He captured all Jerusalem, all the generals, all the soldiers (10,000 prisoners), and all the craftsmen and smiths. Only the poorest people of the land were left.
The king of Babylon brought all 7,000 of the prominent landowners, 1,000 craftsmen and smiths, and all the men who could fight in war as captives to Babylon.
All Israel was recorded in the genealogies in the Book of the Kings of Israel and Judah. The Israelites were taken away to Babylon as captives because they had sinned.
These were the people in the province. They were the ones who left the place where the exiles had been taken captive. (King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had taken them to Babylon.) These exiles returned to Jerusalem and Judah. All of them went to their own cities.
(Kish had been taken captive from Jerusalem together with the others who had gone into exile along with Judah’s King Jehoiakin, whom King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had carried away.)
I will also bring back to this place Jehoiakin, son of King Jehoiakim of Judah, and all the captives of Judah who went to Babylon, declares the Lord. So I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.”
(This was after King Jehoiakin and his mother, the court officials, the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, and metal workers left Jerusalem.)
All the army commanders and their men who were in the field heard that the king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah, son of Ahikam, to govern the country and some of the country’s poorest men, women, and children who had not been taken away to Babylon.
Say, ‘This is what the Almighty Lord says: A large eagle came to Lebanon. It had large wings with long, colorful feathers. It took hold of the top of a cedar tree.
So there were 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 generations from David until the exile to Babylon, 14 generations from the exile until the Messiah.