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2 Kings 24:1-25:7
New English Translation

24 During Jehoiakim’s reign,[a] King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked.[b] Jehoiakim was his subject for three years, but then he rebelled against him.[c] 2 The Lord sent against him Babylonian, Syrian, Moabite, and Ammonite raiding bands; he sent them to destroy Judah, just as in the Lord’s message that he had announced through his servants the prophets. 3 Just as the Lord had announced, he rejected Judah because of all the sins that Manasseh had committed.[d] 4 Because he killed innocent people and stained Jerusalem with their blood, the Lord was unwilling to forgive them.[e]

5 The rest of the events of Jehoiakim’s reign and all his accomplishments, are recorded in the scroll called the Annals of the Kings of Judah.[f] 6 He passed away[g] and his son Jehoiachin replaced him as king. 7 The king of Egypt did not march out from his land again, for the king of Babylon conquered all the territory that the king of Egypt had formerly controlled between the Stream of Egypt and the Euphrates River.

Jehoiachin’s Reign over Judah

8 Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother[h] was Nehushta the daughter of Elnathan, from Jerusalem. 9 He did evil in the sight of[i] the Lord as his ancestors had done.

10 At that time the generals[j] of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon marched to Jerusalem and besieged the city.[k] 11 King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to the city while his generals were besieging it. 12 King Jehoiachin of Judah, along with his mother, his servants, his officials, and his eunuchs surrendered[l] to the king of Babylon. The king of Babylon, in the eighth year of his reign,[m] took Jehoiachin[n] prisoner. 13 Nebuchadnezzar[o] took from there all the riches in the treasuries of the Lord’s temple and of the royal palace. He removed all the gold items that King Solomon of Israel had made for the Lord’s temple, just as the Lord had warned. 14 He deported all the residents of Jerusalem, including all the officials and all the soldiers (10,000 people in all). This included all the craftsmen and those who worked with metal. No one was left except for the poorest among the people of the land. 15 He deported Jehoiachin from Jerusalem to Babylon, along with the king’s mother and wives, his eunuchs, and the high-ranking officials of the land.[p] 16 The king of Babylon deported to Babylon all the soldiers (there were 7,000), as well as 1,000 craftsmen and metal workers. This included all the best warriors.[q] 17 The king of Babylon made Mattaniah, Jehoiachin’s[r] uncle, king in Jehoiachin’s place. He renamed him Zedekiah.

Zedekiah’s Reign over Judah

18 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he ruled for eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother[s] was Hamutal,[t] the daughter of Jeremiah, from Libnah. 19 He did evil in the sight of[u] the Lord, as Jehoiakim had done.[v]

20 What follows is a record of what happened to Jerusalem and Judah because of the Lord’s anger; he finally threw them out of his presence.[w] Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. 25 1 So King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came against Jerusalem with his whole army and set up camp outside[x] it. They built siege ramps all around it. He arrived on the tenth day of the tenth month in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign.[y] 2 The city remained under siege until King Zedekiah’s eleventh year. 3 By the ninth day of the fourth month[z] the famine in the city was so severe the residents[aa] had no food. 4 The enemy broke through the city walls,[ab] and all the soldiers tried to escape. They left the city during the night.[ac] They went through the gate between the two walls, which is near the king’s garden.[ad] (The Babylonians were all around the city.) Then they headed for the rift valley.[ae] 5 But the Babylonian army chased after the king. They caught up with him in the rift valley plains of Jericho,[af] and his entire army deserted him. 6 They captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah,[ag] where he[ah] passed sentence on him. 7 Zedekiah’s sons were executed while Zedekiah was forced to watch.[ai] The king of Babylon[aj] then had Zedekiah’s eyes put out, bound him in bronze chains, and carried him off to Babylon.

