Jeremiah 39:1-7
Jer 39:1-14 In Jer 39:1-14 the events which took place at the taking of Jerusalem are summarily related, for the purpose of showing how the announcements of Jeremiah the prophet have been fulfilled. ▼▼The greater portion of the section Jer 39:1-14 is set down by Movers, Hitzig, Ewald, and Graf as the interpolation of a later glosser, compiled either out of Jer 52:4-16, or from 2 Kings 25. Jer 39:3, Jer 39:11, Jer 39:12, and Jer 39:14 are supposed by Hitzig to be all that are genuine, on the ground that these are the only portions containing independent statements, not derived from any other source. They treat simply of the person of the prophet, and state how, at the command of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the body-guard, brought Jeremiah out of the court of the prison and delivered him over to the care of Gedaliah. If we gather together the verses that are left as genuine, we find, of course, that the subject treated of in them is what occurred when Jeremiah was liberated from his confinement in the court of the prison. But neither is the difference between Jer 39:14 and Jer 40:1. thereby settled, nor the difficulty removed, that Nebuzaradan, the captain of the body-guard, was not present with the army when Jerusalem was taken; according to Jer 52:12, it was not till a month after that event that he was sent to Jerusalem from Riblah by the king, who was staying there. Jer 39:11 and Jer 39:12, too, retain the appearance of being interpolations. Ewald and Graf, accordingly, consider these two verses also as later insertions. But even this view does not settle the differences and difficulties that have been raised, but only increases them; for it would represent Jeremiah as being set at liberty, not by Nebuzaradan, as is related Jer 40:1., but by the Chaldean generals named in Jer 39:3. - When, however, we inquire into the grounds taken as the foundation of this hypothesis, the fact that the lxx have omitted Jer 39:4, Jer 39:10, and Jer 39:13 can prove nothing, since Jer 39:1 and Jer 39:2 are found in the lxx, although these also are supposed to be spurious. The only argument adduced for the attempted excision, viz., that Jer 39:1, Jer 39:2, Jer 39:4-10 break the connection, proves absolutely nothing in itself, but merely receives importance on the supposition that the present section could only treat of the liberation of Jeremiah, and must contain nothing that is mentioned elsewhere regarding the taking of Jerusalem. But this supposition is quite unwarranted. That Jer 39:1 and Jer 39:2 are inserted parenthetically cannot afford any ground of suspicion as regards their genuineness; and that, in Jer 39:4-10, mention is briefly made of Zedekiah’s being seized and condemned, of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the carrying away of the people, except the very meanest, - this also cannot throw suspicion on the genuineness of these verses; fore these statements obviously aim at showing how the word of the Lord, which Jeremiah had proclaimed repeatedly, and once more a short time before the storming of the city, had been fulfilled. Finally, it follows from this that these statements agree with those given in Jer 52 and in 2 Kings regarding the capture and destruction of Jerusalem; but it does not follow that they have been derived from the latter as their source. The language in the disputed verses is peculiarly that of Jeremiah. The expression כּל־חרי יהוּדה is found in Jer 27:20; while in Jer 52:10, instead of it, we find כּל־שׂרי, and in 2 Kings the whole sentence is wanting. So, also, דּבּר משׁפּטים, Jer 39:5 and Jer 52:9, is an expression peculiar to Jeremiah (see on Jer 1:16); in 2Ki 25:6 it is changed to דּבּר משׁפּט. Thus we must set down as groundless and erroneous the allegation made by Hitzig and Graf, that these verses of our chapter have been derived from 2 Kings; for the form of the name Nebuchadnezzar (with n) in Jer 39:5 instead of Nebuchadrezzar, which agrees with 2 Kings, and which has been brought to bear on this question, can prove nothing, just because not only in Jer 39:11 but also in Jer 39:1 (which also is said to be taken from 2 Kings) we find Nebuchadrezzar.
