2 Raja-raja 24:1

24:1 During Jehoiakim’s reign, ¹  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked. ²  Jehoiakim was his subject for three years, but then he rebelled against him. ³ 

2 Raja-raja 24:10-16

24:10 At that time the generals ⁴  of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon marched to Jerusalem and besieged the city. ⁵  24:11 King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to the city while his generals were besieging it. 24:12 King Jehoiachin of Judah, along with his mother, his servants, his officials, and his eunuchs surrendered ⁶  to the king of Babylon. The king of Babylon, in the eighth year of his reign, ⁷  took Jehoiachin ⁸  prisoner. 24:13 Nebuchadnezzar ⁹  took from there all the riches in the treasuries of the Lord’s temple and of the royal palace. He removed all the gold items which King Solomon of Israel had made for the Lord’s temple, just as the Lord had warned. 24:14 He deported all the residents of Jerusalem, including all the officials and all the soldiers (10,000 people in all). This included all the craftsmen and those who worked with metal. No one was left except for the poorest among the people of the land. 24:15 He deported Jehoiachin from Jerusalem to Babylon, along with the king’s mother and wives, his eunuchs, and the high-ranking officials of the land. ¹⁰  24:16 The king of Babylon deported to Babylon all the soldiers (there were 7,000), as well as 1,000 craftsmen and metal workers. This included all the best warriors. ¹¹ 

2 Raja-raja 25:1-7

25:1 So King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came against Jerusalem with his whole army and set up camp outside ¹²  it. They built siege ramps all around it. He arrived on the tenth day of the tenth month in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign. ¹³  25:2 The city remained under siege until King Zedekiah’s eleventh year. 25:3 By the ninth day of the fourth month ¹⁴  the famine in the city was so severe the residents ¹⁵  had no food. 25:4 The enemy broke through the city walls, ¹⁶  and all the soldiers tried to escape. They left the city during the night. ¹⁷  They went through the gate between the two walls that is near the king’s garden. ¹⁸  (The Babylonians were all around the city.) Then they headed for the Jordan Valley. ¹⁹  25:5 But the Babylonian army chased after the king. They caught up with him in the plains of Jericho, ²⁰  and his entire army deserted him. 25:6 They captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah, ²¹  where he ²²  passed sentence on him. 25:7 Zedekiah’s sons were executed while Zedekiah was forced to watch. ²³  The king of Babylon ²⁴  then had Zedekiah’s eyes put out, bound him in bronze chains, and carried him off to Babylon.

[24:1]  ¹ tn Heb “In his days.”

[24:1]  ² tn Heb “came up.” Perhaps an object (“against him”) has been accidentally omitted from the text. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 306.

[24:1]  ³ tn The Hebrew text has “and he turned and rebelled against him.”

[24:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “servants.”

[24:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “went up [to] Jerusalem and the city entered into siege.”

[24:12]  ⁶ tn Heb “came out.”

[24:12]  ⁷ sn That is, the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, 597 b.c.

[24:12]  ⁸ tn Heb “him”; the referent (Jehoiachin) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[24:13]  ⁹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Nebuchadnezzar) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[24:15]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and he deported Jehoiachin to Babylon; the mother of the king and the wives of the king and his eunuchs and the mighty of the land he led into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.”

[24:16]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the entire [group], mighty men, doers of war.”

[25:1]  ¹² tn Or “against.”

[25:1]  ¹³ sn This would have been Jan 15, 588 b.c. The reckoning is based on the calendar that begins the year in the spring (Nisan = March/April).

[25:3]  ¹⁴ tn The MT has simply “of the month,” but the parallel passage in Jer 52:6 has “fourth month,” and this is followed by almost all English translations. The word “fourth,” however, is not actually present in the MT of 2 Kgs 25:3.

[25:3]  sn According to modern reckoning that would have been July 18, 586 b.c. The siege thus lasted almost a full eighteen months.

[25:3]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the people of the land.”

[25:4]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “the city was breached.”

[25:4]  ¹⁷ tn The Hebrew text is abrupt here: “And all the men of war by the night.” The translation attempts to capture the sense.

[25:4]  ¹⁸ sn The king’s garden is mentioned again in Neh 3:15 in conjunction with the pool of Siloam and the stairs that go down from the city of David. This would have been in the southern part of the city near the Tyropean Valley which agrees with the reference to the “two walls” which were probably the walls on the eastern and western hills.

[25:4]  ¹⁹ sn Heb “toward the Arabah.” The Arabah was the rift valley north and south of the Dead Sea. Here the intention was undoubtedly to escape across the Jordan to Moab or Ammon. It appears from Jer 40:14; 41:15 that the Ammonites were known to harbor fugitives from the Babylonians.

[25:5]  ²⁰ map For location see Map5 B2; Map6 E1; Map7 E1; Map8 E3; Map10 A2; Map11 A1.

[25:6]  ²¹ sn Riblah was a strategic town on the Orontes River in Syria. It was at a crossing of the major roads between Egypt and Mesopotamia. Pharaoh Necho had earlier received Jehoahaz there and put him in chains (2 Kgs 23:33) prior to taking him captive to Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar had set up his base camp for conducting his campaigns against the Palestinian states there and was now sitting in judgment on prisoners brought to him.

[25:6]  ²² tn The Hebrew text has the plural form of the verb, but the parallel passage in Jer 52:9 has the singular.

[25:7]  ²³ tn Heb “were killed before his eyes.”

[25:7]  ²⁴ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king of Babylon) has been specified in the translation for clarity.