1. Twenty-one years old was Zedekiah. The conclusion of the Book of Jeremiah, as noted above, largely replicates the conclusion of the Book of Kings, beginning with 2 Kings 24:18. The obvious rationale is that the principal burden of Jeremiah’s prophecies has been the imminent destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the Judahites, which is now presented as a historical report. Some of this material also appears in 39:1–10.

3. And Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylonia. As usual, the writer provides no political explanation—in this case, for the fact that Zedekiah, having been installed by Nebuchadrezzar in 597 B.C.E. as vassal king, now decides to rebel. We have seen earlier in the book that there were sharp divisions within the kingdom of Judah between a pro-Egyptian faction and one advocating accommodation with Babylonia. Zedekiah at this moment, counting on Egyptian support, joined an alliance of trans-Jordanian kingdoms plotting to overthrow Babylonian rule in the west. Egypt did not provide support, and the rebellion failed to materialize. The consequence was Nebuchadrezzar’s assault on Jerusalem and the destruction of the kingdom of Judah in 586 B.C.E.

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

9. he 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.

11. the house of detention. The Hebrew beyt hapequdot is an unusual term for a prison or place of confinement, but the meaning is clear.

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

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

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

the artisans. The Hebrew heʾamon appears to be a collective noun for “artisans.” The parallel text in Kings reads hehamon, “the masses.”

17. And the bronze pillars. This catalogue of precious vessels seized by the Babylonians reverses everything reported in 1 Kings 6–7 about the splendid furnishings for the Temple and 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.

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

24. 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. The usual term for high priest (in the Hebrew, “great priest”) is not used but rather “head priest,” kohen haroʾsh.

27. 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, Nebuchadrezzar wants to eliminate them entirely.

28. This was the people that Nebuchadrezzar exiled. This enumeration of the exiles does not appear in the parallel passage in Kings.

in the seventh year. This is Nebuchadrezzar’s seventh reignal year, 597 B.C.E., when he put down the Judahite rebellion, made King Jehoiakim a captive and exile, and installed Zedekiah as vassal king.

29. In the eighteenth year. This would be 587 or 586 B.C.E., a one-year discrepancy evident between this and the mention of “the nineteenth year” in verse 12.

30. In the twenty-third year. This would be 582 B.C.E., the year of the assassination of Gedaliah (not mentioned in this chapter), an act of insurrection that provoked an additional deportation of Judahites.

all the persons were four thousand six hundred. This amounts to a rather small number of exiles, even if the general population of Judah was not large.

31. lifted up the head. This idiom is borrowed from the Joseph story, where it is applied to the release from prison of Pharaoh’s vizier. The change of garments in verse 33 recalls Joseph’s change of garments after Pharaoh takes him from prison to occupy a high place in the royal court.

32. 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 Jehoiakim would have been granted a higher status than other kings held in Babylonian captivity.

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

34. And his provision was a perpetual provision . . . day after day. This verse is also the last verse of the Book of Kings. Its editorial inclusion here is an attempt to mitigate the national catastrophe that Jeremiah has repeatedly predicted and that is reported in this chapter. The concluding image intimates 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.