Jeremiah 27

Zedekiah, the last king of the last surviving Israelite kingdom, reigned from 597-586 BC, when Babylonian invaders destroyed Jerusalem and exiled most survivors. Many ancient Hebrew manuscripts seem to have copied Jeremiah 26:1, with the King Jehoiakim’s name. But chapter 27 is set in the time after 597 BC, when Babylon exiled some of the leaders to Babylon, where the empire’s leaders could keep an eye on them.

People put yokes around the necks of cattle so the cattle could pull a wagon or a plow, the way farmers also used donkeys and, years later, horses.

The leaders may have been planning to form a coalition and break free from Babylon, their overlord and chief bully. A clay cylinder called the Babylonian Chronicle reports someone attacked the empire. The report doesn’t identify the attacker. But Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar attacked Syria over the winter of 594-93, about three or four years into Zedekiah’s reign.

It’s unclear if Jeremiah gave each ambassador a yoke or simply wore his yoke when he delivered the message verbally.

Twin bronze pillars stood on each side of the entrance into the Temple sanctuary, a place reserved for only priests. The pillars measured 27 feet tall, almost 6 feet thick, and 18 feet in circumference. In metrics, the numbers are eight meters tall, almost two meters in diameter, and more than five meters in circumference.

The bronze bowl measured 15 feet across, over 7 deep, and 45 feet around the rim’s circumference. They called this bowl the Sea. In metrics, it measured over 2 meters deep, 4.5 meters across, and 13.25 meters in circumference. This bowl was the Temple’s water tank, a reservoir that held 11,000 gallons (about 40,000 liters). That’s a little more than half the water in the typical swimming pool. Much of the water was probably used for cleaning up after a sacrifice.

Jehoiakim’s 18-year-old son, Jehoiachin, ruled three months and 10 days after him (2 Chronicles 36:9). Alternate spelling: “Jeconiah.”