Daniel 1:2

"And the Lord gave," etc. These words, "and the Lord gave," are written, that no one, in reading the introduction to the book, may attribute their capture to the strength of the captors and the slackness of their chief. And it is well said. "with part," for the deportation was for the correction, not the ruin, of the whole nation, that there might be no misapplication of the cause.

Verse 2. "And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand." The fact that Jehoiachim is recorded to have been given over shows that it was not a victory for the might of his enemies but rather it was of the will of the Lord. "...and some of the vessels of the house of God, and he brought them to the land of Shinar to the house of his god, and he conveyed them into the treasure house of his god" (Gen. 11). The land of Shinar is a region of Babylon in which the plain of Dura was located, and also the tower which those who had migrated from the East attempted to build up to heaven. From this circumstance and from the confusion of tongues the region received the name Babylon, which, translated into our language, means "confusion." At the same time it ought to be noted, by way of spiritual interpretation, that the king of Babylon was not able to transport all of the vessels of God, and place them in the idol-house which he had built himself, but only a part of the vessels of God's house. By these vessels we are to understand the dogmas of truth. For if you go through all of the works of the philosophers, you will necessarily find in them some portion of the vessels of God. For example, you will find in Plato that God is the fashioner of the universe, in Zeno the chief of the Stoics, that there are inhabitants in the infernal regions and that souls are immortal, and that honor is the one (true) good. But because the philosophers combine truth with error and corrupt the good of nature with many evils, for that reason they are recorded to have captured only a portion of the vessels of God's house, and not all of them in their completeness and perfection.

And so after his deportation his son Jehoiakim reigned three years. And so Nebuchadnezzar arose against him and deported both him and ten thousand men of the people into Babylon and set in his place Jeconiah the brother of his father, whom also changed his name to Zedekiah, with whom he, having made oaths and covenants, returned to Babylon. He, after reigning eleven years, withdrew from Nebuchadnezzar and gave himself to Pharaoh king of Egypt. But in the twelfth year, Nebuchadnezzar and all the power of the Chaldeans came against him and besieged the city and camped around it and pressed in on it from all sides; from then on many of them were destroyed by famine, others killed by the sword, and some of them were taken as captives. The city was burned in fire and the temple and the wall were demolished. And the power of the Chaldeans took all the treasures which were found in the House of the Lord and all the vessels, both the gold and silver and all the copper vessels. Nebuzaradan the captain cut them out and brought them into Babylon, and Zedekiah himself, who was also called Jeconiah, fled through the night with seven-hundred men, but the powers of the Chaldeans pursued Zedekiah and seized him in Jericho and brought him to the king of Babylon in Deblatha. And the king and those with him were judged in spirit because he transgressed the oath of the Lord and the covenant, which Nebuchadnezzar set before him. And taking his sons, Nebuchadnezzar slaughtered them before him and he blinded the eyes of Zedekiah who was also called Jeconiah, and shackled him in iron fetters and brought him into Babylon and he ground at the mill until the day in which he died. And when he died they took his body and hurled it behind the wall of Nineveh. At this the prophecy of Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, who said, "As I live, says the Lord, though Jeconiah, who is the son of Josiah the king of Judah, is the signet ring upon my right hand, I will remove you from there and I will deliver you into the hands of those who seek your life, of whom you were wary of their face, into the hands of the Chaldeans. And I will cast you and your mother who bore you into a land, in which you were not born, and there you will die. But to the land which they pray for in their souls, they will certainly not return. Jeconiah is dishonored as a useless vessel which is not needed, on account of…