"... In Mesopotamian belief, at least as injurious to a community’s relationship with its divine patron as the desecration of the principal temple was the destruction or abduction of the deity’s image. The divine image was not considered an imagined portrayal of its subject, but actually to be or contain the god. In the ritual carried out in Babylon to induct a cult statue, the statue is itself repeatedly designated ‘the god’. Deutero-Isaiah adopts the same perspective in Isaiah 46:1–2: the images of Marduk and Nabû are the gods, discomfited and ridiculous in their helplessness. The Jerusalem temple held no image of Yahweh, but it did possess objects suggestive of his divinity and presence. Nebuchadnezzar transferred these objects to Babylon in three stages (2 Kings 24:13, 25:13–17; Jeremiah 27:16–22, 52:17–23; 2 Chronicles 36:7, 10, 18; Ezra 1:7–11; Daniel 1:2; compare Daniel 5:2–4). The Chronicler is at pains to state that all the vessels of the temple were taken there and none was cut into pieces. With this contention, and his downplaying of other data, he departs from the Kings account. His version draws considerably on Jeremiah’s narrative (Jeremiah 27:19–22; 28:1–11) ..."