Jeremiah 52:12,13 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Now in the fifth month This gave occasion to that solemn fast of the fifth month, observed in the times of the captivity: see Zechariah 7:3-5; Zechariah 8:19. In the tenth day of the month In the parallel place, 2 Kings 25:8, we read, on the seventh day. This difference some attempt to reconcile, by supposing that the one place may speak of the day Nebuzar-adan set out from Riblah, and the other of the day that he arrived at Jerusalem; or else, that he came on the seventh, but did not set fire to the building till the tenth. “But it is more likely,” says Blaney,” to have arisen from some mistake of the transcriber, perhaps, in setting down the numbers at full length, which were expressed by numeral letters in the old copies. And in this instance such a mistake might easily happen between the ז and the י, of which the first stands for seven, the latter for ten.” And burned the house of the Lord After it had stood, says Josephus, four hundred and seventy years; but Archbishop Usher reckons it only four hundred and twenty-four years from the laying of the first foundation by Solomon: see note on 2 Kings 25:9.