Doubtless this would have made the journey far more pleasant than it

actually was, but the simple fact is that the Hebrew word bo does mean that

the ship was 'going' or 'setting out' for Tarshish.  The plain fact of Daniel

1 and Jeremiah 25 is that the former writer tells us the year in which

Nebuchadnezzar 'set out' from Babylon, while the latter tells us when he

arrived.  Moreover, Jeremiah tells us what occupied Nebuchadnezzar on his

journey from one capital to the other:

'Against Egypt, against the army of Pharaoh -necho king of Egypt, which

was by the river Euphrates in Carchemish, which Nebuchadrezzar king of

Babylon smote in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of

Judah' (Jer. 46:2).

Instead, therefore, of discovering a discrepancy in the narrative of

Scripture, we have the obvious fact that Nebuchadnezzar took time to

accomplish his march from Babylon to Jerusalem, and was obliged to meet and

overcome Pharaoh at Carchemish by the Euphrates before he could arrive.

In Jeremiah 25:3 the prophet reminded Israel that since the thirteenth

year of Josiah (see Jer. 1:1,2) the word of the Lord had come urging them to

turn from their evil, and because they had not turned He said:

'Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the

Lord, and Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will

bring them against this land ... and this whole land shall be a

desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king

of Babylon seventy years' (Jer. 25:9 -11).

What God therefore had threatened, He brought to pass in the fourth

year of Jehoiakim, and the historic record of the captivity of Jehoiakim is

found in 2 Chronicles 36, the last chapter of the Hebrew Bible!  Yet with all

this apparent on the surface of Scripture, and needing no more scholarship

than ability to read in one's mother tongue, Kuenen in his Historic Critique

de l'Ancien Testament has the audacity to say:

'We know by the book of Jeremiah that no such event (as the siege of

Jerusalem, Dan. 1:1) took place in the reign of Jehoiakim'.

'We know'!  We also know that it is written: 'professing themselves to

be wise, they became fools', and by such statements they demonstrate that

they are but 'blind leaders of the blind'.

Jehoiakim was appointed king of Judah by Pharaoh-nechoh in the place of

Jehoahaz (2 Kings 23:34).  He did evil in the sight of the Lord, and filled

Jerusalem with innocent blood.  He was succeeded by Jehoiachin.  In the reign

of the latter, Nebuchadnezzar carried out thence all the treasures of the

house of the Lord, whereas Daniel 1:1,2 tells us that at the first he only

carried away a part.

Jehoiachin or Jeconiah is deprived of the Jehovah element in his name,

and as Coniah is utterly rejected by the Lord:

'Thus saith the Lord, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not

prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon

the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah' (Jer. 22:30).