What Does Jeremiah 52:28 Mean?

(28) **This is the people . . .**—Here the parallelism with 2 Kings 25, which goes on to give a brief summary of the history of Gedaliah and Ishmael, as narrated in Jeremiah 40-43, ceases, and the writer of the appendix goes on to give particulars as to the various stages of the deportation of the captives. It presents some difficulties in detail. (1) The date given here, the “seventh year” of Nebuchadnezzar, does not agree with 2Kings 24:12, which gives the “eighth year” as the time of the first deportation after the defeat of Jehoiachin. (2) The number of the captives then carried into exile, given in 2Kings 24:14 at 10,000, besides the craftsmen and the smiths, is given here as 3,023. The precision of the number seems to imply reference to a register or record of some kind, and so far bears *primâ facie *evidence of accuracy. Probably the word “ten” has dropped out before “seven,” and we have here the record of a second deportation in the *seventeenth *year of Nebuchadnezzar, while the siege of Jerusalem was going on, and made up in part of prisoners taken in skirmishes, and partly of the numerous Jews who “fell away to the Chaldæans” (Jeremiah 37:13).