Jer 39:1-3 "And it came to pass, when Jerusalem had been taken (in the ninth year of Zedekiah the king of Judah, in the tenth month, Nebuchadrezzar and all his army had come against Jerusalem and besieged it; in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, on the ninth of the month, was the city broken into), then came all the princes of the king of Babylon and sat down at the middle gate, - Nergal-sharezer, Samgar-nebo, Sarsechim, chief chamberlain, Nergal-sharezer, chief magician, and all the rest of the princes of the king of Babylon." These three verses, to which the last clause of Jer 38:28 belongs, form one period, broken up by a pretty long piece inserted in it, on the beginning and duration of the siege of Jerusalem; so that, after the introductory clause והיה כּאשׁר( = ויהי as in Jer 37:11), Jer 38:28, the conclusion does not come till the word ויּבאוּ, Jer 39:3. In the parenthesis, the length of the siege, as stated, substantially agrees with Jer 52:4-7 and 2Ki 25:1-4, only that in these passages the time when the siege began is further determined by the mention of the day of the month, לחדשׁ be בּעשׂור, which words are omitted here. The siege, then, lasted eighteen months, all but one day. After the besiegers had penetrated into the city through the breaches made in the wall, the princes, i.e., the chief generals, took up their position at "the gate of the midst." ישׁבוּ, "they sat down," i.e., took up a position, fixed their quarters. "The gate of the midst," which is mentioned only in this passage, is supposed, and perhaps rightly, to have been a gate in the wall which divided the city of Zion from the lower city; from this point, the two portions of the city, the upper and the lower city, could most easily be commanded. With regard to the names of the Babylonian princes, it is remarkable (1) that the name Nergal-sharezer occurs twice, the first time without any designation, the second time with the official title of chief magician; (2) that the name Samgar-nebo has the name of God (Nebo or Nebu) in the second half, whereas in all other compounds of this kind that are known to us, Nebu forms the first portion of the name, as in Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan, Nebushasban (Jer 39:13), Naboned, Nabonassar, Nabopolassar, etc.; (3) from this name, too, is omitted the title of office, while we find one with the following name. Moreover (4) in Jer 39:13, where the Babylonian grandees are again spoken of, instead of the four names, only three are given, but every one of them with a title of office; and only the third of these, Nergal-sharezer, the chief magician, is identical with the one who is named last in Jer 39:3; while Nebushasban is mentioned instead of the Sarsechim of Jer 39:3 as רב־סריס, chief of the eunuchs (high chamberlain); and in place of Nergal-sharezer, Samgar-nebo, we find Nebuzaradan as the commander of the body-guards (רב טבּחים). On these four grounds, Hitzig infers that Jer 39:3, in the passage before us, has been corrupted, and that it contained originally only the names of three persons, with their official titles. Moreover, he supposes that סמגּר is formed from the Persian jâm and the derivation-syllable kr, Pers. war, and means "he who has or holds the cup," the cup-bearer; thus corresponding to רב שׁקה ot gnidnop, Rab-shakeh, "chief cup-bearer," 2Ki 18:17; Isa 36:2. He also considers שׂרסכים a Hebraizing form of רב סריס; סכה or שׂכה, "to cut," by transposition from חצה, Arab. chtṣy, from which comes chatṣiyun, "a eunuch," = סכי, plur. סכים; hence שׂרסכים = רב סריס, of which the former has been a marginal gloss, afterwards received into the text. This complicated combination, however, by which Hitzig certainly makes out two official titles, though he retains no more than the divine name Nebu as that of Rabsaris, is founded upon two very hazardous conjectures. Nor do these conjectures gain much support from the renewal of the attempt, made about fifty years since by the late P. von Bohlen, to explain from the Neo-Persian the names of persons and titles occurring in the Assyrian and Old-Babylonian languages, an attempt which has long since been looked upon as scientifically unwarranted. Strange as it may seem that the two persons first named are not further specified by the addition of an official title, yet the supposition that the persons named in Isa 36:3 are identical with those mentioned in Isa 36:13 is erroneous, since it stands in contradiction with Jer 52:12, which even Hitzig recognises as historically reliable. According to Jer 52:12, Nebuzaradan, who is the first mentioned in Jer 39:13, was not present at the taking of Jerusalem, and did not reach the city till four weeks afterwards; he was ordered by Nebuchadnezzar to superintend arrangements for the destruction of Jerusalem, and also to make arrangements for the transportation of the captives to Babylon, and for the administration of the country now being laid waste. But in Jer 39:3 are named the generals who, when the city had bee taken by storm, took up their position within it. - Nor do the other difficulties, mentioned above, compel us to make such harsh conjectures. If Nergal-sharezer be the name of a person, compounded of two words, the divine name, Nergal (2Ki 17:30), and Sharezer, probably dominator tuebitur (see Delitzsch on Isa 37:38), then