The Fall of Jerusalem

Zedekiah did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes, just as Jehoiakim had done. He and his officials and the people of the land didn’t listen to what the Lord said through the prophet Jeremiah. All this happened in Jerusalem and Judah because the Lord was angry, until in the end he threw them out of his presence. Then Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.

2 Chronicles adds that Jeremiah the prophet brought him words from the Lord himself, and Zedekiah didn’t humble himself before Jeremiah. He rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear an oath by God. He was stubborn, and he hardened his heart and wouldn’t turn to the Lord, the God of Israel.

The chief men among the priests, and the people too, were very unfaithful. They followed all the disgusting practices of the nations, and they made the Lord’s house in Jerusalem unclean, the house he had made holy. Time after time the Lord, the God of their ancestors, sent his messengers to them, because he had compassion on his people and on the place where he lived. But they mocked the messengers of God, despised his words and sneered at his prophets, until the Lord’s anger rose up against his people and nothing could be done.

In Zedekiah’s ninth year as king, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came with his whole army against Jerusalem, on the tenth day of the tenth month. They camped around the city and built forts against it on every side.

King Zedekiah sent two men to Jeremiah the prophet. They were Jehucal the son of Shelemiah and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah, the priest. The men brought this request: “Pray to the Lord our God for us.”

At this time Jeremiah was coming and going among the people, because they had not put him in prison. Pharaoh’s army had come out of Egypt. When the Chaldeans camped around Jerusalem heard the news, they pulled back from the city.

Then the Lord’s word came to Jeremiah. The king of Judah had sent men to ask the Lord, and the Lord, the God of Israel, gave Jeremiah this answer to tell the king: “Pharaoh’s army, which came out to help you, will return to Egypt, to its own land. The Chaldeans will come again and fight against this city. They will take it and set it on fire.

“The Lord says: Don’t fool yourselves by saying, ‘The Chaldeans are sure to go away and leave us.’ They won’t go away. Even if you struck down the whole Chaldean army that is fighting you, and only wounded men were left, each of them would get up in his tent and set this city on fire.”

When Jeremiah got to Benjamin’s Gate, a captain of the guard was there. His name was Irijah, the son of Shelemiah, the son of Hananiah. He seized Jeremiah the prophet. “You’re going over to the Chaldeans’ side!” he said.

“That’s false!” said Jeremiah. “I’m not going over to the Chaldeans’ side.” But Irijah didn’t listen to him. He seized Jeremiah and took him to the officials.

The officials were angry with Jeremiah. They beat him and locked him up in the house of Jonathan the scribe, which they had turned into a prison. Jeremiah was put in the dungeon there, in the cells, and he stayed there for many days.

Then the king had him brought out. In the palace, Zedekiah asked him secretly, “Is there any word from the Lord?”

“There is,” said Jeremiah. “You will be handed over to Babylon’s king.”

Jeremiah also said to the king, “How have I wronged you, or your officials, or these people, for you to put me in prison? And where are your prophets now, the ones who told you, ‘The king of Babylon won’t come against you or against this land’? Please listen, my lord the king. Please hear my request. Don’t make me go back to the house of Jonathan the scribe, or I’ll die there.”

So King Zedekiah gave the order, and Jeremiah was moved to the courtyard of the guard. Each day they gave him a loaf of bread from the bakers’ street, until there was no bread left in the city. So Jeremiah stayed in the courtyard of the guard.

Then the officials said to the king, “Please have this man put to death. By saying such things, he is making the soldiers still left in this city lose heart, and all the people too. This man isn’t trying to help these people. He is trying to harm them.”

“Look, he is in your hands,” said King Zedekiah. “The king can’t do anything to oppose you.”

Then they seized Jeremiah and threw him into the dungeon of Malchijah, the king’s son, in the courtyard of the guard. They let him down on ropes. There was no water in the dungeon, but there was mud, and Jeremiah sank down in it.

Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, a eunuch who served in the king’s palace, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the dungeon. At the time, the king was sitting in Benjamin’s Gate. Ebedmelech went out of the palace and spoke to him.

