Nebuchadnezzar: the conqueror of Judah

Nebuchadnezzar II (reigned 605–562 BC, older works, the ISBE among them, give 604–561, counting from his first full regnal year rather than his accession) is, the ISBE says, "of all the heathen monarchs mentioned by name in the Scriptures … the most prominent and the most important", the king around whom Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the close of Kings and Chronicles turn (ISBE, "Nebuchadnezzar"). He defeated Pharaoh Neco at Carchemish, took Jerusalem, deported its people, and burned the temple. The monuments and the Bible converge and diverge in instructive ways: his many building inscriptions confirm the splendor of the city and the boast of Daniel 4:30, but, as the ISBE candidly notes, "we have no real historical inscription of Nebuchadnezzar," so the dream, the golden image, the fiery furnace, and the madness of Daniel 2–4 are not mentioned on the monuments. The ISBE argues that this silence does not disprove them (a king does not publish his own madness), an argument offered in its conservative idiom; the events rest on the biblical witness. (Source: ISBE 1915, "Nebuchadnezzar; Nebuchadrezzar.")