Jeremiah 39:1

Jeremiah THE LAST AGONYJeremiah 39:1 - Jeremiah 39:10 . Two characteristics of this account of the fall of Jerusalem are striking,-its minute particularity, giving step by step the details of the tragedy, and its entire suppression of emotion. The passionless record tells the tale without a tear or a sob. For these we must go to the Book of Lamentations. This is the history of God’s judgment, and here emotion would be misplaced. But there is a world of repressed feeling in the long-drawn narrative, as well as in the fact that three versions of the story are given here { Jeremiah 52:1 - Jeremiah 52:34 , 2 Kings 25:1 - 2 Kings 25:30 }. Sorrow curbed by submission, and steadily gazing on God’s judicial act, is the temper of the narrative. It should be the temper of all sufferers. ‘I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.’ But we may note the three stages in the final agony which this section distinguishes. I. There is the entrance of the enemy. Jerusalem fell not by assault, but by famine. The siege lasted eighteen months, and ended when ‘all the bread in the city was spent.’ The pitiful pictures in Lamentations fill in the details of misery, telling how high-born women picked garbage from dung-heaps, and mothers made a ghastly meal of their infants, while the nobles were wasted to skeletons, and the little children piteously cried for bread.

At length a breach was made in the northern wall {as Josephus tells us, ‘at midnight’}, and through it, on the ninth day of the fourth month {corresponding to July}, swarmed the conquerors, unresisted. The commanders of the Babylonians planted themselves at ‘the middle gate,’ probably a gate in the wall between the upper and lower city, so securing for them the control of both. How many of these fierce soldiers are named in Jeremiah 39:3 ? At first sight there seem to be six, but that number must be reduced by at least two, for Rab-saris and Rab-mag are official titles, and designate the offices {chief eunuch and chief magician} of the two persons whose names they respectively follow. Possibly Samgar-Nebo is also to be deducted, for it has been suggested that, as that name stands, it is anomalous, and it has been proposed to render its first element, Samgar , as meaning cup-bearer , and being the official title attached to the name preceding it; while its second part, Nebo , is regarded as the first element in a new name obtained by reading shashban instead of Sarsechim, and attaching that reading to Nebo. This change would bring Jeremiah 39:3 into accord with Jeremiah 39:13 , for in both places we should then have Nebo-shashban designated as chief of the eunuchs. However the number of the commanders is settled, and whatever their names, the point which the historian emphasises is their presence there.

Jeremiah 39:1-3 . In the ninth year of Zedekiah, &c. — See notes on 2 Kings 25:1-4 . And all the princes of the king of Babylon came in, and sat in the middle gate — Or, the gate of the centre, as Blaney translates it, observing, “The city of Jerusalem stood upon two hills, Zion to the south, and Acra to the north, with a deep valley between them. The gate of the centre, as the term seems plainly to import, was a gate of communication in the middle of the valley between the two parts of the city, sometimes called the higher and the lower city. The Chaldeans entered the city on the north side by a breach in the walls, and immediately rushing forward, and posting themselves in this gate, in the very heart of the city, they became thereby masters at will of the whole. Zedekiah, with his troops, perceiving this, fled out of the opposite gate on the south side.” Even Nergal- sharezer, Samgar-nebo, &c. — It was customary among the Chaldeans to give the names of their idols, as an additional title or mark of honour, to persons of distinction: see note on Isaiah 39:1 . Nergal was the name of an idol worshipped by the Cuthites, 2 Kings 17:30 . Nebo was a Babylonish deity, Isaiah 46:1 .

Jeremiah 39:3 . and sat ] to carry out the matters arising from the capture. Nergal-sharezer, etc .] From the Eng. it would appear that there are six princes mentioned by name. In fact however there are but four at the most (and probably only two), viz. ( a ) Nergal-sharezer, ( b ) Samgar-nebo, ( c ) Sarsechim, ( d ) Nergal-sharezer. But ( d ) is probably an erroneous repetition of ( a ). Rab-saris (usually explained chief of the eunuchs or chamberlains but more probably chief of the heads , i.e. principal men) and Rab-mag (probably chief of the soothsayers ) are the titles of those whose names they follow. Moreover, the first part of Samgar-nebo is probably a corruption of Sar-mag = Rab-mag, chief of the soothsayers , while the latter portion, inasmuch as it never elsewhere ends a name, is to be transferred to the beginning of the third name. Sarsechim, thus becoming Nebo-sarsechim, is an error for Nebushazban of Jeremiah 39:13 . The above modifications of the text thus reduce the list to the more accurate form in which it appears in Jeremiah 39:13 , viz. two names and two titles, i.e. Nergal-sharezer the Rab-mag and Nebushazban the Rab-saris. Nergal-sharezer was a son-in-law of Nebuchadnezzar, and after the murder of Evil-Merodach (b.c. 560) seized the throne. Jeremiah 39:1

XXXIX. (1) In the ninth year of Zedekiah . . .—The great crisis came at last, as Jeremiah had long ago predicted. A fuller narrative of the siege and capture is given in Jeremiah 52. The two verses which open the chapter seem to have been inserted here by the editor of the prophecies in their present form, as explaining the fact with which Jeremiah 38 had closed. The siege had lasted eighteen months, beginning in B.C. 590 and ending B.C. 588. It came to an end, as we learn from Jeremiah 52:6, through the pressure of the famine, of which we have seen traces in Jeremiah 37:21.