Biblion Bible Commentary
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The First Carrying Away
2 Kings 24:1-20
1 In his days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant for three years. Then he turned and rebelled against him. · WEB
Babylon replaces Egypt, the reason for the exile is stated before it is narrated, and ten thousand of the best go east with the temple gold.
In his days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant for three years. Then he turned and rebelled against him 2 Kings 24:1.
The empires change hands and Judah's policy does not: submit, then rebel at the first opportunity, then be crushed. Jehoiakim serves three years and gambles, and the raiding parties that follow are described with a phrase the book has used since Samaria — according to Yahweh's word which he spoke by his servants the prophets 2 Kings 24:2.
Surely at the commandment of Yahweh this came on Judah, to remove them out of his sight for the sins of Manasseh... and also for the innocent blood that he shed; for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and Yahweh would not pardon 2 Kings 24:3–4.
Here the explanation is given before the disaster is narrated. The reader reaches the burning of the city already knowing the verdict, exactly as the fall of Samaria was accounted for at length after the event 2 Kings 17:7–23. Judah's reason is stated in advance; Israel's afterward; and the two explanations bracket the end of both kingdoms.
The naming of Manasseh three reigns later, and of the innocent blood specifically, is the book's answer to the obvious objection — Josiah reformed everything, so why did it still fall? Because a nation is not a ledger that clears when the shrines come down. Blood shed end to end through fifty-five years had made a people, and the people outlived the reform.
The king of Egypt didn't come out of his land any more; for the king of Babylon had taken, from the brook of Egypt to the river Euphrates, all that belonged to the king of Egypt 2 Kings 24:7.
The strategic sentence of the last chapters. Egypt, the ally every Judean king reached for, is finished as a player in the corridor. There is nobody left to play off against Babylon, and Judah's whole foreign policy has run out of options.
Jehoiachin the king of Judah went out to the king of Babylon—he, his mother, his servants, his princes, and his officers; and the king of Babylon captured him 2 Kings 24:12.
An eighteen-year-old who has reigned three months surrenders the city rather than let it be stormed, and walks out with his household. It saves Jerusalem for another decade, and it is the last competent decision anyone in the royal family makes.
He carried out from there all the treasures of Yahweh's house... and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon king of Israel had made in Yahweh's temple, as Yahweh had said 2 Kings 24:13.
The closing clause is the one to notice. Isaiah had told Hezekiah exactly this, after the Babylonian envoys admired the treasury — all that is in your house... will be carried to Babylon 2 Kings 20:17. A century later the inventory he showed off goes east, and the vessels Solomon made are cut up for transport.
He carried away all Jerusalem... even ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and the smiths. No one remained except the poorest people of the land 2 Kings 24:14.
The deportation of 597 takes the administrative and military class and, pointedly, the metalworkers — the men who could make weapons. Among the ten thousand is a young priest named Ezekiel, who will begin seeing visions by a canal in Babylon five years later Ezekiel 1:1–3.
The king of Babylon made Mattaniah, Jehoiachin's father's brother, king in his place, and changed his name to Zedekiah 2 Kings 24:17.
A third king in a decade installed by a foreign power and renamed by it. And the last verse states the outcome before the siege begins: through the anger of Yahweh, this happened in Jerusalem and Judah, until he had cast them out from his presence. Then Zedekiah rebelled 2 Kings 24:20.
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