2 Kings 25:21

21. Slew them at Riblah See on 2 Kings 25:6. All these officers and principal citizens were regarded as implicated with Zedekiah in his rebellion, and guilty of treason, and were, therefore, punished with death.

According to Jeremiah there were three different deportations of Jewish exiles: in Nebuchadnezzar’s seventh year, 3,023; in his eighteenth year, 832; and in his twenty-third year, 745; making in all 4,600. These numbers vary very much from the statements of this book of Kings. According to chap. 2 Kings 24:13, one deportation alone contained 10,000 captives, and occurred in Nebuchadnezzar’s eighth year. 2 Kings 25:12. The difference in the date is but slight, and may be explained by assuming that the different writers began to reckon from different periods of a year; but the numbers in the one or the other passage are undoubtedly corrupt. Most critics incline to think that the numbers in Jeremiah are the more correct. No mention is made in Kings of the third deportation, which occurred, according to Jeremiah, in the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar, and no mention is made in either book of a small deportation, among whom was Daniel and his three friends, which occurred at the time of Nebuchadnezzar’s first invasion of Palestine, and with which the Babylonish captivity of Judah seems really to have begun. But no doubt many that were left in the land proved to be persistently rebellious, and provoked the king of Babylon to order their extirpation.