And he carried out thence all the treasures of the house of the Lord According to the Chronicler (2 Chronicles 36:7) some of the vessels of the house of the Lord had been taken to Babylon in the reign of Jehoiakim. With this agrees the notice in Daniel (2 Kings 1:2) where we are told that the vessels were put by Nebuchadnezzar -into the house of his god", or as the Chronicler records -into his temple at Babylon".

and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon … had made We know from Ezra 1:7-11 that Cyrus gave back to the Jews after the captivity 5400 vessels of gold and silver. We must suppose that the larger portion of these had been taken away at first. This second plundering of the temple appears to have been conducted with much more violence than the former. The verb translated here -cut in pieces" is rendered -cut off" in the account of Hezekiah's stripping the gold from the temple doors (2 Kings 18:16), and before that (2 Kings 16:17) of Ahaz -cutting off" the borders of the bases. So that here we are probably to understand that Nebuchadnezzar stripped all that was overlaid with gold. That there was a large quantity of gold so used by Solomon we see from the account in 1 Kings 6.

as the Lord had said Formerly to Hezekiah after his ostentation (2 Kings 20:17).

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