Daniel 1:2

gave into his hand Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and part, &c. To -give into the hand" as Judges 3:10; Jeremiah 20:4; Jeremiah 21:7; Jeremiah 22:25, and frequently. The expression is a strong one, and seems to imply that the writer had in view a defeat, and not merely a timely submission.

the house of God A frequent expression in late writers for the Temple (e.g. 2 Chronicles 3:3; 2Ch 4:19; 2 Chronicles 5:1; 2 Chronicles 5:14; 2 Chronicles 7:5): earlier writers say nearly always -the house of Jehovah" (e.g. 1 Kings 7:40; 1 Kings 7:45; 1 Kings 7:48; 1 Kings 7:51).

which he carried and he brought them. The pron. (as the text stands: see below, p. 4) refers to the vessels.

Shinar properly Shin-ar, a Hebrew name for Babylonia (Genesis 10:10; Genesis 11:2; Genesis 14:1; Genesis 14:7; Joshua 7:21; Isaiah 11:11; Zechariah 5:11), here, no doubt, an old expression revived. The explanation of the name is uncertain, as nothing directly parallel has been found hitherto in the Inscriptions. According to some Assyriologists there are grounds for supposing it to be a dialectic variation of Shumer, the name given in the Inscriptions to South Babylonia [174]; but this explanation is not accepted by all scholars [175].

[174] As in the common title of the Assyrian kings, -King of Shumer and Akkad" (Akkad being North Babylonia): so Delitzsch, Paradies(1881), p. 198, Assyr. Gramm.(1889), § 49 a, Rem.; Schrader, KAT.2 p. 118 f.; Prince, p. 58.

[175] Cf. Dillmann on Genesis 10:10. Sayce, Patriarchal Palestine, p. 67 f., connects the name with Sangar, a district a little W. of Nineveh.

to the house(i.e. temple) of his god If any stress is to be laid upon the particular deity intended, it would be Marduk (the Merodach of Jeremiah 50:2), the patron-god of Babylon. According to 2 Chronicles 36:7, the vessels which Nebuchadnezzar brought to Babylon in the reign of Jehoiakim were placed by him in his palace [176]. But see the next note.

[176] See, however, Ezra 1:7; Ezra 5:14, though the gold and silver vessels mentioned here may be those carried away by Nebuchadnezzar with Jehoiachin (Jeremiah 27:16 [see Daniel 1:20, and cf. 2 Kings 24:13], Jeremiah 28:3), or Zedekiah (2 Kings 25:14-15).

and the vessels he brought, &c. In the Heb. -the vessels" is emphatic by its position, and would naturally imply that something different had been mentioned before. As the verse stands, the clause is almost tautologous with the preceding one: at all events, if the -treasure house of his god" be really a place distinct from the -house of his god," the correction is attached very awkwardly. Ewald supposed that some words had fallen out, and proposed to read -Jehoiakim, king of Judah, with the noblest of the land, and part," &c. Certainly the transportation of captives is presupposed in Daniel 1:3; but the insertion of these words does not relieve the awkwardness of Daniel 1:2. It is better, with Marti, to reject the preceding words, -(in) the house of his god," as a gloss, intended originally to define the position of the -treasure house" of clause b, which has found its way into the text in a wrong place [177]. Still, the author's Hebrew is often far from elegant, and the anomalous wording of the verse is possibly original.

[177] The words were not, it seems, in the original LXX. (see Swete, footnote).