. 18-XXY. 30. REIGN OF ZEDEKIAH, DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM AND THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH, AND FATE OF THE PEOPLE LEFT BEHIND, AND OF KING JEHOIACHIN.1

1 To this section the historical appendix to the book of Jeremiah (Jer. lii.) furnishes a parallel, which agrees with it for the most part word for word, mital, daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah, was also the mother of Jehoahaz (ch. xxiii. 31); consequently he was his own brother and the half-brother of Jehoiakim, whose mother was named Zebidah (ch. xxiiL 3G). His reign lasted eleven years, and in its attitude towards the Lord exactly resembled that of his brother Jehoiakim, except that Zedekiah does not appear to have possessed so much energy for that which was evil. According to Jer. xxxviii. 5 and 24 sqq., he was weak in character, and completely governed by the great men of his kingdom, having no power or courage whatever to offer resistance. But, like them, he did not hearken to the words of the Lord through Jeremiah (Jer. xxxviL 2), or, as it is expressed in 2 Chron. xxxvi. 12, " he did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, who spake to him out of the mouth of the Lord." — Yer. 20. " For because of the wrath of the Lord it happened concerning Judah and Jerusalem." The subject to <"irvn is to be taken from what precedes, viz. Zedekiah's doing evil, or that such a God-resisting man as Zedekiah became king. " Not that it was of God that Zedekiah was wicked, but that Zedekiah, a man (if we believe Brentius, in loc.) simple, dependent upon counsellors, yet at the same time despising the word of God and impenitent (2 Chron. xxxvi. 12, 13), became king, so as to be the cause of Jerusalem's destruction" (Seb. Schm.). On 'Ul b&Wl ny cf. ver. 3, and ch. xvii. 18, 23. "And Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babel," who, according to 2 Chron. xxxvi. 13, had made him swear by God, to whom he was bound omitting only the short account of the murder of Gedaliah and of the flight of the people to Egypt (vers. 22-26), and adding instead a computation of the number of the people who were led away to Babel by Nebuchadnezzar (vers. 28-30). Apart from the less important variations, which have arisen in part simply from copyists1 errors, we have in Jer. lii. 18, and especially in vers. 21 and 22, by no means unimportant notices concerning the vessels of the temple, especially concerning the ornaments of the brazen pillars, which do not occur anywhere in our books. It is evident from this that our text was not derived from Jer. lii. (Havernick), and that Jer. lii. was not borrowed from our books of Kings and appended to the book of Jeremiah's prophecies (Ros., Maur., Ew., Graf). On the contrary, the two accounts are simply brief extracts from one common and more elaborate history of the later times of the kingdom of Judah, possibly composed by Jeremiah or Baruch, analogous to the two extracts from the history of Hezekiah in 2 Kings xviii.-xx. and Isa. xxx". -xxxix. — More minute accounts of this space of time are given in the historical portions of the prophecies of Jeremiah (ch. xxxix.-xliv.), which form an explanatory commentary to the section before us.

by oath to render fealty. This breach of covenant and frivolous violation of his oath Ezekiel also condemns in sharp words (Ezek. xvii. 1 3 sqq.), as a grievous sin against the Lord. Zedekiah also appears from the very first to have had no intention of keeping the oath of fealty which he took to the king of Babel with very great uprightness. For only a short time after he was installed as king he despatched an embassy to Babel (Jer. xxix. 3), which, judging from the contents of the letter to the exiles that Jeremiah gave to the ambassadors to take with them, can hardly have been sent with any other object than to obtain from the king of Babel the return of those who had been carried away. Then in the fourth year of his reign he himself made a journey to Babel (Jer. xli. 59), evidently to investigate the circumstances upon the spot, and to ensure the king of Babel of his fidelity. And in the fifth month of the same year, probably after his return from Babel, ambassadors of the Moabites, Ammonites, Tyrians, and Sidonians came to Jerusalem to make an alliance with him for throwing off the Chaldaean yoke (Jer. xxvii. 3). Zedekiah also had recourse to Egypt, where the enterprising Pharaoh Hophra (Apries) had ascended the throne; and then, in spite of the warnings of Jeremiah, trusting to the help of Egypt, revolted from the king of Babel, probably at a time when Nebuchadnezzar (according to the combinations of M. v. Nieb., which are open to question however) was engaged in a war with Media.

