22. The bronze capital on top of each pillar was 71/2 feet high and was decorated with a network of bronze pomegranates all the way around.
23. There were 96 pomegranates on the sides, and a total of 100 pomegranates on the network around the top.
24. Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, took with him as prisoners Seraiah the high priest, Zephaniah the priest of the second rank, and the three chief gatekeepers.
25. And from among the people still hiding in the city, he took an officer who had been in charge of the Judean army; seven of the king’s personal advisers; the army commander’s chief secretary, who was in charge of recruitment; and sixty other citizens.
26. Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, took them all to the king of Babylon at Riblah.
27. And there at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, the king of Babylon had them all put to death. So the people of Judah were sent into exile from their land.
28. The number of captives taken to Babylon in the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign was 3,023.
29. Then in Nebuchadnezzar’s eighteenth year he took 832 more.
30. In Nebuchadnezzar’s twenty-third year he sent Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, who took 745 more—a total of 4,600 captives in all.
31. In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of King Jehoiachin of Judah, Evil-merodach ascended to the Babylonian throne. He was kind to Jehoiachin and released him from prison on March 31 of that year.