And the pillars of brass that were in the house of the LORD, and the bases, and the brasen sea that was in the house of the LORD, did the Chaldees break in pieces, and carried the brass of them to Babylon.
The pillars of brass that were in the house of the Lord - (cf. Jeremiah 52:19-20.) The large bronze altar is not mentioned. Whether the gold used in overlaying the house, and in making up the furniture of the temple, was all removed previous to this, is not certain; but from what is stated, it would appear that much gold remained. The removing of such a vast quantity of metal to Babylon must have been a formidable undertaking, and it is exceedingly interesting thus to trace great and precious relies. The sacred vessels of gold and silver were preserved from destruction, and carried by the Assyrians to Babylon, who placed them in the temple of their idols. But in a very few years after the removal of the gold, silver, and brass from the temple in Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold in the plain of Dura (Daniel 3:1). This took place in so short a time after the fall of Jerusalem as to suggest that the image was likely to have been made from the metal removed from the city. The siege had been a formidable undertaking, and of sufficient importance to warrant a memorial being erected. And this image set up in Dura was in all probability in commemoration of the fall of Jerusalem-the defeat of the Jews (Napier's 'Ancient Workers in Metal,' p. 120).
We have no information given us respecting the fate of the tabernacle or of the ark. Supposing the latter to have been captured and transported to Babylon along with the other appurtenances of the sacred place, some surprise may be felt that, while detained in a pagan country, its stay was not marked by Babylonian emerods or by, some, Chaldean stricken for laying hands on it, or by the undirected march of milch-kine conveying it back to the holy land. The circumstances were different then from what they were at the time of the captivity. In the early period, the national covenant was in force, and Yahweh honoured the symbols of His presence placed among His people. In the latter, the national covenant had been completely broken by the apostasy of successive kings and the vast majority of their subjects in Judah, and the Lord was no longer bound to preserve or to honour the symbolic pledge of it. But the truth is, there is reason to believe that the ark was not among the spoils of the temple carried to Babylon; because undoubtedly the removal or destruction of an object so profoundly venerated would have been duly chronicled in the annals of the sacred historians. Perhaps it may have been hid by some pious priests, in anticipation of a disastrous outrage on the temple, as was done with other sacred treasures of that edifice. For Jewish tradition reports, with much probability, that Jeremiah, who had long before predicted that catastrophe, who was always distinguished for his attachment to the law, and who, as a priest and a prophet, lay under double responsibility to watch over its safety, had taken the precaution of removing the standard copy of the sacred books belonging to the temple beyond the reach of the flame which consumed holy house.