What Does 2 Chronicles 36:5 Mean?

**THE REIGN OF JEHOIAKIM** (2Chronicles 36:5-8). (Comp. 2Kings 23:36 to 2Kings 24:7, 2 Kings 3 Esdr. 1:37-41; Jeremiah 25:26) (5) **Jehoiakim . . . in Jerusalem.**—2Kings 23:36, adding the mother’s name. here. So LXX. **And he did** **. . .** **the Lord.**—2Kings 23:37, which adds “according to all that his fathers had done.” So LXX. **Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.**—*Nabium-kudurri-u*ç*ur* (“Nebo guard the crown! “) son of Nabopalassar, who had founded this dynasty by successful revolt against Assyria. His extant inscriptions chiefly relate to palace and temple building. Schrader gives a short inscription from a brick now in the Zürich Museum. “Nabû-Kudurri-uçur, king of Babylon, restorer of Esagili and Ezida [two famous temples], son of Nabû-abala-uçur, King of Babylon am I.” No really historical inscription is known except a fragment relating to his Egyptian campaign in his 37th year (568 B.C. ), and an illegible one on the rocks of *Nahr-el-Kelb* near Beirut. The LXX. here interpolates the account of Jehoiakim’s three years of vassalage, and his revolt against Nebuchadnezzar, and the other events and reflections contained in 2Kings 24:1-4. The LXX. makes Jehoiakim, instead of Manasseh, “fill Jerusalem with innocent blood,” contrary to the Hebrew text. **And bound him in fetters.**—*Two bronze* (*chains*)*,* as in 2Chronicles 33:11. **To carry him to Babylon.**—To *make him go.* It is not said that this intention was carried out. (Comp. 2Chronicles 33:11, “and carried him to Babylon.”) Nebuchadnezzar, who, according to Jeremiah 46:2, had defeated Necho in a great battle at Carchemish, in the 4th year of Jehoiakim, appears to have left the king of Judah to reign as a vassal-king, after inflicting upon him a severe humiliation. (The LXX., 3 Esdr., Vulg., and Arabic, but not the Syriac, read: “and carried him to Babylon.”) Thenius says this must be the right reading, and then denies its claim to credibility. He further *asserts* that, “in order to allow ample scope for the fulfilment of the prophecy of Jeremiah” (see Note on 2Chronicles 36:8), the chronicler has represented Jehoiakim as carried alive to Babylon in the last year of his reign. This statement rests not upon *objective* historical grounds, but upon *subjective* prejudices against the chronicler. Daniel 1:1, by a transcriber’s error, puts this first capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in the *third* year of Jehoiakim; whereas Nebuchadnezzar only became king in the fourth of Jehoiakim. (2Kings 25:8; Jeremiah 25:1.)