Captives Carried to Babylon
The chief priest, second priest, doorkeepers, military officials, royal advisers, and selected men from the land are taken by Nebuzaradan. They are brought to the king of Babylon at Riblah and struck down there. With that act the chapter states plainly that Judah has been carried away into exile from its own land.
T24he captain of the guard also took away Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest of second rank, and the three doorkeepers. 25Of those still in the city, he took a court official who had been appointed over the men of war, as well as seven trusted royal advisers. He also took the scribe of the captain of the army, who had enlisted the people of the land, and sixty men who were found in the city. 26Nebuzaradan captain of the guard took them and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. 27There at Riblah in the land of Hamath, the king of Babylon struck them down and put them to death. So Judah was taken into exile, away from its own land.
The narrative then gives specific numbers for deportees carried away in the seventh, eighteenth, and twenty-third years of Nebuchadnezzar. The totals present exile not merely as a single event but as a sustained process of removal over time. Judah's loss is counted carefully, as though the chapter is closing the ledger of the kingdom's undoing.
28These are the people Nebuchadnezzar carried away: 29in Nebuchadnezzar’s eighteenth year, 832 people from Jerusalem; 30in Nebuchadnezzar’s twenty-third year, Nebuzaradan captain of the guard carried away 745 Jews.