Jeremiah 52:28

This [is] the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away captive in the seventh year,.... That is, of his reign: in 2 Kings 24:12; it is said to be in the eighth year of his reign; it being at the

This is the people whom Nebuchadrezzar carried away captive: in the seventh year three thousand Jews and three and twenty: In the seventh year - in 2 Kings 24:12; 2 Kings 24:14; 2 Kings 24:16 it is

That is, in the time of Jehoiachin, ; here it is said to be in the seventh year, there in the eighth year, it might be in part of both. But there is a difference in the number of the captives, which are here said to be three thousand and twenty-three, and ,16, seven thousand, or eight. It is thought by some that the number here mentioned were such as properly belonged to Judah, and the number mentioned 2Ki 24, were the number of the captives of Judah and Benjamin. See the English Annotations.

(28) This is the people . . .—Here the parallelism with 2 Kings 25, which goes on to give a brief summary of the history of Gedaliah and Ishmael, as narrated in Jeremiah 40-43, ceases, and the writer of the appendix goes on to give particulars as to the various stages of the deportation of the captives. It presents some difficulties in detail. (1) The date given here, the “seventh year” of Nebuchadnezzar, does not agree with 2 Kings 24:12, which gives the “eighth year” as the time of the first deportation after the defeat of Jehoiachin. (2) The number of the captives then carried into exile, given in 2 Kings 24:14 at 10,000, besides the craftsmen and the smiths, is given here as 3,023. The precision of the number seems to imply reference to a register or record of some kind, and so far bears primâ facie evidence of accuracy. Probably the word “ten” has dropped out before “seven,” and we have here the record of a second deportation in the seventeenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, while the siege of Jerusalem was going on, and made up in part of prisoners taken in skirmishes, and partly of the numerous Jews who “fell away to the Chaldæans” (Jeremiah 37:13).

Verse 28. - 30. On these verses Dr. Blayney has some sensible remarks; I will extract the substance. These verses are not inserted in 2 Kings xxv. Are we to conclude from these verses that the whole number of the Jews which Nebuchadnezzar, in all his expeditions, carried away, was no more than four thousand six hundred? This cannot be true; for he carried away more than twice that number at one time and this is expressly said to have been in the eighth year of his reign, 2Kg 24:12-16. Before that time he had carried off a number of captives from Jerusalem, in the first year of his reign, among whom were Daniel and his companions, Daniel 1:3-6. These are confessedly not noticed here. And as the taking and burning of Jerusalem is in this very chapter said to have been in the fourth and fifth months of the nineteenth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, those who were carried into captivity at the date of those events cannot possibly be the same with those that are said to be carried away either in the eighteenth or twenty-third year of that prince. Nor, indeed, is it credible that the number carried away at the time that the city was taken, and the whole country reduced, could be so few as eight hundred and thirty-two, (see Jeremiah 52:29;) supposing a mistake in the date of the year, which some are willing to do without sufficient grounds. Here then we have three deportations, and those the most considerable ones, in the first, in the eighth, and nineteenth years of Nebuchadnezzar, sufficiently distinguished from those in the seventh, eighteenth, and twenty-third years. So that it seems most reasonable to conclude with Abp. Usher, in Chronologia Sacra, that by the latter three the historian meant to point out deportations of a minor kind, not elsewhere noticed in direct terms in Scripture. The first of these, said to have been in the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar, was one of those that had been picked up in several parts of Judah by the band of Chaldeans, Syrians, and others, whom the king of Babylon sent against the land previously to his own coming, 2Kg 24:2. That in the eighteenth year corresponds with the time when the Chaldean army broke off the siege before Jerusalem, and marched to meet the Egyptian army, at which time they might think it proper to send off the prisoners that were in camp, under a guard to Babylon. And the last, in the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar, was when that monarch, being engaged in the siege of Tyre, sent off Nebuzaradan against the Moabites, Ammonites, and other neighbouring nations, who at the same time carried away the gleanings of Jews that remained in their own land, amounting in all to no more than seven hundred and forty-five. Josephus speaks of this expedition against the Moabites and Ammonites, which he places in the twenty-third year or Nebuchadnezzar; but mentions nothing done in the land of Israel at that time.

28–30. Enumeration of Nebuchadnezzar’s captives 28. in the seventh year] These vv. are absent from the LXX and from 2 Kings 25 and apparently come out of a separate document from the rest. For “seventh” we should read seventeenth, for in Jehoiachin’s captivity the number was far greater than is here specified (2 Kings 24:14; 2 Kings 24:16). Thus the first deportation would consist of the men of Judah taken prisoners outside Jerusalem in the first year of the siege (Jeremiah 39:1), the second (Jeremiah 52:29) of those carried captive “from Jerusalem” itself, but not including those taken into exile after the capture of the city. Of the third occurring some years later we have no other clear account, though we know from Josephus (Ant. X. ix. 7) that Nebuchadnezzar in his 23rd year carried on considerable warlike operations in the direction of Palestine and in Egypt, carrying off Jews from that country to Babylon.

Seventh year - The suggestion is now generally received, that the word ten has dropped out before seven, and that the deportations mentioned here are all connected with the final war against Zedekiah.

28-30. In these verses we have an enumeration of the different deportations of Jews by Nebuchadrezzar, namely, first, 3,023 in the seventh year of his reign; second, 832 in the eighteenth year of his