“My lord the king,” he said, “everything these men have done to Jeremiah the prophet is wrong. They threw him into the dungeon, and he is likely to die of hunger where he is, since there’s no more bread in the city.”

“Take thirty men with you from here,” the king ordered Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, “and get Jeremiah the prophet up out of the dungeon before he dies.”

So Ebedmelech took the men with him and went into the palace, under the treasury. From there he took rags and worn-out clothes, and he let them down on ropes to Jeremiah in the dungeon.

“Put these rags and worn-out clothes under your armpits, under the ropes,” Ebedmelech the Ethiopian told Jeremiah. And Jeremiah did.

So they hauled Jeremiah up by the ropes and got him out of the dungeon. After that he stayed in the courtyard of the guard.

“If I give you the answer, you’ll kill me, won’t you?” said Jeremiah. “And if I tell you what to do, you won’t listen.”

So King Zedekiah swore an oath to Jeremiah in secret. “As the Lord lives, who made our souls, I won’t put you to death. And I won’t hand you over to these men who want to kill you.”

Then Jeremiah told Zedekiah, “The Lord, the God of Armies, the God of Israel, says this: ‘If you go out and surrender to the king of Babylon’s officials, you will live, and this city won’t be burned. You will live, and so will your household. But if you don’t go out to them, this city will be given to the Chaldeans. They will set it on fire, and you won’t get away from them.’”

“I’m afraid of the Jews who have deserted to the Chaldeans,” King Zedekiah told Jeremiah. “I could be handed over to them, and they would mock me.”

“They won’t hand you over,” said Jeremiah. “Please obey the Lord in what I am telling you. Then things will go well for you, and you will live. But if you refuse to go out, this is what the Lord has shown me. All the women left in the king of Judah’s palace will be led out to the king of Babylon’s officials, and those women will say, ‘Your close friends turned on you and got the better of you. Your feet are sunk in the mud, and they have turned away from you.’

“They will bring out all your wives and your children to the Chaldeans. You won’t get away from them. The king of Babylon will seize you, and because of you, this city will be burned.”

Then Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “Don’t let anyone know about this talk, and you won’t die. Suppose the officials hear that we have talked, and they come and ask you, ‘What did you say to the king? What did the king say to you? Don’t hide it from us, and we won’t kill you.’ Then just tell them, ‘I was begging the king not to make me go back to Jonathan’s house to die.’”

Then all the officials came to Jeremiah and questioned him. He gave them the answer the king had told him to give, word for word. So they stopped questioning him, because no one had overheard the conversation.

And Jeremiah stayed there, in the courtyard of the guard, until Jerusalem was taken.

The king of Babylon’s officials all came in and sat in the Middle Gate: Nergal Sharezer, Samgarnebo, Sarsechim the Rabsaris, Nergal Sharezer the Rabmag, and all the rest of the king of Babylon’s officials.

Zedekiah king of Judah and all his fighting men saw them and fled. They went out of the city by night, past the king’s garden, through the gate between the two walls, while the Chaldeans were all around the city. The king went toward the Arabah.

But the Chaldean army went after the king and caught up with him in the plains of Jericho. His whole army scattered away from him. They took the king prisoner and brought him up to Riblah, in the land of Hamath, to the king of Babylon, and they passed judgment on him there.

They killed Zedekiah’s sons before his eyes. Then they put out Zedekiah’s eyes, bound him in chains and carried him off to Babylon. The book of Jeremiah adds that the king of Babylon also killed all the nobles of Judah at Riblah, and that he kept Zedekiah in prison in Babylon until the day he died.

Nebuzaradan carried away to Babylon the rest of the people still in the city, along with the deserters who had gone over to the king of Babylon, and all the rest of the crowd. But he left some of the poorest of the land to work the vineyards and fields. Jeremiah 52 says he carried away some of the poorest people too. Jeremiah 39 says the poor he left had nothing, and that he gave them vineyards and fields at the same time.