Ch. xxv. 1-7. Siege and conquest of Jerusalem; Zedekiah taken prisoner and led away to Babel (cf. Jer. lii. 4-11 and xxxix. 1—7). — Ver. 1. In the ninth year of the reign of Zedekiah, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar marched with all his forces against Jerusalem and commenced the siege (cf. Jer. xxxix. 1), after he had taken all the rest of the fortified cities of the land, with the exception of Lachish and Azekah, which were besieged at the same time as Jerusalem (Jer. xxxiv. 7). On the very same day the commencement of the siege of Jerusalem was revealed to the prophet Ezekiel in his exile (Ezek. xxiv. 1). " And they built against it (the city) siege-towers round about." iT/J, which only occurs here and in Jeremiah (lii. 4) and Ezekiel (iv. 2, xvii. 17, xxi. 27, xxvi. 8), does not mean either a line of circumvallation (J. D. Mich., Hitzig), or the outermost enclosure constructed of palisades (Thenius, whose assertion that R]^ is always mentioned as the first work of the besiegers is refuted by Ezek. xvii. 1 7 and xxi. 2 7), but a watch, and that in a collective sense: watch-towers or siege- towers (cf. Ges. thcs. p. 330, and Havernick on Ezek. iv. 2). — Ver. 2. " And the city was besieged till the eleventh year of king Zedekiah," in which the northern wall of the city was broken through on the ninth day of the fourth month (ver. 3). That Jerusalem could sustain a siege of this duration, namely eighteen months, shows what the strength of the fortifications must have been. Moreover the siege was interrupted for a short time, when the approach of the Egyptian king Hophra compelled the Chaldaeans to march to meet him and drive him back, which they appear to have succeeded in doing without a battle (cf. Jer. xxxvii. 5 sqq., Ezek xvii. 7). — Vers. 3, 4. Trusting partly to the help of the Egyptians and partly to the strength of Jerusalem, Zedekiah paid no attention to the repeated entreaties of Jeremiah, that he would save himself with his capital -and people from the destruction which was otherwise inevitable, by submitting, to the Chaldaeans (cf. Jer. xxi. 37 and 38), but allowed things to reach their worst, until the famine became so intense, that inhuman horrors were perpetrated (cf. Lam. ii. 20, 21, iv. 9, 10), and eventually a breach was made in the city wall on the ninth day of the fourth month. The statement of the month is omitted in our text, where the words *Wnn vhhz

(Jer. lii. 6, cf. xxxix. 2) have fallen out before ny^na (ver. 3, commencement) through the oversight of a copyist. The overwhelming extent of the famine is mentioned, not " because the people were thereby rendered quite unfit to offer any further resistance" (Seb. Schm.), but as a proof of the truth of the prophetic announcements (Lev. xxvi. 29; Deut. xxviii. 53-57; Jer. xv. 2, xxvii. 13; Ezek. iv. 16, 17). r™n D^ are the common people in Jerusalem, or the citizens of the capital. From the more minute account of the entrance of the enemy into the city in Jer. xxxix. 3-5 we learn that the Chaldaeans made a breach in the northern or outer wall of the lower city, i.e. the second wall, built by Hezekiah and Manasseh (2 Chron. xxxii. 5, xxxiii. 14), and forced their way into the lower city (pa&&}t xxii. 14), so that their generals took their stand at the gate of the centre, which was in the wall that separated the lower city from the upper city upon Zion, and formed the passage from the one to the other. When Zedekiah saw them here, he fled by night with the soldiers out of the city, through the gate between the two walls at or above the king's garden, on the road to the plain of the Jordan, while the Chaldaeans were round about the city. In ver. 4 a faulty text has come down to us. In the clause nonfen *twfcjrf>31 the verb m2\ is omitted, if not even more, namely "WjJ IP W*M *n"£*., " fled and went out of the city." And if we compare Jer. xxxix. 