Jeremiah 52
Fall of Jerusalem
Jerusalem gone, Jews deported
2 Kings 24:18-25:27-30; 2 Chronicles 36:11-21 1Zedekiah was 21 years old when he became king of Judah. He reigned in Jerusalem for 11 years. His mother was Hamutal. She was the daughter of Jeremiah, who lived in the town of Libnah.
2He was another bad king, as far as the LORD was concerned. He was as evil as Jehoiakim had been. 3The people of Jerusalem and Judah got God so angry that he deported them.
Zedekiah rebelled against the King of Babylon. 4For a third time, Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar comes to Jerusalem, but this time his soldiers lay siege to the city and begin to build siegeworks outside the city walls. This took place nine years into the reign of Judah’s King Zedekiah. [1] On the Hebrew calendar, the date was in the winter, the tenth day of the tenth month. [2] 5The siege continued until the 11th year of King Zedekiah’s reign.
6By mid-July, people of Jerusalem had eaten all the food. They were starving. 7That’s when Babylonians created a break in the wall. [3] The king and all his soldiers who had been defending the town ran for their lives. They escaped at night through the city gate near the King’s Garden. [4] They took the risk knowing Babylonians surrounded the city. Judah’s king and soldiers raced toward Jericho, in the Jordan River Valley. [5]
8Babylonians caught the king in the Jericho fields. [6] His soldiers scattered instead of defending him. 9Babylonian soldiers took King Zedekiah to Nebuchadnezzar, who had moved north to the Syrian town of Riblah. Babylon’s king pronounced sentence. 10As ordered, Babylonian soldiers slaughtered Zedekiah’s sons and Judah’s officials right in front of him at Riblah. 11Then they cut his eyes out of his head. They tied him up and shipped him off to a prison in Babylon, where he lived until he died. Jerusalem’s 400-year-old Temple, gone
12About a month later, in mid-August, [7] Babylon’s commander of the royal guards, Nebuzaradan, arrived in Jerusalem. By this time, Nebuchadnezzar was into his 19th year on Babylon’s throne.
13Nebuzaradan set Jerusalem’s Temple on fire. He torched all the houses in Jerusalem. Every big and beautiful house collapsed into ashes. 14Then all the soldiers along with Nebuzaradan began tearing down the walls of Jerusalem.
15When he and the guards later left for Babylon, they took with them Jerusalem’s survivors and deserters—escorting them into exile. He took some of the poorest people, too. 16But the commander left some of the poorest people behind to take care of the farms and vineyards. Babylon strips bronze from the Temple
17Babylonians stripped the bronze from the Temple, breaking everything into pieces to make it easier to carry it home. They broke apart the pillars at the Temple entrance and the huge bowl—a water reservoir called the Sea, [8] along with its stands. Priests used water from the Sea for sacrifices at the altar.
18They took all the bronze from inside the Temple, too: incense bowls, pots, shovels, lamp snuffers that priests had used to put out the lamplights. If it was bronze and in the Temple, they took it. 19They even took the small firepans that held hot coals and the small bowls for water. The commander told them to take everything of value and to make sure they got all the gold and silver.
20There was too much bronze to weigh. They took the two huge pillars from the Temple entrance, the huge water basin called the Sea, and the stands that held it. Solomon had it all made for the LORD’s Temple. 21Each pillar stood 27 feet tall and 18 feet around, topped with bronze capitals. [9] The pillars were hollow, but the walls were 3 inches thick.
22The capitals were more than seven feet high and decorated with rows of pomegranate art and with a latticework design that looked like seven chains woven into the form of nets. 23There were 96 pomegranates evenly spaced around the sides of each column and there were 100 pomegranates located in the bronze design of nets. Babylon executes Jerusalem priests
24Commander of the Guard Nebuzaradan arrested some Temple priests:
- High Priest Seraiah
- Top associate priest, Zephaniah
- Three Temple guards.
25He also arrested groups of people still hiding in the city:
- One army commander
- Seven personal advisors to the king
- One scribe, an official who took notes
- One commander in charge of recruiting Judah’s militia
- Sixty soldiers.
26Nebuzaradan took them to the Babylonian king at Riblah. 27The king killed them all at Riblah in Hamath territory. And Judah was gone—scattered in exile. Judah gets a Babylon-appointed governor
28Nebuchadnezzar took prisoners from Judah three times:
- during his seventh year as king, took into exile 3,023 people
2918th year as king, 832 from Jerusalem
3023rd year as king, Nebuzaradan took 745 people.
