Jeremiah 52:1-16

Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he was king in Jerusalem for eleven years. His mother’s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah, and she was from Libnah. Zedekiah did what the LORD said was wrong, just as Jehoiakim had done. All this happened in Jerusalem and Judah because the LORD was angry with them. Finally, he threw them out of his presence. Zedekiah turned against the king of Babylon. Then Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. They made a camp around the city and built devices all around the city walls to attack it. This happened on Zedekiah’s ninth year, tenth month, and tenth day as king. And the city was under attack until Zedekiah’s eleventh year as king. By the ninth day of the fourth month, the hunger was terrible in the city; there was no food for the people to eat. Then the city wall was broken through, and the whole army of Judah ran away at night. They left the city through the gate between the two walls by the king’s garden. Even though the Babylonians were surrounding the city, Zedekiah and his men headed toward the Jordan Valley. But the Babylonian army chased King Zedekiah and caught him in the plains of Jericho. All of his army was scattered from him. So the Babylonians captured Zedekiah and took him to the king of Babylon at the town of Riblah in the land of Hamath. There he passed sentence on Zedekiah. At Riblah the king of Babylon killed Zedekiah’s sons as he watched. The king also killed all the officers of Judah. Then he put out Zedekiah’s eyes, and put bronze chains on him, and took him to Babylon. And the king kept Zedekiah in prison there until the day he died. Nebuzaradan, commander of the king’s special guards and servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem on the tenth day of the fifth month. This was in Nebuchadnezzar’s nineteenth year as king of Babylon. Nebuzaradan set fire to the Temple of the LORD, the palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem; every important building was burned. The whole Babylonian army, led by the commander of the king’s special guards, broke down all the walls around Jerusalem. Nebuzaradan, the commander of the king’s special guards, took captive some of the poorest people, those who were left in Jerusalem, those who had surrendered to the king of Babylon, and the skilled craftsmen who were left in Jerusalem. But Nebuzaradan left behind some of the poorest people of the land to take care of the vineyards and fields.