4, it is evident that before 'Oil *BflfcT731 still more has dropped out, not merely sfe^, which must have stood in the text, since according to ver. 5 the king was among the fugitives; but most probably the whole clause nTiiv -jta *n»rm dni -ik*o W1. since the words '»n *swk-^ have no real connection with what precedes, and cannot form a circumstantial clause so far as the sense is concerned. The " gate between the two walls, which (was) at or over (?V) the king's garden," was a gate at the mouth of the Tyropoeon, that is to say, at the south-eastern corner of the city of Zion; for, according to Neh. iii. 15, the king's garden was at the pool of Siloah, i.e. at the mouth of the Tyropoeon (see Eob. Pal. ii. 142). By this defile, therefore, the approach to the city was barred by a double wall, the inner one running from Zion to the Ophel, whilst the outer one, at some distance off, connected the Zion wall with the outer surrounding wall of the Ophel, and most probably enclosed the king's garden. The subject to JJTJ is $®l}, which has dropped out before '&n 'Ebfrta}. rajgh is the lowland valley on both sides of the Jordan (see at Deut. i. 1). — Ver. 5. As the Chaldaeans were encamped around, the city, the flight was immediately discovered. The Chaldaean army pursued him, and overtook him in the steppes of Jericho, whilst his own army was dispersed, all of which Ezekiel had foreseen in the Spirit (Ezek. xii. 3 sqq.). Inr ninny are that portion of the plain of the Jordan which formed the country round Jericho (see at Josh. iv. 13). — Ver. 6. Zedekiah having been seized by the Chaldaeans, was taken to the king of Babel in the Chaldaean headquarters at Kiblah (see at ch. xxiii. 33), and was there put upon his trial. According to ver. 1, Nebuchadnezzar had commenced the siege of Jerusalem in person; but afterwards, possibly not till after the Egyptians who came to relieve the besieged city had been repulsed, he transferred the continuance of the siege, which was a prolonged one, to his generals, and retired to Biblah, to conduct the operations of the whole campaign from thence. '^'flK ttQCJp Wl, to conduct judicial proceedings with any one, i.e. to hear and judge him. For this

Jeremiah constantly uses the plural DNp3'^p, not only in ch. lii. 9 and xxxix. 5, but also in ch. i. 16 and iv. 12. — Ver. 7. The punishment pronounced upon Zedekiah was the merited reward of the breach of his oath, and his hardening himself against the counsel of the Lord which was announced to him by Jeremiah during the siege, that he should save not only his own life, but also Jerusalem from destruction, by a voluntary submission to the Chaldaeans, whereas by obstinate resistance he would bring an ignominious destruction upon himself, his family, the city, and the whole people (Jer. xxxviii. 17 sqq., xxxii. 5, xxxiv. 3 sqq.). His sons, who, though not mentioned in ver. 4, had fled with him and had been taken, and (according to Jer. lii. 1 0 and xxxix. 6) all the nobles (princes) of Judah, sc. those who had fled with the king, were slain before his eyes. He himself was then blinded, and led away to Babel, chained with double chains of brass, and kept a prisoner there till his death (Jer. lii. 11); so that, as Ezekiel (xiL 13) had prophesied, he came to Babel, but did not see the land, and died there. Blinding by pricking out the eyes was a common punishment for princes among the Babylonians and Persians (cf. Herod, vii. 18, and Brisson, de regio Pers. princip. p. 589). D^n^'n^ double brazen chains, are brazen fetters for the hands and feet. Samson was treated in the same manner by the Philistines (Judg. xvi 21).

