2 Kings 24: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Judah's last years under Babylon are recorded here. Jehoiakim becomes Nebuchadnezzar's vassal, then rebels, and raiding bands come against Judah; the writer says this came at the LORD's command because of the sins of Manasseh and the innocent blood he shed. Jehoiakim dies, his son Jehoiachin reigns three months and surrenders during a siege, and Babylon strips the temple and palace treasures and deports the leaders, soldiers, and skilled workers. Nebuchadnezzar then installs Jehoiachin's uncle Mattaniah as king and renames him Zedekiah, who also does evil and rebels against Babylon.

Claim by Claim

1. 24:1
   • In Jehoiakim's days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up.
   • Jehoiakim became Nebuchadnezzar's servant for three years.
   • Jehoiakim then turned and rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar.
2. 24:2
   • The LORD sent bands of Chaldeans against him.
   • The LORD sent bands of Arameans against him.
   • The LORD sent bands of Moabites against him.
   • The LORD sent bands of Ammonites against him.
   • The LORD sent them against Judah to destroy it.
   • This was according to the word of the LORD.
   • The LORD had spoken that word by his servants the prophets.
3. 24:3
   • This came upon Judah at the command of the LORD.
   • The purpose was to remove them out of his sight.
   • It was because of the sins of Manasseh.
   • It was according to all that Manasseh did.
4. 24:4
   • It was also for the innocent blood that Manasseh shed.
   • Manasseh filled Jerusalem with innocent blood.
   • The LORD was not willing to pardon.
5. 24:5
   • The rest of the acts of Jehoiakim are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah.
   • All that Jehoiakim did is written in that book.
6. 24:6
   • Jehoiakim slept with his fathers.
   • Jehoiachin his son reigned in his place.
7. 24:7
   • The king of Egypt did not come out of his land again.
   • The king of Babylon had taken all that belonged to the king of Egypt.
   • That territory extended from the brook of Egypt to the river Euphrates.
8. 24:8
   • Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign.
   • Jehoiachin reigned three months in Jerusalem.
   • His mother's name was Nehushta.
   • Nehushta was the daughter of Elnathan.
   • Elnathan was of Jerusalem.
9. 24:9
   • Jehoiachin did what was evil in the sight of the LORD.
   • He did according to all that his father had done.
10. 24:10
    • At that time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up against Jerusalem.
    • The city came under siege.
11. 24:11
    • Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came against the city.
    • His servants were besieging it.
12. 24:12
    • Jehoiachin king of Judah went out to the king of Babylon.
    • His mother went out with him.
    • His servants went out with him.
    • His princes went out with him.
    • His officers went out with him.
    • The king of Babylon took Jehoiachin.
    • This happened in the eighth year of the king of Babylon's reign.
13. 24:13
    • He carried out from there all the treasures of the house of the LORD.
    • He carried out the treasures of the king's house.
    • He cut in pieces all the gold vessels that Solomon king of Israel had made in the temple of the LORD.
    • This happened as the LORD had said.
14. 24:14
    • He carried away all Jerusalem into exile.
    • He carried away all the princes.
    • He carried away all the mighty men of valor.
    • The captives numbered ten thousand.
    • He carried away all the craftsmen and the smiths.
    • None remained except the poorest people of the land.
15. 24:15
    • He carried Jehoiachin away to Babylon.
    • He carried away the king's mother.
    • He carried away the king's wives.
    • He carried away his officers.
    • He carried away the mighty of the land.
    • He led them into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon.
16. 24:16
    • All the men of might numbered seven thousand.
    • The craftsmen and smiths numbered a thousand.
    • All of them were strong and fit for war.
    • The king of Babylon brought them captive to Babylon.
17. 24:17
    • The king of Babylon made Mattaniah, Jehoiachin's uncle, king in his place.
    • The king of Babylon changed Mattaniah's name to Zedekiah.
18. 24:18
    • Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign.
    • Zedekiah reigned eleven years in Jerusalem.
    • His mother's name was Hamutal.
    • Hamutal was the daughter of Jeremiah.
    • Jeremiah was of Libnah.
19. 24:19
    • Zedekiah did what was evil in the sight of the LORD.
    • He did according to all that Jehoiakim had done.
20. 24:20
    • This came to pass in Jerusalem and Judah through the anger of the LORD.
    • It continued until he cast them out from his presence.
    • Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

24:1

"Became his servant" means Jehoiakim became a vassal: a defeated king was left on his throne but had to swear loyalty to the conqueror and send him a fixed payment (tribute) every year. Rebelling meant refusing to pay. Babylon was the empire based in what is now southern Iraq; Nebuchadnezzar ruled it from 605 to 562 BC, and this invasion came near the start of his reign.

