2Ch 36:17-21 | KD | STEP | When the moral corruption had reached this height, judgment broke upon the incorrigible race. As in the transgressions of the king and people are not described according to their historical progression, but are portrayed in rhetorical gradation; so, too, in the judgment upon the sinful people and kingdom is not represented in its historical details, but only rhetorically in its great general outlines. “Then brought He upon them the king of the Chaldeans, who slew their young men with the sword in their sanctuary, and spared not the youth and the maiden, the old man and the grey-headed; he gave everything into his hand.” Prophetic utterances form the basis of this description of the fearful judgment, e.g., ; Jer 32:3., ; and these, again, rest upon Deu 32:25. The subject in the first and last clause of the verse is Jahve. Bertheau therefore assumes that He is also the subject of the intermediate sentence: “and God slew their young men in the sanctuary;” but this can hardly be correct. As in the expansion of the last clause, “he gave everything into his hand,” which follows in , not Jahve but the king of Babylon is the subject; so also in the expansion of the first clause, which וגו ויּהרג introduces, the king of the Chaldeans is the subject, as most commentators have rightly recognised. By מקדּשׁם בּבית the judgment is brought into definite relationship to the crime: because they had profaned the sanctuary by idolatry ( ), they themselves were slain in the sanctuary. On נתן ב הכּל, cf. ; -4. הכּל includes things and persons, and is specialized in -20.

‏ 2 Chronicles 36:17-21

When the moral corruption had reached this height, judgment broke upon the incorrigible race. As in 2Ch 36:12-16 the transgressions of the king and people are not described according to their historical progression, but are portrayed in rhetorical gradation; so, too, in 2Ch 36:17-21 the judgment upon the sinful people and kingdom is not represented in its historical details, but only rhetorically in its great general outlines. “Then brought He upon them the king of the Chaldeans, who slew their young men with the sword in their sanctuary, and spared not the youth and the maiden, the old man and the grey-headed; he gave everything into his hand.” Prophetic utterances form the basis of this description of the fearful judgment, e.g., Jer 15:1-9; Jer 32:3., Eze 9:6; and these, again, rest upon Deu 32:25. The subject in the first and last clause of the verse is Jahve. Bertheau therefore assumes that He is also the subject of the intermediate sentence: “and God slew their young men in the sanctuary;” but this can hardly be correct. As in the expansion of the last clause, “he gave everything into his hand,” which follows in 2Ch 36:18, not Jahve but the king of Babylon is the subject; so also in the expansion of the first clause, which וגו ויּהרג introduces, the king of the Chaldeans is the subject, as most commentators have rightly recognised. By מקדּשׁם בּבית the judgment is brought into definite relationship to the crime: because they had profaned the sanctuary by idolatry (2Ch 36:14), they themselves were slain in the sanctuary. On נתן ב הכּל, cf. Jer 27:6; Jer 32:3-4. הכּל includes things and persons, and is specialized in 2Ch 36:18-20. 2Ch 36:18

All the vessels of the house of God, the treasures of the temple, and of the palace of the king and of the princes, all he brought to Babylon. 2Ch 36:19

They burnt the house of God; they pulled down the walls of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces of the city with fire, and all the costly vessels were devoted to destruction. On להשׁחית, cf. 2Ch 12:12. 2Ch 36:20-21

