2 Kings 24:14

All Jerusalem. — Limited by what follows, and meaning the most important part of the population.

The princes — i.e., the nobles, e.g., the grandees of the court, some of the priests (Ezekiel 1:1), and the heads of the clans.

The mighty men of valour. — This is probably right. Thenius and Bähr prefer to understand the men of property and the artisans, as in 2 Kings 15:20.

All the craftsmen and smiths. — The former were workers in wood, stone, and metal, i.e., carpenters, masons, and smiths. (Comp. Genesis 4:22.) The “smiths” (properly, “they who shut”) answer to what we should call locksmiths. They were makers of bolts and bars for doors and gates (Jeremiah 24:1; Jeremiah 29:2). It is obvious that by deporting “the craftsmen and smiths” the king of Babylon made further outbreaks impossible (comp. 1 Samuel 13:19.) Kimchi’s explanation of “smiths” is a curiosity of exegesis. He makes of them “learned persons, who shut other people’s mouths, and propose riddles which nobody else can guess.” Hitzig and Thenius derive the word (masgçr) from mas, “levy,” and gçr, “alien,” so that it would originally mean “statute labourers,” “Canaanites compelled to work for the king;” and afterwards, as here, “manual labourers” in general. But such a compound term in Hebrew would be very surprising.

The poorest sort. — Those who had neither property nor handicraft. (Comp. Jeremiah 39:10.)