2 Kings 25: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Nebuchadnezzar's army besieges Jerusalem until the famine is severe and there is no bread, breaks through the wall, captures the fleeing King Zedekiah near Jericho, kills his sons in front of him, and blinds him. Nebuzaradan then burns the temple and the palace, pulls down the city walls, carries most of the people into exile, strips the bronze, gold, and silver from the temple, and takes the chief priests and officials to Riblah to be executed. Gedaliah is appointed over the people left behind, but he is assassinated, and the survivors flee to Egypt. The book ends with Jehoiachin released from prison in Babylon and fed at the king's table for the rest of his life.

Claim by Claim

1. 25:1
   • In the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came against Jerusalem.
   • Nebuchadnezzar came with all his army.
   • Nebuchadnezzar encamped against Jerusalem.
   • They built a siege wall against Jerusalem all around it.
2. 25:2
   • The city was kept under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.
3. 25:3
   • On the ninth day of the fourth month the famine was severe in the city.
   • There was no bread for the people of the land.
4. 25:4
   • The city was breached.
   • All the men of war fled by night by way of the gate between the two walls, which is by the king's garden.
   • The Chaldeans were around the city on every side.
   • The king went by the way toward the Arabah.
5. 25:5
   • The army of the Chaldeans pursued the king.
   • The Chaldeans overtook the king in the plains of Jericho.
   • All the king's army was scattered from him.
6. 25:6
   • They seized the king.
   • They brought the king up to the king of Babylon at Riblah.
   • They pronounced judgment on him.
7. 25:7
   • They slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes.
   • They blinded Zedekiah's eyes.
   • They bound Zedekiah with bronze fetters.
   • They brought Zedekiah to Babylon.
8. 25:8
   • In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan came to Jerusalem.
   • Nebuzaradan was captain of the guard.
   • Nebuzaradan was a servant of the king of Babylon.
9. 25:9
   • He burned the house of the LORD.
   • He burned the king's house.
   • He burned all the houses of Jerusalem.
   • He burned every great house with fire.
10. 25:10
    • All the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem.
11. 25:11
    • Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile the rest of the people who were left in the city.
    • He carried into exile the deserters who had fallen away to the king of Babylon.
    • He carried into exile the rest of the multitude.
12. 25:12
    • The captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land behind.
    • Those left behind were to be vinedressers and field workers.
13. 25:13
    • The Chaldeans broke in pieces the bronze pillars that were in the house of the LORD.
    • The Chaldeans broke in pieces the stands.
    • The Chaldeans broke in pieces the bronze sea that was in the house of the LORD.
    • They carried the bronze of them to Babylon.
14. 25:14
    • They took away the pots, the shovels, the snuffers, and the dishes.
    • They took away all the bronze vessels used in the temple service.
15. 25:15
    • The captain of the guard took away the firepans and the bowls.
    • He took what was of gold as gold and what was of silver as silver.
16. 25:16
    • Solomon had made the two pillars, the one sea, and the stands for the house of the LORD.
    • The bronze of all these vessels was beyond weighing.
17. 25:17
    • The height of the one pillar was eighteen cubits.
    • There was a capital of bronze upon it.
    • The height of the capital was three cubits.
    • There was network and pomegranates on the capital all around.
    • The capital's work was all of bronze.
    • The second pillar had the like, with network.
18. 25:18
    • The captain of the guard took Seraiah the chief priest.
    • He took Zephaniah the second priest.
    • He took the three keepers of the threshold.
19. 25:19
    • From the city he took one officer who was set over the men of war.
    • He took five men of those who saw the king's face, who were found in the city.
    • He took the scribe of the commander of the army, who mustered the people of the land.
    • He took sixty men of the people of the land who were found in the city.
20. 25:20
    • Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard took them.
    • He brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah.
21. 25:21
    • The king of Babylon struck them down.
    • The king of Babylon put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath.
    • So Judah was carried into exile out of its own land.
22. 25:22
    • Some people remained in the land of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had left there.
    • Nebuchadnezzar appointed Gedaliah son of Ahikam, son of Shaphan, over them.
23. 25:23
    • All the captains of the forces, they and their men, heard that the king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah.
    • They came to Gedaliah at Mizpah.
    • Those who came were Ishmael son of Nethaniah, Johanan son of Kareah, Seraiah son of Tanhumeth the Netophathite, and Jaazaniah son of the Maacathite.
    • Their men came with them.
24. 25:24
    • Gedaliah swore an oath to them and to their men.
    • Gedaliah told them not to fear the servants of the Chaldeans.
    • Gedaliah told them to dwell in the land.
    • Gedaliah told them to serve the king of Babylon.
    • Gedaliah said that it would then be well with them.
25. 25:25
    • In the seventh month Ishmael son of Nethaniah, son of Elishama, came.
    • Ishmael was of the royal seed.
    • Ten men came with Ishmael.
    • They struck Gedaliah so that he died.
    • They also struck the Jews and the Chaldeans who were with Gedaliah at Mizpah.
26. 25:26
    • All the people, from small to great, and the captains of the forces arose and went to Egypt.
    • They went because they were afraid of the Chaldeans.
27. 25:27
    • In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, Evil-merodach king of Babylon lifted up the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah out of prison.
    • This happened in the year that Evil-merodach began to reign.
28. 25:28
    • Evil-merodach spoke kindly to Jehoiachin.
    • Evil-merodach set Jehoiachin's throne above the throne of the kings who were with him in Babylon.
29. 25:29
    • Jehoiachin changed his prison garments.
    • Jehoiachin ate bread continually before the king all the days of his life.
30. 25:30
    • A continual allowance was given to Jehoiachin from the king.
    • The allowance was a daily portion for every day.
    • The allowance continued all the days of his life.

