(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 prima 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 Chaldaeans" (Jeremiah 37:13).

Verse 28. - In the seventh year. As Ewald and Keil agree, we should correct "seventh" into "seventeenth" (just as in 2 Chronicles 36:9, for "eight" we should read "eighteen"). On the small number of Jews deported Ewald remarks, "Nothing so clearly shows the extent to which the best men from the upper classes had been already despatched by the Chaldeans across the Euphrates, as the fact that in all the years of the second, and, if it be insisted on, of the third revolt, put together, they found only 4600 men more whom they thought worth the trouble of transporting" ('History of Israel,' 4:265). As to the third deportation, see on Jeremiah 41:1.

52:24-30 The leaders of the Jews caused them to err; but now they are, in particular, made monuments of Divine justice. Here is an account of two earlier captivities. This people often were wonders both of judgment and mercy.This is the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away captive in the seventh year,.... That is, of his reign: in 2 Kings 24:12; it is said to be in the eighth year of his reign; it being at the latter end of the seventh, and the beginning of the eighth, as Kimchi observes; this was the captivity of Jeconiah: the number of the captives then were

three thousand Jews, and three and twenty; but in 2 Kings 24:14; they are said to be ten thousand; which may be reconciled thus, there were three thousand twenty and three of the tribe of Judah, here called Jews; and the rest were of the tribe of Benjamin, and of the ten tribes that were mixed among them; see 2 Kings 24:16.