Vers. 8-21. Destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. TJie people carried away to Babel (cf. Jer. lii. 12—27, and xxxix. 8-10). — In this section we have first a general account of the destruction of the temple and city (vers. 8-10), and of the carrying away of the people (vers. 1 1 and 1 2), and then a more particular description of what was done with the metal vessels of the temple (vers. 13-17), and how the spiritual and secular leaders of the people who had been taken prisoners were treated (vers. 18—21). — Vers. 8-10. The destruction of Jerusalem, by the burning of the temple, of the king's palace, and of all the larger buildings, and by throwing down the walls, was effected by ISTebuzaradan, the chief of the body-guard of Nebuchadnezzar, on the seventh day of the fifth month in the nineteenth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. Instead of the seventh day we have the tenth in Jer. lii. 12. This difference might be reconciled, as proposed by earlier commentators, on the assumption that the burning of the city lasted several days, commencing on the seventh and ending on the tenth. But since there are similar differences met with afterwards (vers. 17 and 19) in the statement of numbers, which can only be accounted for from the substitution of similar numeral letters, we must assume that there is a change of this kind here. Which of the two dates is the correct one it is impossible to determine. The circumstance that the later Jews kept the ninth as a fast-day cannot be regarded as decisive evidence in favour of the date given in Jeremiah, as Thenius supposes; for in Zech. vii. 3 and viii. 1 9 the fasting of the fifth month is mentioned, but no day is given; and though in the Talmudic times the ninth day of the month began to be kept as a fast-day, this was not merely in remembrance of the Chaldaean destruction of Jerusalem, but of the Eoman also, and of three other calamities which had befallen the nation (see the statement of the Gemara on this subject in Lightfoot, Opp. ii. p. 139, ed. Leusden, and in Kohler on Zech. vii. 3), from which we see that the Gemarists in the most unhistorical manner grouped together different calamitous events in one single day. The nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar corresponds to the eleventh of Zedekiah (see at ch. xxiv. 12). Nebuzaradan is not mentioned in Jer. xxxix. 3 among the Chaldaean generals who forced their way into the city, so that he must have been ordered to Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar after the taking of the city and the condemnation of Zedekiah, to carry out the destruction of the city, the carrying away of the people, and the appointment of a deputy-governor over those who were left behind in the land. This explains in a very simple manner how a month could intervene between their forcing their way into the city, at all events into the lower city, and the burning of it to the ground, without there being any necessity to assume, with Thenius, that the city of Zion held out for a month, which is by no means probable, for the simple reason that the fighting men had fled with Zedekiah and had been scattered in their flight. ^iwni = D-natsn np in Gen. xxx vii. 36, xxxix. 1, was with the Babylonians, as with the Egyptians, the chief of the king's body-guard, whose duty it was to execute the sentences of death (see at Gen. xxxvii. 36). D'na&n answers to the W|!) of the Israelites (2 Sam. viii. 18, etc.). In Jer. lii 12 we have jjo W6 noy instead of l£e W, without the "HP*, which is rarely omitted in prose, and pbB'VVa instead of B?BW: he came into Jerusalem, not he forced a way into the real Jerusalem (Thenius). The meaning is not altered by these two variations. — Ver. 9. By the words, " every great house," '"^ V^'S AN is more minutely defined: not all the houses to the very last, but simply all the large houses he burned to the very last, together with the temple and the royal palaces. The victors used one portion of the dwelling-houses for their stay in Jerusalem. He then had all the walls of the city destroyed. In Jeremiah bb is omitted before nbin, as not being required for the sense; and also the ns before EW?ao 31 which is indispensable to the sense, and has fallen out through a copyist's oversight. — Vers. 11, 12. The rest of the people he led away, both those who had been left behind in the city and the deserters who had gone over to the Chaldeans, and the remnant of the multitude. jiDnn W, for which we have P&^ W in Jer. lii. 15, has been interpreted in various ways. As PON signifies an artist or artificer in Prov. viii. 30, and DV? W has just preceded it, we might be disposed to give the preference to the reading poxn, as Hitzig and Graf have done, and understand by it the remnant of the artisans, who were called "UDern Knnn in ch. xxiv. 14, 16. But this view is precluded by Jer. xxxix. 9, where we find DVn W D*UC$in instead of finxn W or fionn '\ These words cannot be set aside by the arbitrary assumption that they crept into the text through a copyist's error; for the assertion that they contain a purposeless repetition is a piece of dogmatical criticism, inasmuch as there is a distinction drawn in Jer. xxxix. 9 between Vja D^KBfcf] °¥? -in; and DTOfta Dyn inj. Consequently |iDMn is simply another form for ponn (n and n being interchanged) in the sense of a mass of people, and we have simply the choice left between two interpretations. Either Dyn "UV vpa Dns^n means the fighting people left in the city, as distinguished from the deserters who had fled to the Chaldseans, and |iONn — [tonn nrv in Jer. lii. 15, or Dnatwn oyn -in* in Jer.