Words Worth Explaining

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

25:1

Dates are given by the years of a king's reign, the normal way of counting time in the ancient Near East; the tenth month of the Hebrew calendar falls in our December–January, so this is about January 588 BC. Nebuchadnezzar had earlier placed Zedekiah on the throne as a subject king, and Zedekiah had rebelled against him. "Siege works" were earth ramps, walls and towers thrown up around a city to seal it off from supplies and to let attackers reach the top of its walls.

25:2

Counting from the ninth year to the eleventh, the siege lasted about eighteen months.

25:3

The fourth month falls in our June–July. A besieged city starved because nothing could be brought in; the food ran out before the walls did.

25:4

"Chaldeans" was the name of the people of southern Babylonia, the group the ruling dynasty came from; throughout these chapters it simply means the Babylonians.

25:5

Jericho lies about seventeen miles northeast of Jerusalem on flat, open ground in the Jordan valley, where men on the run have no cover.

25:6

Riblah was a town in Syria on the Orontes river, roughly two hundred miles north of Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar was running the campaign from there rather than being present at the siege himself.

25:7

Blinding a defeated rebel was a recognized punishment for a subject king who broke his oath of loyalty. Killing his sons first both ended his family line and made that the last thing he ever saw.

25:8

"Captain of the guard" translates a title for the commander of the king's bodyguard, one of the senior officers of the Babylonian state. The fifth month falls in our July–August; this is about a month after the wall was breached, in 586 BC.

25:9

The temple was the one Solomon had built roughly four hundred years earlier; it was the only place where sacrifices to the LORD were offered. Where the King James prints LORD in capitals, it stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters usually written YHWH, which readers spoke aloud as "the Lord."

25:10

Demolishing the walls was more than punishment. Without them Jerusalem could no longer function as a fortress or serve as a base for another rebellion.

25:11

Deporting a conquered population, especially its leading families, was standard Babylonian policy: people scattered far from home were far less likely to revolt again. "Those who had deserted" are people who had gone over to the besieging army before the city fell.

