Nergal-sharezer: Nergal, protect the king!1. One of the "princes of the king of Babylon who accompanied him
in his last expedition against Jerusalem"
(Jeremiah 39:3,13)
2. Another of the "princes," who bore the title of "Rabmag." He was
one of those who were sent to release Jeremiah from prison
(Jeremiah 39:13) by "the captain of the guard." He was a
Babylonian grandee of high rank. From profane history and the
inscriptions, we are led to conclude that he was the Neriglissar
who murdered Evil-merodach, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, and
succeeded him on the throne of Babylon (B.C. 559) He was married
to a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar. The ruins of a palace, the only
one on the right bank of the Euphrates, bear inscriptions
denoting that it was built by this king. He was succeeded by his
son, a mere boy, who was murdered after a reign of some nine
months by a conspiracy of the nobles, one of whom, Nabonadius,
ascended the vacant throne, and reigned for a period of
seventeen years (B.C. 555) at the close of which period Babylon
was taken by Cyrus. Belshazzar, who comes into notice in
connection with the taking of Babylon, was by some supposed to
have been the same as Nabonadius, who was called
Nebuchadnezzar's son
(Daniel 5:11,18,22) because he had married
his daughter. But it is known from the inscriptions that
Nabonadius had a son called Belshazzar, who may have been his
father's associate on the throne at the time of the fall of
Babylon, and who therefore would be the grandson of
Nebuchadnezzar. The Jews had only one word, usually rendered
"father," to represent also such a relationship as that of
"grandfather" or "great-grandfather."