xxxix. 9, the rest of the inhabitants of Jerusalem; or Ey? w vpa 'Bfcfl is the people left in Jerusalem (warriors and nonwarriors), and l^nn W the rest of the population of the land outside Jerusalem. The latter is probably the preferable view, not only because full justice is thereby done to "I*p3 in the first clause, but also because it is evident from the exception mentioned in ver. 12 that the deportation was not confined to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but extended to the population of the whole land. The " poor people," whom he allowed to remain in the land as vine-dressers and husbandmen, were the common people, or people without property, not merely in Jerusalem, but throughout the whole land, PJKfJ njn = pKn-Dy rta (ch. xxiv. 14). Instead of n^t? we have in Jeremiah riip'np: the plural used in an abstract sense, " the poverty," i.e. the lower people, " the poor who had nothing" (Jer. xxxix. 10). Instead of the Chethib D^J? from aia, secuit, aravit, the Keri has &^y from 3JJ, in the same sense, after Jer. lii. 16. — Vers. 13—17. The brazen vessels of the temple were broken in pieces, and the brass, and smaller vessels of brass, silver, and gold, were carried away. Compare Jer. lii. 17—23, where several other points are mentioned that have been passed over in the account before us. The pillars of brass (see 1 Kings vii. 15 sqq.), the stands (see 1 Kings vii. 27 sqq.), and the brazen sea (1 Kings vii 2 3 sqq.), were broken in pieces, because it would have been difficult to carry these colossal things away without breaking them up. On the smaller vessels used in the worship (ver. 14) see 1 Kings vii. 40. In Jer. lii 18 ripnTrpn are also mentioned. Ver. 15 is abridged still more in contrast with Jer. lii. 19, and only nteinsn and nipJTOn are mentioned, whereas in Jeremiah six different things are enumerated beside the candlesticks. 1KW t\Q3... an J, " what was of gold, gold, what was of silver, silver, the captain of the guard took away," is a comprehensive description of the objects carried away. To this there is appended a remark in ver. 16 concerning the quantity of the brass of the large vessels, which was so great that it could not be weighed; and in ver. 17 a supplementary notice respecting the artistic work of the two pillars of brass. 'W DHiDyn is placed at the head absolutely: as for the pillars, etc., the brass of all these vessels was not to be weighed. In Jer. lii. 20, along with the brazen sea, the twelve brazen oxen under it are mentioned; and in the description of the pillars of brass (vers. 21 sqq.) there are several points alluded to which are omitted in our books, not only here, but also in 1 Kings vii. 1 6 sqq. For the fact itself see the explanation given at pp. 97-103. The omission of the twelve oxen in so condensed an account as that contained in our text does not warrant the inference that these words in Jeremiah are a spurious addition made by a later copyist, since the assumption that Ahaz sent the brazen oxen to king Tiglath-pileser cannot be proved from ch. xvi. 17 (see p. 407). Instead of BW nsK we must read ribs wnnt Jive cubits, according to Jer. lii 22 and 1 Kings vii 16. The naafrrrpy at the end of the verse is very striking, since it stands quite alone, and when connected with 'H1 npspl does not appear to yield any appropriate sense, as the second pillar was like the first not merely with regard to the trellis- work, but in its form and size throughout. At the same time, it is possible that the historian intended to give especial prominence to the similarity of the two pillars with reference to this one point alone. — Vers. 18—21 (cf. Jer. lii. 24-27). The principal officers of the temple and city, and sixty men of the population of the land, who were taken at the destruction of Jerusalem, Nebuzaradan sent to his king at Eiblah, where they were put to death. Seraiah, the high priest, is the grandfather or great-grandfather of Ezra the scribe (Ezra vii. 1; 1 Chron. v. 40). Zephaniah, a priest of the second rank (fH3 nips; in Jer. wren jnb: see at ch. xxiii. 4), is probably the same person as the son of Maaseiah, who took a prominent place among the priests, according to Jer. xxi. 1, xxix. 25 sqq., and xxxvii. 