1. Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylonia came. It appears that Nebuchadnezzar was so incensed by the betrayal on the part of his vassal king Zedekiah that he personally led the siege against Jerusalem. At some point, however, before the actual conquest of the city, he withdrew to a Mesopotamian outpost in Riblah (verse 5), leaving the completion of the siege to his military deputy, Nebuzaradan (verse 9ff.).

3. bread. As elsewhere, this word is probably a synecdoche for food in general.

4. In the eleventh year of Zedekiah. The text at this point is clearly defective, exhibiting a subject (“all the men of war”) with no predicate and lacking some narrative information. The entire passage is replicated in Jeremiah 39, and so the translation incorporates, italicized, elements from the text in Jeremiah.

Nergal-Sarezer. This name occurs twice here (as well as in the corresponding list in Jeremiah), which must be a scribal duplication.

6. pronounced judgment against him. This would scarcely have been a proper trial but summary judgment of a vassal king who had proved himself a traitor.

7. And Zedekiah’s sons they slaughtered before his eyes. In a pointed device of ancient Near Eastern barbarity, the last thing he is made to see before they blind him is the slaughter of his sons. The act is political as well as sadistic: no one is left in the line of Zedekiah to claim the throne after him.

8. the high chamberlain. This is the same title attached to Potiphar in Genesis 39:1. The Hebrew sar hatabaḥim literally means “commander of the slaughter” (“slaughter” in the culinary sense). The title might have originally designated a head steward or chef, but it clearly came to mean someone exercising high authority in the political and military realm.

9. every great house. These are the houses of the nobility, as the Aramaic translation, batey revavaia, properly registers.

10. And the wall of Jerusalem . . . did the Chaldean force . . . shatter. Destroying the wall rendered the city totally indefensible, eradicating any possibility that it could continue to be the capital of an independent state.

11. the turncoats. Literally, “those who fell.” One should recall that there was a strong group among the Judahites (including Jeremiah) who thought that the rebellion against Babylonia was greatly ill advised, and so it is not surprising that some of these should defect to the Babylonians.

the masses. The Hebrew hamon, which in biblical usage generally refers to a loud hubbub, may be doubtful. The parallel passage in Jeremiah 52:15 shows haʾamon, a collective noun for artisans, and that looks like the more likely reading.

12. And of the poorest of the land. The impression given here that only the poor agricultural workers were spared the fate of exile is probably misleading. Although the Babylonians appear to have exiled a large part of the nation’s elite, both Gedaliah, who is appointed regent by the Babylonians, and the conspirators who kill him are from the nobility. The burial center at Katef-Hinnom, in western Jerusalem, which contains epigraphic and other evidence of having been in continuous use through the sixth century B.C.E., was clearly a burial place for Judahite aristocracy.

13. And the bronze pillars. It was common procedure in conquests to cart off the temple treasures of the conquered. At the same time, this catalogue of precious sacred vessels seized by the Babylonians reverses everything reported in 1 Kings 6–7 about the splendid furnishings for the Temple and the palace that Solomon caused to be fashioned. Everything that the grand first king after David built or made is either reduced to rubble or taken off by the enemy,

the bronze sea. This is a large cast-metal pool, mentioned in 1 Kings 7:23 and elsewhere.

16. beyond measure. More literally, “beyond weighing.”

18. And the high chamberlain took Seraiah the head priest and Zephaniah the assistant priest. The obvious intention is to prevent a renewal of the cult in Jerusalem. The usual term for high priest (in the Hebrew, “great priest”) is not used but rather “head priest,” kohen haroʾsh.

21. And the king of Babylonia struck them down and put them to death. No Geneva convention obtains for these ancient prisoners of war, and since they constitute the nation’s military and sacerdotal elite, Nebuchadnezzar wants to eliminate them entirely,

24. Do not be afraid to serve the Chaldeans. Gedaliah is obviously a member of the pro-Babylonian faction among the Judahites who assumed that military resistance was not feasible and that cooperation would lead to kind treatment by the Babylonians. The men who come to see him clearly belong to the opposing faction, and they regard Gedaliah as a quisling and thus proceed to kill him.

25. of the royal seed. He may well have hoped to claim the throne after the death of Gedaliah.

as well as the Judahites and the Chaldeans who were with him in Mizpah. These killings are a mark of their ruthlessness and of their thoroughness as insurgents. They murder all of Gedaliah’s attendants and staff as vile collaborators, and they also kill the Chaldeans stationed with him, perhaps to eliminate them as witnesses and certainly as an act of defiance against the conquerors.

26. And all the people arose, from the least to the greatest. This is again a patent exaggeration: the historical evidence argues strongly against the notion that the entire country was emptied of its Judahite population. The logic of the flight to Egypt is that the Egyptians were the adversaries of Babylonia and the allies of the anti-Babylonian faction.

27. Evil-Merodach. He assumed the throne of Babylonia in 562 B.C.E. Granting pardons when one becomes king was a common ancient Near Eastern practice. Jehoiachin was taken into captivity in 597. His quarter century as prisoner may actually have been a form of house arrest because a Babylonian document from 592 records the provision of food for Jehoiachin king of Judah and his five sons, suggesting that some recognition of his royal status was accorded all along.

lifted up the head. This is the same idiom, intimating pardon, that is used for the imprisoned chief steward in the Joseph story (Genesis 40:13).

28. gave him a throne above the thrones of the kings who were with him. This is probably a nationalistic flourish of the writer’s because it is unlikely that Jehoiachin would have been granted a higher status than other kings held in Babylonian captivity.

29. And he changed his prison garments. This detail is probably a deliberate reminiscence of the Joseph story: when Joseph is freed from prison, he is clothed by Pharaoh in fine garments.

Jehoiachin. The Hebrew says merely “he,” and the proper name has been added in order to avoid confusion of pronominal reference.

30. And his provision was a perpetual provision . . . day after day. The historical event with which the Book of Kings ends is of course a complete catastrophe—the utter destruction of Jerusalem, including Temple and palace; the massacre of the royal line and the military and priestly elite; and the exile of a large part of the population. This concluding image, however, seeks to intimate a hopeful possibility of future restoration: a Davidic king is recognized as king, even in captivity, and is given a daily provision appropriate to his royal status. As he sits on his throne elevated above the thrones of the other captive kings, the audience of the story is invited to imagine a scion of David again sitting on his throne in Jerusalem.