2 Kings 25:1 - Exposition

And it cams to pass in the ninth year of his —i.e. Zedekiah's— reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month. Extreme exactness with respect to a date indicates the extreme importance of the event dated. In the whole range of the history contained in the two Books of the Kings, there is no instance of the year, month, and day being all given excepting in the present chapter, where we find this extreme exactness three times ( 2 Kings 25:1 , 2 Kings 25:4 , and 2 Kings 25:8 ). The date in 2 Kings 25:1 is confirmed by Jeremiah 52:10 and Ezekiel 24:1 . That Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon came, he, and all his host, against Jerusalem . 'According to the description of the eye-witness, Jeremiah, the army was one of unusual magnitude. Nebuchadnezzar brought against Jerusalem at this time "all his army , and all the kingdoms of the earth of his dominion , and all the people " ( Jeremiah 34:1 ). The march of the army was not direct upon Jerusalem; it at first spread itself over Judea, wasting the country and capturing the smaller fortified towns (.Josephus, 'Ant. Jud.,' 10.7. §3)—among them Lachish, so famous in the war against Sennacherib ( 2 Kings 18:14 , 2 Kings 18:17 ; 2 Kings 19:8 ), and Azekah ( Jeremiah 34:7 ). The capture of these two places was important as intercepting Zedekiah's line of communication with Egypt. Having made himself master of them, Nebuchadnezzar proceeded to invest the capital. And pitched against it — i.e; encamped, and commenced a regular siege— and they built forts against it round about. It has been argued that דָיֵק does not mean a "fort" or "tower," but a "line of circumvallation" (Michaelis, Hitzig, Thenius, Bahr). Jerusalem, however, can scarcely be surrounded by lines of circumvallation, which, moreover, were not employed in their sieges by the Orientals. Dayek ( דָיֵק ) seems to be properly a "watchtower," from דוּק , speculari , whence it passed into the meaning of a "tower" generally. The towers used in sieges by the Assyrians and Babylonians were movable ones, made of planks, which were pushed up to the walls, so that the assailants might attack their adversaries, on a level, with greater advantage. Sometimes they contained battering rams (see Layard, 'Monuments of Nineveh,' first series, pl. 19; and comp. Jeremiah 52:4 ; Ezekiel 4:2 ; Ezekiel 17:17 ; Ezekiel 26:8 ; Josephus, 'Ant. Jud.,' 10.8. § 1).