17.  What thinkest thou of Nabuchodonosor?  Hast thou not heard out of the Scriptures that he was bloodthirsty, fierce R.C. “most impious, and most fierce in temper.”, lion-like in disposition?  Hast thou not heard that he brought out the bones of the kings from their graves into the light Jer. viii. 1; Baruch ii. 25.?  Hast thou not heard “Knowest thou not…” that he carried the people away captive?  Hast thou not heard that he put out the eyes of the king, after he had already seen his children slain 2 Kings xxv. 7.?  Hast thou not heard that he brake in pieces R.C. “carried off.” the Cherubim?  I do not mean the invisible νοητά.  R.C. add “and heavenly.” beings;—away with such a thought, O man Omitted by R.C.,—but the sculptured images, and the mercy-seat, in the midst of which God spake with His voice R.C. “But those which had been constructed in the Temple, which were over the mercy-seat of the Ark.”  Besides the two Cherubim of solid gold which Moses placed on the two ends of the Mercy-seat (Ex. xxxvii. 7 ff.), Solomon set “within the oracle” two Cherubim of olive wood overlaid with gold, ten feet high with outstretched wings overshadowing the Ark (1 Kings vi. 23–26; viii. 6, 7).  All these were either carried off or destroyed, when Nebuchadnezzar took away “all the treasures of the house of the Lord” and “cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon, King of Israel, had made in the Temple of the Lord” (2 Kings xxiv. 13; 1 Esdras i. 54; 2 Esdras x. 22).  The Benedictine editor is concerned because Cyril has paid no attention to the strange fiction in 2 Maccabees ii. 4 that Jeremy the Prophet “commanded the Tabernacle and the Ark to go with him” to Mount Horeb, and there hid them, with the Altar of Incense, in a hollow cave, to remain “unknown until the time that God gathers His people again together.”.  The veil of the Sanctuary The Greek word rendered “Sanctuary” is ἡ ἁγιωσύνη, literally “the holiness.” he trampled under foot:  the altar of incense he took and carried away to an idol-temple 2 Chron. xxxvi. 7.:  all the offerings he took away:  the Temple he burned from the foundations R.C. “The veil of the Sanctuary he tore down, he overturned the altar, and took all the vessels and carried them away to an idol temple.  The Temple itself he burned.”.  How great punishments did he deserve, for slaying kings, for setting fire to the Sanctuary, for taking the people captive, for setting the sacred vessels in the house of idols?  Did he not deserve ten thousand deaths?