Context No. 2 of 4322 · Jeremiah
Context · Reflection
Jeremiah 52:17-23: in context
17The Chaldeans broke the pillars of bronze that were in the LORD’s house and the bases and the bronze sea that were in the LORD’s house in pieces, and carried all of their bronze to Babylon. 18They also took away the pots, the shovels, the snuffers, the basins, the spoons, and all the vessels of bronze with which they ministered. 19The captain of the guard took away the cups, the fire pans, the basins, the pots, the lamp stands, the spoons, and the bowls; that which was of gold, as gold, and that which was of silver, as silver. 20They took the two pillars, the one sea, and the twelve bronze bulls that were under the bases, which King Solomon had made for the LORD’s house. The bronze of all these vessels was without weight. 21As for the pillars, the height of the one pillar was eighteen cubits; and a line of twelve cubits encircled it; and its thickness was four fingers. It was hollow. 22A capital of bronze was on it; and the height of the one capital was five cubits, with network and pomegranates on the capital all around, all of bronze. The second pillar also had the same, with pomegranates. 23There were ninety-six pomegranates on the sides; all the pomegranates were one hundred on the network all around.
Jeremiah spent his life warning Jerusalem that Babylon would take the city, and the book that carries his name ends by recording that it happened. The last chapter is mostly a chronicle, close to the account in 2 Kings, of the fall. Babylon breached the walls in 587 or 586 BC, and this passage records what the soldiers did with the temple. They broke up the bronze and carried it off: the two great pillars Solomon had set at the entrance, named Jachin and Boaz (1 Kings 7:15-22), the huge basin called the bronze Sea, the stands, and every vessel used in worship.
The passage lingers on the inventory. It counts the pomegranates cast into the bronze capitals, ninety-six on the sides, a hundred around the network. It measures the pillars to the finger's width. A furnishing is described in full at the moment it is carried away. The same close attention that shaped these objects now itemizes their looting.
The temple's holiness did not keep its bronze from being weighed out in Babylon. What have I treated as permanent because it was dedicated, rather than because it was kept?
Sources
- 2 Kings 24:18-25:30: the parallel account of Jerusalem's fall that Jeremiah 52 follows
- 1 Kings 7:15-22: Solomon's bronze pillars Jachin and Boaz, described when they were made
- The Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem, 587 or 586 BC (Albright dated it to 587, others to 586)