=6. The captivity of Judah= took place under Nebuchadnezzar, called also Nebuchadrezzar, Ezek. 29:19. This king succeeded to the throne of Babylon B. C. 604. His father was the first king of Babylon after the fall of Nineveh and death of its king Assur-bani-pal, the Sardanapalus of the Greek historians. =7. Immediately after the fall of Nineveh=, B. C. 626, the father of Nebuchadnezzar, Nabopolassar, founded the independent monarchy of Babylon, B. C. 625, and at the death of Nabopolassar, B. C. 604, Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne. He was a general of great energy and enterprise and became so well known, even to the Greeks, that according to Josephus,[88] he was compared with Hercules for his valor and deeds.[89] The prophet Jeremiah compares him with an eagle swooping down on his prey,[90] and Ezekiel represents him as a great eagle with great wings.[91] He was intrusted by his father with the entire management of the attack upon Nechoh, who had come up from Egypt in battle against the city Carchemish on the Euphrates, B. C. 606. This city was over five hundred miles northwest from Babylon on the west bank of the river. =8. With a fine army= he attacked Nechoh, and defeated him with so dreadful a slaughter that the Egyptian king retreated rapidly to the Nile. Nebuchadnezzar followed him through Palestine to Pelusium, a city on the sea-coast frontiers of Egypt, about seventy miles east of the Nile. At this place he heard of the death of his father, at Babylon, and committing the army and his prisoners into the hands of his trusty generals, he left and, with a small escort, crossed the desert and arrived at Babylon, 700 miles distant to the east. Here he found that the chief of the priestly caste of the Chaldæans had held the government for him since the death of his father.[92] He then peaceably succeeded his father. =9. But the kingdom of Judah= had not yet submitted to Nebuchadnezzar. He, therefore, after settling the new order of rule at Babylon, returned to Syria, B. C. 602, and attacked Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and placed him under tribute. Three years had not passed before this Hebrew king, counting on help from the king of Egypt, rebelled against the king of Babylon, and dying soon after, left the odium of the rebellion, together with the regal succession, to his son Jehoiachin.