The Fall of Jerusalem^(A)

^13 (B)Zedekiah rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had forced him to swear in God's name that he would be loyal. He stubbornly refused to repent and return to the Lord, the God of Israel. ¹⁴ In addition, the leaders of Judah, the priests, and the people followed the sinful example of the nations around them in worshiping idols, and so they defiled the Temple, which the Lord himself had made holy. ¹⁵ The Lord, the God of their ancestors, had continued to send prophets to warn his people, because he wanted to spare them and the Temple. ¹⁶ But they made fun of God's messengers, ignoring his words and laughing at his prophets, until at last the Lord's anger against his people was so great that there was no escape.

^17 (C)So the Lord brought the king of Babylonia to attack them. The king killed the young men of Judah even in the Temple. He had no mercy on anyone, young or old, man or woman, sick or healthy. God handed them all over to him. ¹⁸ The king of Babylonia looted the Temple, the Temple treasury, and the wealth of the king and his officials, and took everything back to Babylon. ^19 (D)He burned down the Temple and the city, with all its palaces and its wealth, and broke down the city wall. ²⁰ He took all the survivors to Babylonia, where they served him and his descendants as slaves until the rise of the Persian Empire. ^21 (E)And so what the Lord had foretold through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: “The land will lie desolate for seventy years, to make up for the Sabbath rest^[a] that has not been observed.”

³ The Lord became so angry with the people of Jerusalem and Judah that he banished them from his sight.

Zedekiah rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, ^4 (A)and so Nebuchadnezzar came with all his army and attacked Jerusalem on the tenth day of the tenth month of the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign. They set up camp outside the city, built siege walls around it, ⁵ and kept it under siege until Zedekiah's eleventh year. ⁶ On the ninth day of the fourth month of that same year, when the famine was so bad that the people had nothing left to eat, ^7 (B)the city walls were broken through. Although the Babylonians were surrounding the city, all the soldiers escaped during the night. They left by way of the royal garden, went through the gateway connecting the two walls, and fled in the direction of the Jordan Valley. ⁸ But the Babylonian army pursued King Zedekiah, captured him in the plains near Jericho, and all his soldiers deserted him. ⁹ Zedekiah was taken to King Nebuchadnezzar, who was in the city of Riblah in the territory of Hamath, and there Nebuchadnezzar passed sentence on him. ¹⁰ At Riblah he put Zedekiah's sons to death while Zedekiah was looking on and he also had the officials of Judah executed. ^11 (C)After that, he had Zedekiah's eyes put out and had him placed in chains and taken to Babylon. Zedekiah remained in prison in Babylon until the day he died.