He took 4,600 people in all, from Judah to Babylon. Blind king of Judah free in Babylon
31Jehoiachin, former king of Judah, served 37 years in a Babylonian prison. [10] A new Babylonian king named Evil-Merodach kindly freed him during the first year of his reign, sometime in February or March. [11]
32King Evil-Merodach took a liking to the old Jewish king. He talked warmly with him and showed him more respect than he did the other conquered kings in Babylon. 33Jehoiachin traded in his prison clothes for something more presentable. And every day for the rest of his life, he ate with the king. 34The Babylonian king even gave him a pension to cover his expenses for the rest of his life. 
Footnotes
152:4Babylonians arrived in the dead of winter, on the tenth day of the tenth month on the Jewish calendar. Scholars put the invasion in late December or early January, possibly in 588-587 BC.
252:4The Jewish calendar was based on the cycles of the moon instead of the seasons of the sun. They call the tenth month Tebeth. It ran from mid-December to mid-January. Jeremiah 52:4 says Babylonians arrived on the tenth day of the tenth month. Most scholars seem to say the siege lasted a year and a half, from the winter of 588-587 BC to the July heat of 586 BC. But some scholars say the siege began a year earlier, in January of 589 BC and that the city fell in 587 BC, and that the siege lasted 2 1/2 years. Archaeological evidence supports that the city did fall about the time of 587 BC or 586 BC. Babylonians burned the city and pulled down the stone walls surrounding it. When they were finished, Jerusalem was a burned out pile of scorched rocks.
352:7Soldiers attacked the walls in different ways, looking for the weakest point to attack. They would plow into it with a large battering ram. They would build catapults to throw stone missiles at Jerusalem’s walls, which were built with massive blocks of cut rock. Attackers also used men called sappers. They would dig a short tunnel under part of the wall. They would brace it with beams. Then they pulled down the beams, which would collapse the tunnel and possibly a part of the wall above the tunnel.
452:7Maybe the king and his men escaped through this gate. Or maybe the Babylonians broke into the city through this gate. The verse is confusing, which leaves scholars and Bible translators guessing and possibly flipping coins.
552:7Also known as the Arabah, a rift valley north and south of the Dead Sea.
652:8Jericho was about 20 winding, downhill miles (33 km) from Jerusalem.
752:12Literally, on the “seventh day of the fifth month” on the Jewish lunar calendar.
852:17For a more detailed description of the metals in the Temple, see 1 Kings 6—7.
952:21The pillars were eight meters tall, with another two meters for the crown. Without the crown: 27 feet high (8 m), 18 feet around (5.5 m) and walls 3 inches thick (75 mm).
1052:31Arrested at about age 18, he would have been about 55 years old when the Babylonian king freed him.
1152:31Literally, on the “27th day of the 12th month” on the Jewish calendar.
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Exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon
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2He was another bad king, as far as the LORD was concerned. He was as evil as Jehoiakim had been. 3The people of Jerusalem and Judah got God so angry that he deported them.
Zedekiah rebelled against the King of Babylon. 4For a third time, Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar comes to Jerusalem, but this time his soldiers lay siege to the city and begin to build siegeworks outside the city walls. This took place nine years into the reign of Judah’s King Zedekiah. [1] On the Hebrew calendar, the date was in the winter, the tenth day of the tenth month. [2] 5The siege continued until the 11th year of King Zedekiah’s reign.
6By mid-July, people of Jerusalem had eaten all the food. They were starving. 7That’s when Babylonians created a break in the wall. [3] The king and all his soldiers who had been defending the town ran for their lives. They escaped at night through the city gate near the King’s Garden. [4] They took the risk knowing Babylonians surrounded the city. Judah’s king and soldiers raced toward Jericho, in the Jordan River Valley. [5]
8Babylonians caught the king in the Jericho fields. [6] His soldiers scattered instead of defending him. 9Babylonian soldiers took King Zedekiah to Nebuchadnezzar, who had moved north to the Syrian town of Riblah. Babylon’s king pronounced sentence. 10As ordered, Babylonian soldiers slaughtered Zedekiah’s sons and Judah’s officials right in front of him at Riblah. 11Then they cut his eyes out of his head. They tied him up and shipped him off to a prison in Babylon, where he lived until he died.
Jerusalem’s 400-year-old Temple, gone
12About a month later, in mid-August, [7] Babylon’s commander of the royal guards, Nebuzaradan, arrived in Jerusalem. By this time, Nebuchadnezzar was into his 19th year on Babylon’s throne.13Nebuzaradan set Jerusalem’s Temple on fire. He torched all the houses in Jerusalem. Every big and beautiful house collapsed into ashes. 14Then all the soldiers along with Nebuzaradan began tearing down the walls of Jerusalem.