3. The "three keepers of the threshold" are probably the three superintendents of the Levites, whose duty it was to keep guard over the temple, and therefore wrere among the principal officers of the sanctuary. — Ver. 19. From the city, i.e. from the civil authorities of the city, Nebuz"aradan took a king's chamberlain (D>">?), who wras commander of the men of war. Instead of Tpfi ran "Wfc we find in Jer. lii. 25 'D n\i l&Kt who had been commander, with an allusion to the fact that his official function had terminated when the city was conquered. " And five (according to Jeremiah seven) men of those who saw the king's face," i.e. who belonged to the king's immediate circle, de intimis consiliariis regis, and " the scribe of the commanderin-chief, who raised the people of the land for military service," or who enrolled them. Although "IBB"? has the article, which is omitted in Jeremiah, the following words K33fn ito are governed by it, or connected with it in the construct state (Ewald, § 290, d). N^n iw is the commander-in-chief of the whole of the military forces, and 'W N^V^n a more precise definition of "JBBl1, and not of ^2^n ifef which needed no such definition. " And sixty men of the land-population who were found in the city." They were probably some of the prominent men of the rural districts, or they may have taken a leading part in the defence of the city, and therefore were executed in Eiblah, and not merely deported with the rest of the people. — The account of the destruction of the kingdom of Judah closes with rTWTJ?P\ in ver. 21, "thus was Judah carried away out of its own land;" and in vers. 22-26 there follows merely a brief notice of those who had been left behind in the land, in the place of which we find in Jer. lii. 28—40 a detailed account of the number of those who were carried away.

Vers. 22—26. Installation of Gedaliah the governor. His assassination, and the flight of the people to Egypt — Much fuller accounts have been handed down to us in Jer. xl.-xliv. of the events which are but briefly indicated here. — Vers. 22, 23. Over the remnant of the people left in the land Nebuchadnezzar placed Gedaliah as governor of the land, who took up his abode in Mizpah. Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, who had interested himself on behalf of the prophet Jeremiah and saved his life (Jer. xxvi. 24), and the grandson of Shaphan, a man of whom nothing more is known (see at ch. xxii. 12), had his home in Jerusalem, and, as we may infer from his attitude towards Jeremiah, had probably secured the confidence of the Chaldaeans at the siege and conquest of Jerusalem by his upright conduct, and by what he did to induce the people to submit to the judgment inflicted by God; so that Nebuchadnezzar entrusted him with the oversight of those who were left behind in the land — men, women, children, poor people, and even a few princesses and courtofficials, whom they had not thought it necessary or worth while to carry away (Jer. xl. 7, xli. 10, 16), i.e. he made him governor of the conquered land. Mizpah is the present Nebi Sarnwil, two hours to the north-west of Jerusalem (see at Josh, xviii. 26). — On hearing of Gedaliah's appointment as governor, there came to him " all the captains of the several divisions of the army and their men," i.e. those portions of the army which had been scattered at the flight of the king (ver. 5), and which had escaped from the Chaldaeans, and, as it is expressed in Jer. xl. 7, had dispersed themselves " in the field," i.e. about the land. Instead of D^JKm we have in Jer. xl. 7 the clearer expression DJWJK1, " and their men," whilst EPBblKt] in our text receives its more precise definition from the previous word Ey^Dp. Of the military commanders the following are mentioned by name: Ishmael, etc. (the \ before SwypB* is explic, "and indeed Ishmael"). Ishmael, son of Mattaniah and grandson of Elishama, probably of the king's secretary mentioned in Jer. xxxvi. 