Nebuchadnezzar

• Jeremiah counseled surrendering Jerusalem to

97:6.4Said this fear­less prophet: “Righ­teous is our Lord, great in coun­sel and mighty in work. His eyes are open upon all the ways of all the sons of men, to give ev­ery one ac­cord­ing to his ways and ac­cord­ing to the fruit of his do­ings.” But it was con­sid­ered blas­phe­mous trea­son when, dur­ing the siege of Je­ru­sa­lem, he said: “And now have I given these lands into the hand of Neb­uchad­nez­zar, the king of Baby­lon, my ser­vant.” And when Jeremiah coun­seled the sur­ren­der of the city, the priests and civil rulers cast him into the miry pit of a dis­mal dun­geon.

• Babylonian king who overthrew Necho; destroyed Jerusalem, carried population into captivity

97:9.25With the over­throw of Ne­cho by Neb­uchad­nez­zar, Ju­dah fell un­der the rule of Baby­lon and was given ten years of grace, but soon re­belled. When Neb­uchad­nez­zar came against them, the Ju­dahites started so­cial re­forms, such as re­leas­ing slaves, to in­flu­ence Yah­weh. When the Baby­lo­nian army tem­porar­ily with­drew, the He­brews re­joiced that their magic of re­form had de­liv­ered them. It was dur­ing this pe­riod that Jeremiah told them of the im­pend­ing doom, and pres­ently Neb­uchad­nez­zar re­turned.

97:9.26And so the end of Ju­dah came sud­denly. The city was de­stroyed, and the peo­ple were car­ried away into Baby­lon. The Yah­weh-Baal strug­gle ended with the cap­tiv­ity. And the cap­tiv­ity shocked the rem­nant of Is­rael into mono­the­ism.