25:12

The point of leaving the poorest was practical, not merciful. Removing the wealthy, the skilled and the leading families broke any capacity to resist, while farm laborers kept the land producing crops and taxes for Babylon.

25:13

The pillars were two free-standing bronze columns at the temple entrance, known elsewhere as Jachin and Boaz. The "Sea" was an enormous bronze basin, about fifteen feet across, holding water for the priests to wash with. The stands were wheeled bronze carts that carried smaller basins. Bronze was a costly metal, and the value here was in the metal itself, which is why it was broken up and hauled away.

25:14

These were the working tools of sacrificial worship: pots for boiling meat and carrying ashes, shovels for clearing ash from the altar, trimmers for cutting the burnt ends off lamp wicks, and dishes used for incense.

25:15

Firepans were shallow metal trays for carrying live coals from the altar. Sprinkling bowls held blood or wine that was thrown against the sides of the altar during a sacrifice.

25:16

"Too heavy to weigh" is a way of saying the amount was beyond reckoning, not that anyone tried and failed.

25:17

A cubit was about eighteen inches, roughly the length of a forearm, so each pillar stood about twenty-seven feet high with a decorated cap of about four and a half feet on top. Pomegranates, a fruit with a crown-shaped top, were a common decorative motif in temple and palace work.

25:18

These were the temple's senior staff: the chief priest, his deputy, and the officials who controlled who could enter the temple courts. Executing them dismantled the religious establishment along with the building.

25:19

"The people of the land" was a set phrase for the free landholding citizens of Judah, a recognized class with real political weight, not simply the general population. The army's scribe kept the muster rolls recording which men owed military service, so he was the state's record of its own manpower.

25:21

Hamath was a region of central Syria, well north of Israelite territory; Riblah lay within it.

25:22

Gedaliah was made governor of a Babylonian province, not king. His grandfather Shaphan had been a senior secretary of state under King Josiah, and his father Ahikam had earlier protected the prophet Jeremiah; naming three generations signals that he came from a well-known Jerusalem official family rather than being a foreign appointee.

25:23

These commanders led units of Judean soldiers who had escaped the fall of the city and were still under arms in the countryside. Mizpah, about eight miles north of Jerusalem, became the administrative center because Jerusalem itself was in ruins. "Netophathite" means a man from Netophah, a village near Bethlehem; "Maachathite" means from Maacah, a region northeast of the Sea of Galilee.

25:24

Swearing an oath was the binding legal act of the time; Gedaliah is guaranteeing with his own life that the men will not be punished for having fought against Babylon.

25:25

The seventh month falls in our September–October. Ishmael was a descendant of David, so a member of the family that had ruled Judah for four centuries, while Gedaliah was not; the killing was an attack by the old royal line on a Babylonian-appointed ruler from outside it.

25:26

Egypt was Babylon's great rival and the obvious refuge, being outside Babylonian control. They fled because the murder of a Babylonian-appointed governor would bring reprisals on everyone left in the land.

25:27

Jehoiachin was the king before Zedekiah. He had reigned only three months and was deported to Babylon in 597 BC, about eleven years before the city fell, and had been held there ever since; thirty-seven years on brings the date to about 561 BC. Evilmerodach is the Hebrew form of Amel-Marduk, Nebuchadnezzar's son and successor. The King James phrase "did lift up the head" is a Hebrew idiom for restoring someone to favor.

25:28

Defeated kings were commonly kept at the conqueror's court as hostages and trophies. Their seating order at court expressed their rank, so raising Jehoiachin's seat above theirs was a public statement of his new standing.

25:29

Eating at the king's table every day meant being kept permanently at royal expense with a recognized position at court, the opposite of being a prisoner.

25:30

A fixed daily ration was how a court supported its dependants. Clay tablets found in Babylon record exactly this kind of ration list, including allowances of oil for "Yaukin, king of the land of Judah," and for his sons.