He who remained from the sword, i.e., who had not been slain by the sword, had not fallen and died in war, Nebuchadnezzar carried away to Babylon into captivity; so that they became servants to him and to his sons, as Jeremiah (Jer 27:7) prophesied, until the rise of the kingdom of the Persians. These last words also are an historical interpretation of the prophecy, Jer 27:7. All this was done (2Ch 36:21) to fulfil (מלּאת instead of מלּא, as in 1Ch 29:5), that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, he having prophesied (Jer 25:11., 2Ch 29:10) the seventy years’ duration of Judah’s desolation and the Babylonian captivity, while the king and people had not regarded his words (2Ch 36:12). This period, which according to 2Ch 36:20 came to an end with the rise of the kingdom of the Persians, is characterized by the clause וגו רצתה עד as a time of expiation of the wrong which had been done the land by the non-observance of the sabbath-years, upon the basis of the threatening (Lev 26:34), in which the wasting of the land during the dispersion of the unrepentant people among the heathen was represented as a compensation for the neglected sabbaths. From this passage in the law the words are taken, to show how the Lord had inflicted the punishment with which the disobedient people had been threatened as early as in the time of Moses. רצתה עד is not to be translated, “until the land had made up its years of rest;” that signification רצה has not; but, “until the land had enjoyed its sabbath-years,” i.e., until it had enjoyed the rest of which it had been deprived by the non-observance of the sabbaths and the sabbath-years, contrary to the will of its Creator; see on Lev 26:34. That this is the thought is placed beyond doubt by the succeeding circumstantial clause, taken word for word from Lev 26:34 : “all days (i.e., the whole time) of its desolation did it hold it” (שׁבתה, it kept sabbath). “To make full the seventy years;” which Jeremiah, ll. cc., had prophesied.

This connecting of Jeremiah’s prophecy with the declaration in Lev 26:34 does not justify us in supposing that the celebration of the sabbath-year had been neglected seventy times, or that for a period of 490 years the sabbath-year had not been observed. Bertheau, holding this view, fixes upon 1000 b.c., i.e., the time of Solomon, or, as we cannot expect any very great chronological exactitude, the beginning of the kingly government in Israel, as the period after which the rest-years ceased to be regarded. He is further of opinion that 2Ch 35:18 harmonizes with this view; according to which passage the passover was not celebrated in accordance with the prescription of the law until the end of the period of the judges. According to this chronological calculation, the beginning of this neglect of the observance of the sabbath-year would fall in the beginning of the judgeship of Samuel. ^{▼▼The seventy years’ exile began in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, i.e., in the year 606 b.c., or 369 years after the division of the kingdom; see the Chronol. Tables at 1 Kings 12 (ii. 3, S. 141), to which the eighty years of the reigns of David and Solomon, and the time of Saul and Samuel, must be added to make up the 490 years (see the comment. on Judges).}

But this is itself unlikely; and still more unlikely is it, that in the time of the judges the sabbath-year had been regularly observed until Samuel; and that during the reigns of the kings David, Solomon, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah, this celebration remained wholly in abeyance. But even apart from that, the words, that the land, to make full the seventy years prophesied by Jeremiah, kept the whole time of the desolation holy, or enjoyed a sabbath rest such as Moses had proclaimed in Lev 26:34, do not necessarily involve that the land had been deprived of its sabbath rest seventy times in succession, or during a period of 490 years, by the sin of the people. The connection between the prophecy of Jeremiah and the provision of the law is to be understood theologically, and does not purport to be calculated chronologically. The thought is this: By the infliction of the punishment threatened against the transgressors of the law by the carrying of the people away captive into Babylon, the land will obtain the rest which the sinful people had deprived it of by their neglect of the sabbath observance commanded them. By causing it to remain uncultivated for seventy years, God gave to the land a time of rest and refreshment, which its inhabitants, so long as they possessed it, had not given it. But that does not mean that the time for which this rest was granted corresponded to the number of the sabbath-years which had not been observed. From these theological reflections we cannot calculate how often in the course of the centuries, from the time of Joshua onwards till the exile, the sabbath-year had not been observed; and still less the time after which the observation of the sabbath-year was continuously neglected. The passage 2Ch 35:8 has no bearing on this question, because it neither states that the passover had been held according to the precepts of the law till towards the end of the time of the judges, nor that it was no longer celebrated in accordance with the precept from that time until Josiah; it only contains the thought that such a passover as that in Josiah’s reign had not been held since the time of the judges: see on the passage.