Jeremiah 52

This is the final chapter of Jeremiah. It is a historical account added as an appendix after Jeremiah 51 closes with the statement that the words of Jeremiah end there, and most of its content is nearly identical to 2 Kings 25.

Outline

• Verses 1–3 Zedekiah becomes king at twenty-one and reigns eleven years. He does evil in the sight of the LORD and rebels against the king of Babylon.
• Verses 4–11 On the tenth day of the tenth month of Zedekiah's ninth year, Nebuchadnezzar besieges Jerusalem, and by the ninth day of the fourth month of the eleventh year the city has run out of food. When the city wall is breached, Zedekiah flees by night but is captured in the plains of Jericho. At Riblah his sons and the princes of Judah are executed, and Zedekiah, his eyes put out, is carried to Babylon and kept in prison until his death.
• Verses 12–16 On the tenth day of the fifth month of Nebuchadnezzar's nineteenth year, Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, burns the temple, the royal palace, and all the houses of the city, and breaks down the walls. The people are taken captive, and only the poor are left behind to tend the vineyards and fields.
• Verses 17–23 The bronze pillars, the stands, and the bronze sea are broken up and their bronze carried away, and the gold and silver vessels are taken as well. Each pillar was eighteen cubits high and twelve cubits in circumference, each capital was five cubits high, and the pomegranate ornaments numbered one hundred in all.
• Verses 24–27 Leaders including Seraiah the chief priest and Zephaniah the second priest are taken to Riblah and executed.
• Verses 28–30 The number of people carried into captivity was 3,023 in Nebuchadnezzar's seventh year, 832 in his eighteenth year, and 745 in his twenty-third year, for a total of 4,600.
• Verses 31–34 In the thirty-seventh year of Jehoiachin's captivity, Evil-merodach releases him from prison and allows him to eat at the king's table for the rest of his life.

Key Verses

• Jeremiah 52:13 "And burned the house of the LORD, and the king's house" — This shows that the judgment Jeremiah had long warned of actually came to pass.
• Jeremiah 52:31 "...lifted up the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah, and brought him forth out of prison" — The book does not end merely as a record of destruction; it closes by indicating that the house of David still survives.

People and Places

• Zedekiah: The last king of Judah.
• Nebuchadnezzar: The king of Babylon who destroyed Jerusalem.
• Nebuzaradan: Captain of the Babylonian king's guard, who burned the temple and led the captives away.
• Jehoiachin: A king of Judah who was taken to Babylon before Zedekiah.
• Evil-merodach: The Babylonian king who succeeded Nebuchadnezzar and released Jehoiachin.
• Hamutal: Zedekiah's mother. Her father, Jeremiah of Libnah, is a different person from the prophet Jeremiah.
• Seraiah and Zephaniah: The chief priest and the second priest who were executed. This Zephaniah is not the prophet of the Book of Zephaniah.
• Riblah: The Babylonian king's camp in the land of Hamath, where the captives were executed.
• Jerusalem, Jericho, the Temple in Jerusalem (the temple built by Solomon).

Points for Reflection

• The fall of Jerusalem is also recounted in Jeremiah 39, but this chapter is closer to the account in 2 Kings. The Gedaliah narrative found in 2 Kings, however, is omitted here, and the numbers of captives in verses 28–30 appear only in this chapter.
• The numbers of captives in this chapter differ from those given in 2 Kings 24, and the dates are also off by one year. Proposed explanations include that only men were counted or that different methods of reckoning a king's regnal years were used.
• Many interpreters read Jehoiachin's release in verses 31–34 as a sign of hope that the house of David would be restored. The genealogy in Matthew 1 traces a line through Jechoniah (Jehoiachin) and the Babylonian captivity down to Christ.
• These events are regarded as marking the beginning of the Babylonian exile.