15When he and the guards later left for Babylon, they took with them Jerusalem’s survivors and deserters—escorting them into exile. He took some of the poorest people, too. 16But the commander left some of the poorest people behind to take care of the farms and vineyards.
Babylon strips bronze from the Temple
17Babylonians stripped the bronze from the Temple, breaking everything into pieces to make it easier to carry it home. They broke apart the pillars at the Temple entrance and the huge bowl—a water reservoir called the Sea, [8] along with its stands. Priests used water from the Sea for sacrifices at the altar.18They took all the bronze from inside the Temple, too: incense bowls, pots, shovels, lamp snuffers that priests had used to put out the lamplights. If it was bronze and in the Temple, they took it. 19They even took the small firepans that held hot coals and the small bowls for water. The commander told them to take everything of value and to make sure they got all the gold and silver.
20There was too much bronze to weigh. They took the two huge pillars from the Temple entrance, the huge water basin called the Sea, and the stands that held it. Solomon had it all made for the LORD’s Temple. 21Each pillar stood 27 feet tall and 18 feet around, topped with bronze capitals. [9] The pillars were hollow, but the walls were 3 inches thick.
22The capitals were more than seven feet high and decorated with rows of pomegranate art and with a latticework design that looked like seven chains woven into the form of nets. 23There were 96 pomegranates evenly spaced around the sides of each column and there were 100 pomegranates located in the bronze design of nets.
Babylon executes Jerusalem priests
24Commander of the Guard Nebuzaradan arrested some Temple priests:- High Priest Seraiah
- Top associate priest, Zephaniah
- Three Temple guards.
- One army commander
- Seven personal advisors to the king
- One scribe, an official who took notes
- One commander in charge of recruiting Judah’s militia
- Sixty soldiers.
Judah gets a Babylon-appointed governor
28Nebuchadnezzar took prisoners from Judah three times:- during his seventh year as king, took into exile 3,023 people
Blind king of Judah free in Babylon
31Jehoiachin, former king of Judah, served 37 years in a Babylonian prison. [10] A new Babylonian king named Evil-Merodach kindly freed him during the first year of his reign, sometime in February or March. [11]32King Evil-Merodach took a liking to the old Jewish king. He talked warmly with him and showed him more respect than he did the other conquered kings in Babylon. 33Jehoiachin traded in his prison clothes for something more presentable. And every day for the rest of his life, he ate with the king. 34The Babylonian king even gave him a pension to cover his expenses for the rest of his life.
Footnotes
Babylonians arrived in the dead of winter, on the tenth day of the tenth month on the Jewish calendar. Scholars put the invasion in late December or early January, possibly in 588-587 BC.
The Jewish calendar was based on the cycles of the moon instead of the seasons of the sun. They call the tenth month Tebeth. It ran from mid-December to mid-January. Jeremiah 52:4 says Babylonians arrived on the tenth day of the tenth month. Most scholars seem to say the siege lasted a year and a half, from the winter of 588-587 BC to the July heat of 586 BC. But some scholars say the siege began a year earlier, in January of 589 BC and that the city fell in 587 BC, and that the siege lasted 2 1/2 years. Archaeological evidence supports that the city did fall about the time of 587 BC or 586 BC. Babylonians burned the city and pulled down the stone walls surrounding it. When they were finished, Jerusalem was a burned out pile of scorched rocks.
Soldiers attacked the walls in different ways, looking for the weakest point to attack. They would plow into it with a large battering ram. They would build catapults to throw stone missiles at Jerusalem’s walls, which were built with massive blocks of cut rock. Attackers also used men called sappers. They would dig a short tunnel under part of the wall. They would brace it with beams. Then they pulled down the beams, which would collapse the tunnel and possibly a part of the wall above the tunnel.
Maybe the king and his men escaped through this gate. Or maybe the Babylonians broke into the city through this gate. The verse is confusing, which leaves scholars and Bible translators guessing and possibly flipping coins.
Also known as the Arabah, a rift valley north and south of the Dead Sea.
Jericho was about 20 winding, downhill miles (33 km) from Jerusalem.
Literally, on the “seventh day of the fifth month” on the Jewish lunar calendar.
For a more detailed description of the metals in the Temple, see 1 Kings 6—7.
The pillars were eight meters tall, with another two meters for the crown. Without the crown: 27 feet high (8 m), 18 feet around (5.5 m) and walls 3 inches thick (75 mm).
Arrested at about age 18, he would have been about 55 years old when the Babylonian king freed him.
Literally, on the “27th day of the 12th month” on the Jewish calendar.
Discussion Questions
- Sorry, there are currently no questions for this chapter.
Maps/Guides
art by James Tissot
