Jeremiah 27:16

Hebrew Bible

14 ‘Do not listen to the prophets who are telling you that you do not need to serve the king of Babylon. For they are prophesying lies to you. 15 For I, the Lord, affirm that I did not send them. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. If you listen to them, I will drive you and the prophets who are prophesying lies out of the land and you will all die in exile.’” 16 I also told the priests and all the people, “The Lord says, ‘Do not listen to what your prophets are saying. They are prophesying to you that the valuable articles taken from the Lord’s temple will be brought back from Babylon very soon. But they are prophesying a lie to you. 17 Do not listen to them. Be subject to the king of Babylon. Then you will continue to live. Why should this city be made a pile of rubble?’” 18 I also told them, “If they are really prophets and the Lord is speaking to them, let them pray earnestly to the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. Let them plead with him not to let the valuable articles that are still left in the Lord’s temple, in the royal palace of Judah, and in Jerusalem be taken away to Babylon.

2 Chronicles 36:7

Hebrew Bible

5 Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned for eleven years in Jerusalem. He did evil in the sight of the Lord his God. 6 King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked him, bound him with bronze chains, and carried him away to Babylon. 7 Nebuchadnezzar took some of the items in the Lord’s temple to Babylon and put them in his palace there. 8 The rest of the events of Jehoiakim’s reign, including the horrible sins he committed and his shortcomings, are recorded in the Scroll of the Kings of Israel and Judah. His son Jehoiachin replaced him as king. 9 Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he became king, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem. He did evil in the sight of the Lord.

 Notes and References

"... 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.79 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) ..."

Baker, Robin Mesopotamian Civilization and the Origins of the New Testament (p. 41) Cambridge University Press, 2022

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