12 and 20, of royal blood. Nothing further is known about the other names. We simply learn from Jer. xl 13 sqq. that Johanan had warned Gedaliah against the treachery of Ishmael, and that when Gedaliah was slain by Ishmael, having disregarded the warning, he put himself at the head of the people and marched with them to Egypt, notwithstanding the dissuasions of Jeremiah (Jer. xli. 15 sqq.). Instead of " Johanan the son of Kareah," we have in Jer. xl. 8 " Johanan and Jonathan the sons of Kareah;" hut it is uncertain whether |T)Jto has crept into the text of Jeremiah from the previous l^nin^ merely through a mistake, and this mistake has brought with it the alteration of IJ into *?3 (Ewald), or whether \T\W\ has dropped out of our text through an oversight, and this omission has occasioned the alteration of *33 into p (Thenius, Graf, etc.). The former supposition is favoured by the circumstance that in Jer. xl. 13, xli. 11, 16, Johanan the son of Kareah alone is mentioned. In Jer. xl. 8 ♦fifa) •JM (ChctJiib %&y) stands before ViBbsn according to which it was not Seraiah who sprang from Netophah, but Ophai whose sons were military commanders. He was called Ndopliathite because he sprang from Netopha in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem (Neh. vii. 26; Ezra ii. 22), the identity of which with Beit Ncttif is by no means probable (see at 2 Sam. xxiii. 28). The name ^TR1 is written *W in Jeremiah; he was the son of the Maachathite, i.e. his father sprang from the Syrian district of Maacah in the neighbourhood of the Hermon (see at Deut. iii. 14). — Ver. 24. As these men were afraid of the vengeance of the Chaldaeans because they had fought against them, Gedaliah assured them on oath that they had nothing to fear from them if they would dwell peaceably in the land, be submissive to the king of Babel, and cultivate the land (cf. Jer. xl. 9 and 10). " Servants of the Chaldees " are Chalda?an officials who were subordinate to the governor Gedaliah. — Ver. 25. In the seventh month, i.e. hardly two months after the destruction of Jerusalem, came Ishmael with ten men to Gedaliah at Mizpah, and murdered him together with the Jews and Chaldaeans, whom he had with him as soldiers to do his bidding and for his protection. This occurred, according to Jer. xli. 1 sqq., when Gedaliah had received them hospitably and had invited them to eat with him. Ishmael was instigated to commit this murder by the Ammonitish king Baalis, and Gedaliah had previously been made acquainted with the intended crime and put upon his guard by Johanan, but had put no faith in the information (Jer. xL 13-16). — Ver. 26. After Ishmael had performed this deed, and had also treacherously murdered a number of men, who had come to the temple with a sacrifice from Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria, he took the Jews who were at Mizpah prisoners, with some kings' daughters among them, intending to take them over to the Ammonites; but as soon as his deed became known, he was pursued by Johanan and the rest of the military chiefs and was overtaken at Gibeon, whereupon those who had been led away by him went over to Johanan, so that he was only able to make his escape with eight men and get away to the Ammonites (Jer. xli. 4-1 5). Johanan then went with the rest of the military commanders and the people whom he had brought back into the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, with the intention of fleeing to Egypt for fear of the Chaldseans. There they did indeed have recourse to the prophet Jeremiah, to inquire of him the word of the Lord; but they did not allow themselves to be diverted from their intention by the word of the Lord which he announced to them, that if they remained in the land they need not fear anything from the king of Babel, but if they went to Egypt they should all perish there with sword, hunger, and pestilence, or by the prediction that the Lord would also deliver Pharaoh Hophra into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. xlii.). They went to Egypt notwithstanding, taking the prophet himself with them, and settled in different cities of Egypt, where they gave themselves up to idolatry, and did not suffer themselves to be drawn away from it even by the severe judgments which the prophet Jeremiah predicted as sure to fall upon them (Jer. xliii. and xliv.). In the verse before us we have simply a brief allusion to the eventual result of the whole affair. " Because they were afraid of the Chaldseans," namely, that they might possibly take vengeance upon them for the murder of the governor.