The Chaldeans broke up the bronze pillars that stood in the Lord’s house, the stands, and the bronze Sea, a huge tank, and they carried the bronze pieces to Babylon. They took the pots, the shovels, the snuffers for the lamps, the spoons and all the bronze things used in the worship there. The captain of the guard took the fire pans and the basins, everything made of gold for its gold, and everything made of silver for its silver. Jeremiah 52’s list is longer, with cups, lampstands and bowls too.

King Solomon had made the two pillars, the Sea and the stands for the Lord’s house, and the bronze in them was not weighed. One pillar stood eighteen cubits high, about twenty-seven feet, with a bronze top piece three cubits high, and a bronze network and pomegranates all around the top. The second pillar was the same. Jeremiah 52 also names the twelve bronze bulls under the stands. It says each pillar was hollow, twelve cubits around and four fingers thick, and that the top piece was five cubits high, with ninety-six pomegranates on the sides and a hundred in all on the network.

2 Chronicles tells it this way. Because of all this, the Lord brought the king of the Chaldeans against them. The king killed their young men with the sword in their sanctuary. He had no pity for young men or young women, for the old or the frail. The Lord handed them all over to him. He carried off to Babylon all the things from God’s house, great and small, and the treasures of the Lord’s house and of the king and his officials. They burned God’s house and broke down the wall of Jerusalem. They set fire to all its palaces and destroyed all its valuable things.

The king of the Chaldeans carried away to Babylon the people who had escaped the sword, and they served him and his sons until the kingdom of Persia began to rule. So the Lord’s word through Jeremiah came true, and the land enjoyed its Sabbaths, its times of rest. As long as it lay empty, it kept Sabbath, until the seventy years were over.

Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard brought them all to the king of Babylon at Riblah. There, in the land of Hamath, the king of Babylon attacked them and put them to death. So Judah was carried away from its own land into captivity.

Jeremiah 52 counts the people Nebuchadnezzar carried away. In his seventh year he took 3,023 Jews. In his eighteenth year he took 832 people from Jerusalem. In his twenty-third year, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard took 745 Jews. All together they numbered 4,600.

So Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard sent for Jeremiah. With him were Nebushazban the Rabsaris and Nergal Sharezer the Rabmag, along with all the king of Babylon’s chief officers. They brought Jeremiah out of the courtyard of the guard. They put him in the care of Gedaliah son of Ahikam, son of Shaphan, who was to take him home. So Jeremiah lived among the people.

While Jeremiah was still locked up in the courtyard of the guard, the Lord had given him a message for Ebedmelech the Ethiopian: “The Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says this: Look, I will bring on this city what I said I would: harm, not good. You will see it happen on that day. But on that day I will rescue you, says the Lord. You won’t be handed over to the men you are afraid of. I will surely save you. You won’t be killed by the sword. You will escape with your life, because you have put your trust in me, says the Lord.”

Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon made Gedaliah governor over the people he had left in the land of Judah.

All the captains of the army and their men heard that the king of Babylon had made Gedaliah governor, and they came to him at Mizpah. They were Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, Johanan the son of Kareah, Seraiah the son of Tanhumeth the Netophathite, and Jaazaniah the son of the Maacathite, with their men.

Gedaliah swore an oath to them and their men. “Don’t be afraid of the Chaldeans’ servants,” he said. “Stay in the land and serve the king of Babylon, and things will go well for you.”

But in the seventh month Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, the son of Elishama, from the royal family, arrived with ten men. They attacked Gedaliah and killed him. The Jews and Chaldeans who were with him at Mizpah died too.

Then all the people, great and small, and the army captains got up and set off for Egypt, because they were afraid of the Chaldeans.

Evilmerodach spoke kindly to him and set Jehoiachin’s throne higher than those of the other kings in Babylon with him. Jehoiachin’s prison clothes were changed, and for the rest of his life he ate at the king’s table. The king gave him an allowance too, a share for every day, as long as he lived.

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, so that the Lord’s word spoken through Jeremiah would come true. Cyrus sent a proclamation through his whole kingdom, and he put it in writing too: “Cyrus king of Persia says this: ‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given all the kingdoms of the earth to me. He has commanded me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever among you is one of the Lord’s people, may the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up.’”