2 Chronicles 36:20

And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away captive,.... The king of Babylon, or his general by his orders, excepting some poor persons left to till the land, see Jeremiah 52:15 , where they were servants to him and his sons; his son Evilmerodach, and his grandson Belshazzar; see Gill on Jeremiah 27:7, until the reign of the kingdom of Persia; until that monarchy began, as it did upon the taking of Babylon by Cyrus king of Persia. This is the first place we meet with this name of Persia in Scripture.

The Arabic writers differ about the origin of it; some derive it from Pars the son of Arsham (Arphaxad), the son of Shem; others from Pars the son of Amur, the son of Japheth; and others say Pars was the son of Elam, the son of Shem, the son of Noah (a); but Bochart (b), seems to be most correct in the derivation of the word, who observes, from Xenophon (c), horses were very rare in this country; and very few could ride them before the times of Cyrus, who taught his foot soldiers to ride horses; and hence it became common, so that none of the best men of the land cared to be seen on foot; yea, he made a law, that it should be reckoned infamous if any of those he had taught the art of riding were seen to go on foot, though ever so little a way; from this sudden change made in his time the people were called Persians, and the country Persia; in the Arabic language, "pharas" signifying a horse, and "pharis" a horseman; and the same writer observes, that hence it is that no mention is made of this country, in the name of Persia, by Isaiah and Jeremiah; but by Ezekiel and Daniel, who were contemporary with Cyrus; and in this book and the following historical ones, which were wrote after the Babylonish captivity, as their history shows; and that this book was, is clear from the preceding clause, as well as from the three last verses. (a) Hyde, Hist. Relig. Vet. Pers. c. 35. p. 418, 419. (b) Phaleg. l. 4. c. 10. col. 224. (c) Cyropaedia, l. 1. c. 11. & l. 4. c. 17, 18.

36:1-21 The ruin of Judah and Jerusalem came on by degrees. The methods God takes to call back sinners by his word, by ministers, by conscience, by providences, are all instances of his compassion toward them, and his unwillingness that any should perish. See here what woful havoc sin makes, and, as we value the comfort and continuance of our earthly blessings, let us keep that worm from the root of them. They had many times ploughed and sowed their land in the seventh year, when it should have rested, and now it lay unploughed and unsown for ten times seven years. God will be no loser in his glory at last, by the disobedience of men. If they refused to let the land rest, God would make it rest. What place, O God, shall thy justice spare, if Jerusalem has perished? If that delight of thine were cut off for wickedness, let us not be high-minded, but fear.

2 Chronicles 36:20 . Where they were servants to him and his sons — They do not seem to have been made captives to private persons, but to have been taken in one body, and made the servants of the king; that is, to have been employed by him, in one way or other, to his private advantage, which we are not now acquainted with. Until the reign of the kingdom of Persia — Until the reign of the king of Persia, Houb. Respecting the proclamation of Cyrus, see the beginning of the next book. From these words, we may conclude that this book was written after the return from captivity.

20, 21 (= 1Es 1:57-58 ). The Captivity 20 . to him and his sons ] Cp. Jeremiah 27:7 . There were three kings of Babylon after Nebuchadnezzar before Cyrus established Persian rule, viz. Evil-Merodach (Amil-Marduk) ( 2 Kings 25:27 ), Neriglissar (Nergalšar-uṣur), and Nabonidus (Nabu-na’id). The last two kings were usurpers. Neriglissar was (it seems) son-in-law to Nebuchadnezzar (Hommel, Babylonia in Hastings’ Bible Dict. , i. 229a). Whether Nabonidus was connected with the royal house is not known. 2 Chronicles 36:20

13. who had made him swear by God—Zedekiah received his crown on the express condition of taking a solemn oath of fealty to the king of Babylon (Eze 17:13); so that his revolt by joining in a league with Pharaoh-hophra, king of Egypt, involved the crime of perjury. His own pride and obdurate impiety, the incurable idolatry of the nation, and their reckless disregard of prophetic warnings, brought down on his already sadly reduced kingdom the long threatened judgments of God. Nebuchadnezzar, the executioner of the divine vengeance, commenced a third siege of Jerusalem, which, after holding out for a year and a half, was taken in the eleventh year of the reign of Zedekiah. It resulted in the burning of the temple, with, most probably, the ark, and in the overthrow of the kingdom of Judah (see on [480]2Ki 25:1-7; [481]Eze 12:13; [482]Eze 17:16).

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 ( Jeremiah 27:7 ) prophesied, until the rise of the kingdom of the Persians. These last words also are an historical interpretation of the prophecy, Jeremiah 27:7 . All this was done ( 2 Chronicles 36:21 ) to fulfil (מלּאת instead of מלּא, as in 1 Chronicles 29:5 ), that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, he having prophesied ( Jeremiah 25:11 ., 2 Chronicles 29:10 ) the seventy years' duration of Judah's desolation and the Babylonian captivity, while the king and people had not regarded his words ( 2 Chronicles 36:12 ). This period, which according to 2 Chronicles 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 ( Leviticus 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 Leviticus 26:34 . That this is the thought is placed beyond doubt by the succeeding circumstantial clause, taken word for word from Leviticus 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 Leviticus 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.