12 Then Jehoiachin, king of Judah, went out to the king of Babylon, with his mother and his servants and his chiefs and his unsexed servants; and in the eighth year of his rule the king of Babylon took him.
The Lord gave me a vision, and I saw two baskets full of figs put in front of the Temple of the Lord, after Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, had taken prisoner Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and the chiefs of Judah, and the expert workmen and metal-workers from Jerusalem, and had taken them to Babylon.
These are the people whom Nebuchadrezzar took away prisoner: in the seventh year, three thousand and twenty-three Jews:
And in the thirty-seventh year after Jehoiachin, king of Judah, had been taken prisoner, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, Evil-merodach, king of Babylon, in the first year of his rule, took Jehoiachin, king of Judah, out of prison;
In the spring of the year King Nebuchadnezzar sent and took him away to Babylon, with the beautiful vessels of the house of the Lord, and made Zedekiah, his father's brother, king over Judah and Jerusalem.
Now these are the words of the letter which Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the responsible men among those who had been taken away, and to the priests and the prophets and to all the rest of the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken away prisoners from Jerusalem to Babylon; (After Jeconiah the king and the queen-mother and the unsexed servants and the rulers of Judah and Jerusalem and the expert workmen and the metal-workers had gone away from Jerusalem;)
Say now to this uncontrolled people, Are these things not clear to you? Say to them, See, the king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and took its king and its rulers away with him to Babylon;
By my life, says the Lord, even if Coniah, the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, was the ring on my right hand, even from there I would have you pulled off; And I will give you into the hands of those desiring your death, and into the hands of those whom you are fearing, even into the hands of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, and into the hands of the Chaldaeans. I will send you out, and your mother who gave you birth, into another country not the land of your birth; and there death will come to you. But to the land on which their soul's desire is fixed, they will never come back. Is this man Coniah a broken vessel of no value? is he a vessel in which there is no pleasure? why are they violently sent out, he and his seed, into a land which is strange to them? O earth, earth, earth, give ear to the word of the Lord! The Lord has said, Let this man be recorded as having no children, a man who will not do well in all his life: for no man of his seed will do well, seated on the seat of the kingdom of David and ruling again in Judah.
Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, These are the words of the Lord, the God of armies, the God of Israel: If you go out to the king of Babylon's captains, then you will have life, and the town will not be burned with fire, and you and your family will be kept from death: But if you do not go out to the king of Babylon's captains, then this town will be given into the hands of the Chaldaeans and they will put it on fire, and you will not get away from them.
And in the thirty-seventh year after Jehoiachin, king of Judah, had been taken prisoner, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth day of the month, Evil-merodach, king of Babylon, in the first year after he became king, took Jehoiachin, king of Judah, out of prison.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on 2 Kings 24
Commentary on 2 Kings 24 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 24
Things are here ripening for, and hastening towards, the utter destruction of Jerusalem. We left Jehoiakim on the throne, placed there by the king of Egypt: now here we have,
2Ki 24:1-7
We have here the first mention of a name which makes a great figure both in the histories and in the prophecies of the Old Testament; it is that of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon (v. 1), that head of gold. He was a potent prince, and one that was the terror of the mighty in the land of the living; and yet his name would not have been known in sacred writ if he had not been employed in the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of the Jews.
2Ki 24:8-20
This should have been the history of king Jehoiachin's reign, but, alas! it is only the history of king Jehoiachin's captivity, as it is called, Eze. 1:2. He came to the crown, not to have the honour of wearing it, but the shame of losing it. Ideo tantum venerat, ut exiret-He came in only to go out.