Footnotes

  1. 2 Kings 24:1 tn Heb “In his days.”
  2. 2 Kings 24:1 tn Heb “came up.” Perhaps an object (“against him”) has been accidentally omitted from the text. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (AB), 306.
  3. 2 Kings 24:1 tn The Hebrew text has “and he turned and rebelled against him.”
  4. 2 Kings 24:3 tn Heb “Certainly according to the word of the Lord this happened against Judah, to remove [them] from his face because of the sins of Manasseh according to all which he did.”
  5. 2 Kings 24:4 tn Heb “and also the blood of the innocent which he shed, and he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord was not willing to forgive.”
  6. 2 Kings 24:5 tn Heb “As for the rest of the events of Jehoiakim, and all which he did, are they not written on the scroll of the events of the days of the kings of Judah?”
  7. 2 Kings 24:6 tn Heb “lay down with his fathers.”
  8. 2 Kings 24:8 tn Heb “the name of his mother.”
  9. 2 Kings 24:9 tn Heb “in the eyes of.”
  10. 2 Kings 24:10 tn Heb “servants.”
  11. 2 Kings 24:10 tn Heb “went up [to] Jerusalem and the city entered into siege.”
  12. 2 Kings 24:12 tn Heb “came out.”
  13. 2 Kings 24:12 sn That is, the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, 597 b.c.
  14. 2 Kings 24:12 tn Heb “him”; the referent (Jehoiachin) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
  15. 2 Kings 24:13 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Nebuchadnezzar) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
  16. 2 Kings 24:15 tn Heb “and he deported Jehoiachin to Babylon; the mother of the king and the wives of the king and his eunuchs and the mighty of the land he led into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.”
  17. 2 Kings 24:16 tn Heb “the entire [group], mighty men, doers of war.”
  18. 2 Kings 24:17 tn Heb “his.”
  19. 2 Kings 24:18 tn Heb “the name of his mother.”
  20. 2 Kings 24:18 tc Some textual witnesses support the consonantal text (Kethib) in reading “Hamital.”
  21. 2 Kings 24:19 tn Heb “in the eyes of.”
  22. 2 Kings 24:19 tn Heb “according to all which Jehoiakim had done.”
  23. 2 Kings 24:20 tn Heb “Surely [or, ‘for’] because of the anger of the Lord this happened in Jerusalem and Judah until he threw them out from upon his face.”
  24. 2 Kings 25:1 tn Or “against.”
  25. 2 Kings 25:1 sn This would have been Jan 15, 588 b.c. The reckoning is based on the calendar that begins the year in the spring (Nisan = March/April).
  26. 2 Kings 25:3 tn The MT has simply “of the month,” but the parallel passage in Jer 52:6 has “fourth month,” and this is followed by almost all English translations. The word “fourth,” however, is not actually present in the MT of 2 Kgs 25:3.sn According to modern reckoning that would have been July 18, 586 b.c. The siege thus lasted almost a full eighteen months.
  27. 2 Kings 25:3 tn Heb “the people of the land.”
  28. 2 Kings 25:4 tn Heb “the city was breached.”
  29. 2 Kings 25:4 tn The Hebrew text is abrupt here: “And all the men of war by the night.” The translation attempts to capture the sense.
  30. 2 Kings 25:4 sn The king’s garden is mentioned again in Neh 3:15 in conjunction with the pool of Siloam and the stairs that go down from the City of David. This would have been in the southern part of the city near the Tyropean Valley which agrees with the reference to the “two walls” which were probably the walls on the eastern and western hills.
  31. 2 Kings 25:4 sn The rift valley (עֲרָבָה, ʿarabah) extends northward of the Dead Sea past Galilee and southward to the Gulf of Aqaba. Here the southern part of the Jordan Valley is in view with the intention to escape across the Jordan river to Moab or Ammon. It appears from Jer 40:14; 41:15 that the Ammonites were known to harbor fugitives from the Babylonians.
  32. 2 Kings 25:5 sn The rift valley plains of Jericho refer to the parts of the Jordan Valley in the vicinity of Jericho (see HALOT 880 s.v. עֲרָבָה). There the terrain is fairly level and slopes gently down to the Jordan, a descent of about 450 feet over five miles. Many translations render this as “the plains of Jericho” (ESV, NASB, NIV, KJV). See the note at Num 22:1.
  33. 2 Kings 25:6 sn Riblah was a strategic town on the Orontes River in Syria. It was at a crossing of the major roads between Egypt and Mesopotamia. Pharaoh Necho had earlier received Jehoahaz there and put him in chains (2 Kgs 23:33) prior to taking him captive to Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar had set up his base camp for conducting his campaigns against the Palestinian states there and was now sitting in judgment on prisoners brought to him.
  34. 2 Kings 25:6 tn The Hebrew text has the plural form of the verb, but the parallel passage in Jer 52:9 has the singular.
  35. 2 Kings 25:7 tn Heb “were killed before his eyes.”
  36. 2 Kings 25:7 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king of Babylon) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
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