Samgar-Nebu-Sarsechim may possibly be a proper name compounded of three words. So long as we are unable with certainty to explain the words סמגּר and שׂרסכים out of the Assyrian, we can form no decisive judgment regarding them. But not even does the hypothesis of Hitzig account for the occurrence twice over of the name Nergal-sharezer. The Nergal-sharezer mentioned in the first passage was, no doubt, the commander-in-chief of the besieging army; but it could hardly be maintained, with anything like convincing power, that this officer could not bear the same name as that of the chief magician. And if it be conceded that there are really errors in the strange words סמגּר־נבוּ and שׂרסכים, we are as yet without the necessary means of correcting them, and obtaining the proper text. Jer 39:4-7 In Jer 39:4-7 are narrated the flight of Zedekiah, his capture, and his condemnation, like what we find in Jer 52:7-11 and 2Ki 25:4-7. "When Zedekiah the king of Judah and all the men of war saw them (the Chaldean generals who had taken up their position at the mid-gate), they fled by night out of the city, by the way of the king’s garden, by a gate between the walls, and he went out by the way to the Arabah. Jer 39:5. But the army of the Chaldeans pursued after them, and overtook Zedekiah in the steppes of Jericho, and captured him, and brought him to Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, to Riblah, in the land of Hamath; and he pronounced judgment on him." Hitzig and Graf consider that the connection of these events, made by כּאשׁר ראם, is awkward, and say that the king would not have waited till the Chaldean generals took up their position at the mid-gate, nor could he see these in the night-time; that, moreover, he would hardly have waited till the city was taken before he fled. These objections are utterly worthless. If the city of Zion, in which the royal palace stood, was separated from the lower city by a wall, then the king might still be quite at ease, with his men of war, in the upper city or city of Zion, so long as the enemy, who were pushing into the lower city from the north, remained at the separating wall, near the middle gate in it; and only when he saw that the city of Zion, too, could no longer be held, did he need to betake himself to flight with the men of war around him. In actual fact, then, he might have been able to see the Chaldean generals with his own eyes, although we need not press ראם so much as to extract this meaning from it. Even at this juncture, flight was still possible through the south gate, at the king’s garden, between the two walls. Thenius, on 2Ki 25:4, takes חמתים to mean a double wall, which at the southern end of Ophel closed up the ravine between Ophel and Zion. But a double wall must also have had two gates, and Thenius, indeed, has exhibited them in his plan of Jerusalem; but the text speaks of but one gate (שׁער). "The two walls" are rather the walls which ran along the eastern border of Zion and the western border of Ophel. The gate between these was situated in the wall which ran across the Tyropoean valley, and united the wall of Zion and that of Ophel; it was called the horse-gate (Neh 3:28), and occupied the position of the modern "dung-gate" (Bab-el Moghâribeh); see on Neh 3:27-28. It was not the "gate of the fountain," as Thenius (Bücher der Kön. S. 456), Nägelsbach, and others imagine, founding on the supposed existence of the double wall at the south end of Ophel. Outside this gate, where the valley of the Tyropoeon joined with the valley of the Kidron, lay the king’s garden, in the vicinity of the pool of Siloam; see on Neh 3:15. The words 'ויּצא וגו introduce further details as to the king’s flight. In spite of the preceding plurals ויּברחוּ , the sing. יצא is quite suitable here, since the narrator wishes to give further details with regard to the flight of the king alone, without bringing into consideration the warriors who fled along with him. Nor does the following אחריהם militate against this view; for the Chaldean warriors pursued the king and his followers, not to capture these followers, but the king. Escaped from the city, the king took the direction of the ערבה, the plain of the Jordan, in order to escape over Jordan to Gilead. But the pursuing enemy overtook him in the steppes of Jericho (see Comm. on Joshua on Jos 4:13), and thus before he had crossed the Jordan; they led him, bound, to Riblah, before the king of Babylon. "Riblah in the land of Hamath" is still called Ribleh, a wretched village about 20 miles S.S.W. from Hums (Emesa) on the river el Ahsy (Orontes), in a large fertile plain in the northern portion of the Bekâa, on the great caravan-track which passes from Palestine through Damascus, Emesa, and Hamath to Thapsacus and Carchemish on the Euphrates; see Robinson’s Bibl. Res. iii. 545, and on Comm. on Kings at 2Ki 23:33. - On דּבּר משׁפּטים, to speak judgment, pronounce sentence of punishment, see on Jer 1:16. Nebuchadnezzar caused the sons of Zedekiah and all the princes of Judah (חרים, nobles, lords, as in 27:30) to be slain before the eyes of the Jewish king; then he put out his eyes and bound him with brazen fetters, to carry him away to Babylon (לביא for להביא), where, according to Jer 52:11, he remained in confinement till his death.
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