translation_id: net-engnet

label: NET study note

text: This would have been Jan 15, 588 b.c. The reckoning is based on the calendar that begins the year in the spring (Nisan = March/April).


text: The king’s garden is mentioned again in Neh 3:15 in conjunction with the pool of Siloam and the stairs that go down from the city of David. This would have been in the southern part of the city near the Tyropean Valley which agrees with the reference to the “two walls” which were probably the walls on the eastern and western hills.


text: Heb “toward the Arabah.” The Arabah was the rift valley north and south of the Dead Sea. Here the intention was undoubtedly to escape across the Jordan to Moab or Ammon. It appears from Jer 40:14; 41:15 that the Ammonites were known to harbor fugitives from the Babylonians.


text: Riblah was a strategic town on the Orontes River in Syria. It was at a crossing of the major roads between Egypt and Mesopotamia. Pharaoh Necho had earlier received Jehoahaz there and put him in chains ( 2 Kgs 23:33 ) prior to taking him captive to Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar had set up his base camp for conducting his campaigns against the Palestinian states there and was now sitting in judgment on prisoners brought to him.


text: The seventh day of the month would have been August 14, 586 b.c. in modern reckoning.


text: See the note at 1 Kgs 7:23 .


text: These shovels were used to clean the altar.


text: These were used to trim the wicks.


text: These held the embers used for the incense offerings.


text: It is not altogether clear whether this is in the same year that Jerusalem fell or not. The wall was breached in the fourth month (= early July; Jer 39:2 ) and Nebuzaradan came and burned the palace, the temple, and many of the houses and tore down the wall in the fifth month (= early August; Jer 52:12 ). That would have left time between the fifth month and the seventh month (October) to gather in the harvest of grapes, dates and figs, and olives ( Jer 40:12 ). However, many commentators feel that too much activity takes place in too short a time for this to have been in the same year and posit that it happened the following year or even five years later when a further deportation took place, possibly in retaliation for the murder of Gedaliah and the Babylonian garrison at Mizpah ( Jer 52:30 ). The assassination of Gedaliah had momentous consequences and was commemorated in one of the post exilic fast days lamenting the fall of Jerusalem ( Zech 8:19 ).


text: The parallel account in Jer 52:31 has “twenty-fifth.”


text: The twenty-seventh day would be March 22, 561 b.c. in modern reckoning.