Jeremiah 52:17-34

The Babylonians took everything of value from the temple of YAHWEH. They smashed the bronze pillars and confiscated the wheeled stands and the bronze laver. Everything made of bronze they carried off to Babylon. They also took the ash pots, the shovels, the snuffers, the sprinkling bowls, the incense bowls, and all the bronze vessels that had been used in worship. The field general took away every small bowl, the censers, the sprinkling bowls, the ash containers, the lampstands, the ladles, and the saucers —everything that was made of gold or silver. But the two pillars, the one sea and the twelve bronze bulls on their movable stands, which King Solomon had made for the temple of YAHWEH, were too heavy to weigh. Both pillars were identical, and each stood eighteen cubits high. Their circumference was twelve cubits, and they were four fingers thick and hollow inside. On top of each column was a large section of bronze; its height was over five cubits, and all around it were filigree and pomegranates, all in bronze. There was a total of one hundred pomegranates on the filigree all around, and ninety-six were visible from the ground. Nebuzaradan, the field general, arrested Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest next in rank, and other temple officials. In the city he arrested an official who was in command of the fighting men, seven of the king’s closest associates, who were discovered in the city, the secretary to the army commander responsible for mustering the troops, and sixty men of distinction. The field general took these men and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. At Riblah, in the territory of Hamath, the king of Babylon had them executed. And so, the people of Judah were taken into exile. Here is the record of the number of those deported by Nebuchadnezzar in the seventh year of his reign: 3,023 men from Judah. In the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, he deported 832 persons from Jerusalem. In the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, Nebuzaradan, the field general, deported 745 Judeans. In all, 4,600 persons were deported. Thirty-seven years after King Jehoiachin was taken away as a prisoner, on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month of that year, King Evil-merodach of Babylon showed kindness to Jehoiachin by releasing him from prison. This was in Evil-merodach’s first year as king. The king of Babylon treated Jehoiachin kindly and gave him a position of honor above the other kings. So Jehoiachin laid aside his prison clothes and, for the rest of his life, always ate at the king’s table. At the command of the king of Babylon, everything that he needed was given to him each day until his death.

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