And Nebuzar-adan the captain of the body-guard carried away captive the rest of the people that were left in the city, and the deserters that had deserted to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the multitude.
Jerusalem has fallen, the temple is ash, and Nebuzaradan, commander of the Babylonian guard, marches the last of its people off to Babylon. Among them are the deserters who had already gone over to the enemy — and they are the ones who lived.
One commentator describes the city's last days and names who was taken:
The Babylonians set the temple on fire, and the king's palace too. They reduced the whole city to ruins and ashes and broke down the walls that had defended it (2 Kings 25:9, 10). Three days later the work of destruction was complete. Ever after, people mourned the 10th (9th) of Ab as the fatal day of Jerusalem's fall (Jer. 52:12; Zech. 7:3, 5, 8:19). … We can hardly be wrong to see these captives as most of the civilian population of Jerusalem and Judah.
The deserters did not simply run. They had heard something first:
Only a small remnant who had received the Lord's message and had delivered themselves over to the Chaldeans had their lives saved (2 Kings 25:11). They were the excellent figs of Jeremiah 24.
That message came at a price. The city's officials wanted the man who preached it dead:
"Thus says the Lord: He who stays in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. But he who goes out to the Chaldeans shall live; he shall have his life as a prize of war, and live." … So the officials said to the king, "Let this man be put to death. He weakens the hands of the soldiers who remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, by speaking such words to them. This man does not seek the welfare of this people, but harm."
Walking out to the besieging army looked like betraying your own nation. The same writer explains why it was the opposite:
The Lord meant their exile to be for their eventual good. In a day of ruin faith always recognises the chastening of God and bows to it. Unbelief always resists, and counts it patriotism or perhaps religion to oppose. For this reason Jeremiah seemed, in the eyes of the men of Judah, a very false Jew. He always advised them to submit to the king of Babylon. They thought themselves much better Jews, because they were willing to fight against the king of Babylon.
Emptying the land served a purpose. It reached back to a command Israel had ignored: let the farmland rest every seventh year.
So God's word through Jeremiah came true. The land of Israel would be left empty, to enjoy the sabbaths it had not enjoyed for years. The people were greedy and wanted crops in the seventh year as well as in the six years God had allotted them. So God had told them through Jeremiah that the land would stay empty for 70 years — the length of Judah's captivity in Babylon (Jer. 25:9-12).
This deportation did more than end a kingdom. It moved the seat of authority on earth:
God still waited patiently with the kingdom of Judah. Then the sin of David's house made it impossible for Him to bear with either any longer. Jerusalem fell, the temple was destroyed, and the Jews were carried captive to Babylon. The throne of God no longer existed at Jerusalem. Power passed into the hands of the Gentiles, and it has stayed with them until now. With Nebuchadnezzar, the times of the Gentiles began, and so did the captivity and scattering of the Jews.
The chapter reads like an ending. One writer sees it closing man's story, not God's:
The people are carried away to Babylon. The priests and those who had helped with the resistance die a violent death at Riblah. The last traces of Judah's power and wealth disappear after this attack. Even the two pillars of the temple are broken in pieces and carried to Babylon, along with all the brass, the gold and the silver of the house of God. … So ends the history of man, placed under responsibility before God. God must give him up — but His promises are not withdrawn. He will re-establish the reign of His anointed upon these two marvellous pillars, and this reign will be unshakeable.
- Sin. Real guilt emptied the land. Israel had ignored God's command to let the ground rest, and the seventy years abroad collected that unpaid rest.
- Sentence. Everyone left in the city went to Babylon. Most were ordinary civilians, taken after the temple and the walls had fallen.
- Surrender. The deserters lived because they believed a warning: stay and die, go out to the Chaldeans and live. Obedience, not the city wall, was the safe place.
- Shift. This captivity ended God's throne at Jerusalem. Authority passed to the Gentile powers, and it has stayed there ever since.
- Sureness. Man's record under responsibility ends in ruin here. God's promise does not end, and the reign He will set up cannot be shaken.
But the captain of the body-guard left of the poor of the land for vinedressers and husbandmen.
Judah's capital lay in ruins, and its leading citizens were gone. Why did the captain of the guard leave a handful of the poorest to work the land, and what does that say about God's dealings with His people?
The verse closes a national collapse. King, temple and city were gone. Only the poorest layer of society stayed.
The temple was burned to the ground. Only a miserable remnant of the nation was left in the land — "the poor" — to be vinedressers and plowmen (2 Kings 25:12). Rebellion arose even among these. In fear of the Chaldeans they fled to the land of Egypt, only to perish miserably there, as Jeremiah had faithfully warned them, with tears.
Even the survivors did not survive well.
Commentators point to this moment as the start of a long period in which Israel no longer holds power over itself.
The end of 2 Kings tells how Nebuchadnezzar's captain of the guard destroyed Solomon's temple and razed Jerusalem to the ground. He broke down its walls and burned its palaces and houses. He deported all the Jews, except for leaving a few of "the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and plowmen" (2 Kings 25:12). It was then that the Times of the Gentiles began — the time when the Jewish nation came under Gentile domination.
Another writer weighs what that handover cost: a nation given every advantage, and pardoned once before.
So the history of Israel's downfall ends in mercy — but in a mercy that recognises that power has passed into the hands of the Gentiles. This was the downfall of a people placed in the most favourable circumstances. God could say to them, "What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it?" They were a people who had already been pardoned once... The long-suffering of God, the restoration He had granted them, the establishment of the house of David in grace, all was fruitless.
The parallel account in Jeremiah gives more detail, and one writer reads the selection of the poor as something more than military calculation.
The poorest are permitted to remain and were treated mercifully. God remembers the poor and they are spared. As far as we know, these poor people, who had nothing, were the godly ones, those who wept over the conditions and who cried to God for help. Their prayer, the prayer of the needy, was answered.
Commentators differ here: Knapp, above, sees the same group rebelling soon after.
The Babylonian officer thought he was tidying up a conquest. Another writer sees a promise buried in the arrangement, noting that Jeremiah's version adds that these landless people were actually given the vineyards and fields.
Still, the clearance was not complete. The poor did not fail in the land; some were left in it. They were a pledge — little as the foreigner thought it — of the return of a poor remnant, and of a nation yet to be poor in spirit. That will be when God brings back the captivity of His people, and Jacob shall rejoice and Israel shall be glad.
Those left behind were placed under a governor and told to work the land in submission to Babylon. One writer treats that submission as the right response, and draws a lesson from it.
It was God who had put them in that position because of Judah's previous guilt, and faith could only bow to it... rebellion would have been rebellion against God. So too in Christendom, because of the sad failure in testimony, God has allowed confusion (the meaning of Babylon) to take possession of the church publicly, and it is only right that we bow to the shame of our confusion.
A quiet season followed the collapse.
For this poor remnant there was a respite of several months. They gathered wine and summer fruits in great abundance (Jer. 40:12). People even seem to have honoured the worship of the Lord again, at a time when the temple lay completely destroyed and ruined.
- Emptied — the temple burned, the city fell, and only a miserable remnant stayed to tend vines and fields.
- Transferred — the Times of the Gentiles begin here. Power over Jerusalem passes to the Gentiles, after long patience and by mercy.
- Remembered — God remembered the poor, who had nothing, and spared them; one writer reads them as the godly who cried to Him.
- Pledged — the poor left in the land were a hidden pledge: a poor remnant will return, and a nation will yet be poor in spirit.
- Bowed — God had put them under Babylon for Judah's guilt. Faith could only bow; rebellion here would have been rebellion against God.