Jeremiah 52

This chapter is almost verbally identical with 2 Kings xxiv. 18-20; xxv. 1-21; 27-30 (on which see the notes); but it gives some particulars of the history rather more fully.

10 he slew also all the princes of Judah in Riblah. This is additional to the account in 2 Kings.

11 and put him in prison till the day of his death. Not in 2 Kings.

28. This is the people whom Nebuchadrezzar, etc. These three verses are not given in the Septuagint. Niebuhr, followed by Lange, thinks they are a gloss. “Seventh year” (v. 28) should be “seventeenth year.”

31. Evil-merodach. Son and successor of Nebuchadrezzar.

THE Hebrew title of this Book, in its earlier form, is Hichah, “How!” from the first word of the first chapter. As the same word begins chaps. ii. and iv., it was a characteristic expression of the writer’s grief, an exclamation of surprise and sorrow. But the later Hebrew edition and commentators called the Book Kinoth, dirges, elegies (cp. the Irish keen or caoin, the weeping for the dead). This title was followed by the Septuagint and the Vulgate, using respectively the Greek and Latin equivalents, “Lamentations.” It is one of the “Kethubim” or hagiographa, and is one of the megilloth (“rolls”) which is still read in the Synagogues on the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple. The Roman Catholic Church uses lessons from it in the services for Maundy Thursday, Good