2 Kings 25:16
The two pillars, one sea, and the bases which Solomon had made for the house of the LORD; the brass of all these vessels was without weight. The two pillars, one sea, and the bases which Solomon had made for the house of the LORD; the brass of all these vessels was without weight.
2 Kings 25:16 stands in the closing chapters of Kings that recount the wicked and weak reigns of the kings of Judah. It belongs to the fuller telling in 2 Kings 24 and 25 of the downfall of Zedekiah as the last king of the chosen people, whose eyes were put out before he was taken to Babylon where he died in captivity, after which Judah existed only as a province subservient to the great kingdoms that ruled the world. It belongs to the record of the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, the carrying of many of the children of God into captivity, and the rebellion of Zedekiah and the final capture of the Jewish nation, after which a little company under Gedaliah was left in the land. It describes what Nebuzar-adan, captain of the guard and servant of the king of Babylon, did when he came to Jerusalem on the seventh day of the fifth month, after burning the house of the LORD and the king's house and all the houses of Jerusalem and every great man's house with fire and breaking down the walls of Jerusalem.
He carried the remnant of the people to Babylon with vessels of gold and silver and brass, including the two great brass pillars Solomon had made and the brazen sea and the bases, whose brass was so much it could not be weighed, and with this the captivity of Judah was completed. The verse belongs to the closing history of the kingdom of Judah, recording the despoiling of the temple when Jerusalem was laid waste. It belongs to the concluding historical account associated with the fall of Jerusalem, which is presented as an addition to the words of Jeremiah.
The verse is part of the account of Babylon's overthrow of Judah and Jerusalem and the captivity and scattering of the people, in which Babylon was the first empire to subvert the kingdom of Judah, while earlier hostile nations had only been temporarily successful. It is part of the Babylonian captivity that ends the span of Bible history from the confusion of tongues, giving salient facts of history that show God's overruling hand in the history of nations. It belongs to the history of the Jews' captivity in Babylon and the final destruction of Jerusalem, and that history is typical of events to transpire either under the gospel or at the close of this dispensation. It belongs to the account of the Babylonian captivity, which is a historical event that people believed but, as a past event, did not by itself reveal God's truth for their present needs.