¹⁷The king of Babylon made King Jehoiakin’s Uncle Mattaniah king in his place and changed Mattaniah’s name to Zedekiah. ¹⁸Zedekiah was 21 years old when he began to rule, and he ruled for 11 years in Jerusalem. His mother was Hamutal, daughter of Jeremiah from Libnah. ¹⁹Zedekiah did what the Lord considered evil, as Jehoiakim had done.

²⁰The Lord became angry with Jerusalem and Judah and threw the people out of his sight.

Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.

25TH CHAPTER

The Fall of Jerusalem—2 Chronicles 36:19–21; Jeremiah 39:1–10; 40:5–9; 41:1–3, 16–18; 52:4–30

¹On the tenth day of the tenth month of the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked Jerusalem with his entire army. They set up camp and built dirt ramps around the city walls. ²The blockade of the city lasted until Zedekiah’s eleventh year as king. ³On the ninth day of the fourth^amonth, the famine in the city became so severe that the common people had no food.

⁴The enemy broke through the city walls that night. All Judah’s soldiers left on the road of the gate between the two walls beside the king’s garden. While the Babylonians were attacking the city from all sides, the king took the road to the plain ⸤of Jericho⸥. ⁵The Babylonian army pursued King Zedekiah and caught up with him in the plain of Jericho. His entire army had deserted him. ⁶The Babylonians captured the king, brought him to the king of Babylon at Riblah, and passed sentence on him. ⁷They slaughtered Zedekiah’s sons as he watched, and then they blinded Zedekiah. They put him in bronze shackles and took him to Babylon.

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Footnotes

a 25:3 Jeremiah 39:2; 52:6; Masoretic Text omits “fourth.”