“This is the people whom Nebuchadrezzar carried away captive: in the seventh year three thousand Jews and three and twenty:”
My Notes
What Does Jeremiah 52:28 Mean?
"This is the people whom Nebuchadrezzar carried away captive: in the seventh year three thousand Jews and three and twenty." Jeremiah records the exact number of the first deportation: 3,023 people. The precision is deliberate — these aren't round numbers or estimates. Each person was counted. Each exile was numbered. The specificity says: these were real people, and someone was counting.
The phrase "this is the people" (zeh ha'am) introduces a statistical record at the end of Jeremiah's narrative: after all the prophecies, all the sermons, all the dramatic encounters — the book includes a CENSUS of the exiled. The theological becomes demographic. The prophetic becomes numerical. The people who were the subject of prophecy are now the subjects of counting.
The "three thousand Jews and three and twenty" (sheloshet alaphim ve'esrim usheloshah) is a surprisingly SMALL number: only 3,023 in the first deportation. The total across all three deportations (verses 28-30) is only 4,600. These modest numbers suggest that Jeremiah counts only adult males, or only specific categories — but the smallness of the number also personalizes: this wasn't a faceless mass. This was a countable community.
Reflection Questions
- 1.Do you believe God keeps the exact count — not the round number — of every person affected?
- 2.What does the precision (3,023 not 3,000) teach about every person mattering in the count?
- 3.How does the exile being a SMALL, countable number make it more personal?
- 4.What does a census record following chapters of prophecy teach about data and theology coexisting?
Devotional
Three thousand and twenty-three. That's the number. Not a round figure. Not an estimate. Three thousand and twenty-three actual people, counted by name, carried away to Babylon. The precision is the respect. Every exile was numbered.
The 'this is the people' introduces hard data after chapters of prophecy: Jeremiah has preached, warned, wept, and agonized. And now, at the end, he gives the count. The theological drama becomes a census record. The people who were the subject of divine speeches are now the subject of a body count. Both matter. Both are recorded. The prophecy and the number exist in the same book.
The '3,023' is surprisingly small — and that's the point: the exile wasn't a faceless mass of millions. It was a countable community of specific people. Each of the 3,023 had a name, a family, a house they left, a life they were forced to abandon. The smallness of the number makes it MORE personal, not less. You can imagine 3,023 faces. You can't imagine a million.
The precision — not 3,000, but 3,023 — says someone was COUNTING: someone tracked. Someone recorded. Someone cared enough about the accuracy to include the twenty-three. The difference between 3,000 and 3,023 is twenty-three people who might have been rounded away into a convenient number but weren't. They were counted. They were included. They mattered.
Do you believe God counts the specific number — not the round figure, but the exact count — of the people affected by every crisis?
Commentary
Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.
In the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar,.... Said to be the nineteenth, Jer 52:12; it was at the end of the eighteenth,…
Seventh year - The suggestion is now generally received, that the word ten has dropped out before seven, and that the…
We have here a very melancholy account, 1. Of the slaughter of some great men, in cold blood, at Riblah, seventy-two in…
Enumeration of Nebuchadnezzar's captives
28. in the seventh year These vv. are absent from the LXX and from 2Kings 25…
Cross References
Related passages throughout Scripture