Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king. He reigned for eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah, of Libnah. He did what was displeasing in the sight of YAHWEH, just as King Jehoiakim had done. YAHWEH became so angry with the people of Jerusalem and Judah that he banished them from the land.
Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. In the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon attacked Jerusalem with his entire army and laid siege to it. After the city had been surrounded for a year and half, they broke through the city walls. On the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine was so severe in the city that there was nothing left to eat. That was when the Babylonians broke through the city wall. That same night, Zedekiah and his soldiers tried to escape through the gate between the two walls near the royal garden even though they knew the enemy had the city surrounded. They fled toward the Jordan Valley, but the Babylonians pursued King Zedekiah and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his army deserted him there and fled. The Babylonians captured him and brought him to King Nebuchadnezzar, who was based at the town of Riblah in the territory of Hamath, where he passed sentence on Zedekiah. Nebuchadnezzar had Zedekiah’s sons slaughtered at Riblah, and Zedekiah was forced to watch their execution. The king of Babylon also executed all the officials of Judah. Then he put out Zedekiah’s eyes and bound him with chains. Then they dragged him off blinded to distant Babylon and put him in prison till the day of his death.
In the nineteenth year that Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon, on the tenth day of the fifth month of that year, the field general Nebuzaradan, who served the king, entered Jerusalem. He burned down the temple of YAHWEH, the royal palace, and all the homes of the wealthy of Jerusalem, and other buildings went up in flames. The Babylonians under the command of Nebuzaradan demolished all the walls surrounding Jerusalem.
Nebuzaradan, the field general, took as prisoners some of the poor who were left behind in Jerusalem, together with the skilled workers and the deserters who had gone over to him. But he also left behind some of the extremely poor people in the land of Judah. They owned nothing, but he gave them vineyards and fields of their own.
The Babylonians took everything of value from the temple of YAHWEH. They smashed the bronze pillars and confiscated the wheeled stands and the bronze laver. Everything made of bronze they carried off to Babylon. They also took the ash pots, the shovels, the snuffers, the sprinkling bowls, the incense bowls, and all the bronze vessels that had been used in worship. The field general took away every small bowl, the censers, the sprinkling bowls, the ash containers, the lampstands, the ladles, and the saucers —everything that was made of gold or silver. But the two pillars, the one sea and the twelve bronze bulls on their movable stands, which King Solomon had made for the temple of YAHWEH, were too heavy to weigh. Both pillars were identical, and each stood eighteen cubits high. Their circumference was twelve cubits, and they were four fingers thick and hollow inside. On top of each column was a large section of bronze; its height was over five cubits, and all around it were filigree and pomegranates, all in bronze. There was a total of one hundred pomegranates on the filigree all around, and ninety-six were visible from the ground.
Nebuzaradan, the field general, arrested Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest next in rank, and other temple officials. In the city he arrested an official who was in command of the fighting men, seven of the king’s closest associates, who were discovered in the city, the secretary to the army commander responsible for mustering the troops, and sixty men of distinction. The field general took these men and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. At Riblah, in the territory of Hamath, the king of Babylon had them executed. And so, the people of Judah were taken into exile.
Here is the record of the number of those deported by Nebuchadnezzar in the seventh year of his reign: 3,023 men from Judah. In the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, he deported 832 persons from Jerusalem. In the twenty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, Nebuzaradan, the field general, deported 745 Judeans. In all, 4,600 persons were deported.
Thirty-seven years after King Jehoiachin was taken away as a prisoner, on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month of that year, King Evil-merodach of Babylon showed kindness to Jehoiachin by releasing him from prison. This was in Evil-merodach’s first year as king. The king of Babylon treated Jehoiachin kindly and gave him a position of honor above the other kings. So Jehoiachin laid aside his prison clothes and, for the rest of his life, always ate at the king’s table. At the command of the king of Babylon, everything that he needed was given to him each day until his death.
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