Jeremiah 52:28-30

28-30. In these verses we have an enumeration of the different deportations of Jews by Nebuchadrezzar, namely, first, 3,023 in the seventh year of his reign; second, 832 in the eighteenth year of his reign; and third, 745 in the twenty-third year of his rule; thus giving for the total, 4,600.

In this statement there are, as all confess, serious, if not inexplicable, difficulties. For example, in Jeremiah 52:12 the second deportation is represented as occurring in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar, instead of the eighteenth as here; and the first deportation was, as we learn from 2 Kings 24:12, in the eighth, and not in the seventh, year of his reign, and was much more numerous than is here stated. Hence many accept the suggestion of Ewald, that the word ten before seven has been dropped out of the Hebrew text, and that the true reading should be seventeenth. This would lead to the conclusion that we have mentioned here, simply three deportations in the final war of Zedekiah, occurring in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and twenty-third years of Nebuchadrezzar’s reign. The first took place a year before the fall of Jerusalem, and probably embraced people taken from the country districts of Judea. This accounts for the smallness of the number, three thousand and twenty-three. In the following year were added eight hundred and thirty-two others, who may have been selected because they were judged to be turbulent and dangerous men. Finally, at a later time, probably on the occasion of the war with the Ammonites and Moabites mentioned by Josephus, ( Antiq., Jeremiah 10:9 ; Jeremiah 10:7,) seven hundred and forty-five more were carried away, perhaps because they too were judged likely to become disturbers of the peace.