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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 2 King 24:14 - 24:14
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Beside these treasures, he carried away captive to Babylon the cream of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, not only the most affluent, but, as is evident from Jer 24:1-10, the best portion in a moral respect. In 2Ki 24:14 the number of those who were carried off is simply given in a general form, according to its sum-total, as 10,000; and then in 2Ki 24:15, 2Ki 24:16 the details are more minutely specified. “All Jerusalem” is the whole of the population of Jerusalem, which is first of all divided into two leading classes, and then more precisely defined by the clause, “nothing was left except the common people,” and reduced to the cream of the citizens. The king, queen-mother, and king's wives being passed over and mentioned for the first time in the special list in 2Ki 24:15, there are noticed here כָּל־הַשָּׂרִים and הַחַיִל גִּבֹּורֵי כֹּל, who form the first of the leading classes. By the שָׂרִים are meant, according to 2Ki 24:15, the סָרִיסִים, chamberlains, i.e., the officials of the king's court in general, and by הָאָרֶץ אוּלֵי (“the mighty of the land”) all the heads of the tribes and families of the nation that were found in Jerusalem; and under the last the priests and prophets, who were also carried away according to Jer 29:1, with Ezekiel among them (Eze 1:1), are included as the spiritual heads of the people. The הַחַיִל גִּבֹּורֵי are called הַחַיִל אַנְשֵׁי in 2Ki 24:16; their number was 7000. The persons intended are not warriors, but men of property, as in 2Ki 15:20. The second class of those who ere carried away consisted of כָּל־הֶֽחָרָשׁ, all the workers in stone, metal, and wood, that is to say, masons, smiths, and carpenters; and הַמַּסְגֵּר, the locksmiths, including probably not actual locksmiths only, but makers of weapons also. There is no need for any serious refutation of the marvellous explanation given of מַסְגֵּר by Hitzig (on Jer 24:1), who derives it from מַס and גֵּר, and supposes it to be an epithet applied to the remnant of the Canaanites, who had been made into tributary labourers, although it has been adopted by Thenius and Graf, who make them into artisans of the foreign socagers. עַם־הָאָרֶץ דַּלַּת = דַלַּת־הָאָרֶץ (2Ki 25:12), the poor people of the land, i.e., the lower portion of the population of Jerusalem, from whom Nebuchadnezzar did not fear any rebellion, because they possessed nothing (Jer 39:10), i.e., neither property (money nor other possessions), nor strength and ability to organize a revolt. The antithesis to these formed by the מִלְחָמָה עֹשֵׂי מִ גִּבֹּורִים, the strong or powerful men, who were in a condition to originate and carry on a war; for this category includes all who were carried away, not merely the thousand workmen, but also the seven thousand הַחַיִל אַנְשֵׁי, and the king's officers and the chiefs of the nation, whose number amounted to two thousand, since the total number of the exiles was then thousand. There is no special allusion to warriors or military, because in the struggle for the rescue of the capital and the kingdom from destruction every man who could bear arms performed military service, so that the distinction between warriors and non-warriors was swept away, and the actual warriors are swallowed up in the ten thousand. Babel is the country of Babylonia, or rather the Babylonian empire.