Nergal-sharezer in Easton's Bible Dictionary
Nergal, protect the king! (1.) One of the "princes of the
king
of Babylon who accompanied him in his last
expedition against
Jerusalem" (Jer. 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 (Jer. 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-
556). 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. 555-538), 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 (Dan. 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."
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