24:2

"Chaldees" is the older English name for the Chaldeans, the people of southern Babylonia, and by this period the word simply meant Babylonians. "Syrians" here translates a word meaning Arameans, the peoples of the region north-east of Israel around Damascus. Moab and Ammon were small kingdoms east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan, longstanding neighbors and rivals of Judah. These are described as raiding bands rather than a full imperial army.

24:3

Manasseh was a king of Judah who had reigned for fifty-five years and died roughly half a century before these events (his reign is described in 2 Kings 21). The writer is saying the disaster falls on a later generation for what an earlier king did.

24:4

"Innocent blood" is a legal phrase: the killing of people who had done nothing to deserve death, as opposed to lawful execution or death in war. In Israelite law such killing left a stain of guilt on the land itself, which had to be answered for.

24:5

This "book of the record" was a set of official royal annals kept by the court of Judah. It is a lost document, not the biblical books of Chronicles; the writer of Kings repeatedly points readers to it for the fuller record.

24:6

"Slept with his fathers" is the standard formula in Kings for a king's death, usually implying he died without violence and was buried in the family tomb. Notably, the writer does not say where Jehoiakim was buried, though he normally records this.

24:7

The "river of Egypt" is not the Nile but the Brook of Egypt, a seasonal watercourse (usually identified with the Wadi el-Arish) that marked the traditional southern boundary of the land. The Euphrates, far to the north-east, marked the other extreme. The sentence means Egypt had lost control of everything between the two and could no longer intervene in the region.

24:8

The names of the mothers of the kings of Judah are recorded consistently in Kings because the queen mother held a recognized position at court, with rank and influence of her own; that is also why she is listed among the captives in verses 12 and 15.

24:9

"Did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD" is the writer's fixed verdict formula on a king, applied throughout Kings. It refers chiefly to tolerating or promoting the worship of gods other than the LORD, and worship at unauthorised shrines, rather than to a particular crime.

24:10

To besiege a city was to surround its walls with an army and cut off food, water and reinforcements until the defenders surrendered or starved. Ancient armies rarely stormed a walled city directly if they could wait it out.

24:12

"Went out to the king of Babylon" is the language of formal surrender: leaving the protection of the walls and handing yourself over. "The eighth year of his reign" means Nebuchadnezzar's eighth year, not Jehoiachin's, Jehoiachin had only ruled three months. This dates the surrender to 597 BC.

24:13

The gold objects were the fittings and utensils of the temple built by Solomon some four centuries earlier. Cutting them in pieces was not vandalism but standard practice: worked gold was broken up so it could be weighed and carried off as bullion.

24:14

Deporting the craftsmen and metalworkers was a deliberate military measure: they were the people who could make and repair weapons and fortifications. "The poorest sort of the people of the land" were the laborers with no property or standing, left behind to work the fields and vineyards so the land would keep producing. The figure of ten thousand here and the figures in verse 16 (seven thousand plus one thousand) do not obviously agree; the Hebrew does not explain how they relate, and the text leaves it unresolved.

24:15

Deporting the ruling class was standard Babylonian policy, inherited from Assyria: resettle the leaders, soldiers and skilled workers far from home so they cannot organize a revolt, and leave the poor farmers behind to keep the land producing crops and tribute.

24:17

Mattaniah was Jehoiachin's uncle, a son of the previous king Josiah, so Babylon put an older member of the royal family on the throne rather than an outsider. Changing a vassal king's name was an act of ownership, publicly marking who had made him king. Both names are ordinary Hebrew royal names: Mattaniah means roughly "gift of the LORD", Zedekiah "the LORD is my righteousness".

24:18

This Jeremiah is not the prophet Jeremiah, who was active in Jerusalem at this same time; the name was common. Libnah was a town in the lowlands of Judah, to the west.

24:20

To rebel meant stopping the tribute payments and looking to Egypt for military support. The next chapter records what Babylon did in response.