¹⁴King Zedekiah sent for the prophet Jeremiah and brought him to the third entrance in the Lord’s temple. “I’m going to ask you a question,” the king said to Jeremiah. “Don’t hide anything from me.”

¹⁵Jeremiah answered Zedekiah, “If I answer you, you’ll kill me. If I give you advice, you won’t listen to me.”

¹⁶So King Zedekiah secretly swore an oath to Jeremiah, “The Lord gave us life. As the Lord lives, I will not kill you or hand you over to these men who want to kill you.”

¹⁷Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, “This is what the Lord God of Armies, the God of Israel, says: If you surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, you will live, and this city will not be burned. You and your household will live. ¹⁸But if you don’t surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, this city will be handed over to the Babylonians. They will burn it down, and you will not escape from them.”

¹⁹King Zedekiah answered Jeremiah, “I’m afraid of the Jews who have deserted to the Babylonians. The Babylonians may hand me over to them, and they will torture me.”

²⁰Jeremiah said, “You will not be handed over to them. Obey the Lord by doing what I’m telling you. Then everything will go well for you, and you will live. ²¹But if you refuse to surrender, this is what the Lord has shown me. ²²All the women who are left in the palace of Judah’s king will be brought out to the officers of the king of Babylon. These women will say:

‘Your trusted friends have misled you and used you.

Your feet are stuck in the mud, and your friends have deserted you.’

²³“All your wives and children will be brought to the Babylonians. You will not escape from them. You will be captured by the king of Babylon, and this city will be burned down.”

Jeremiah and Zedekiah Make an Agreement

²⁴Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “Don’t let anyone know about this conversation, or you will die. ²⁵The officials may find out that I’ve been talking with you. They may come to you and say, ‘Tell us what you said to the king and what the king said to you. Don’t hide anything from us, or we’ll kill you.’ ²⁶If they come to you, say to them, ‘I asked the king not to send me back to Jonathan’s house to die there.’ ”

²⁷All the officials came to Jeremiah and questioned him. He told them exactly what the king had told him to say. So they stopped questioning him, because they hadn’t heard his conversation with the king. ²⁸Jeremiah stayed in the courtyard of the prison until the day Jerusalem was captured.

39TH CHAPTER

Jerusalem Is Captured—2 Kings 25:1–12; 2 Chronicles 36:19–21; Jeremiah 52:4–16

¹In the tenth month of Zedekiah’s ninth year as king of Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked Jerusalem with his entire army and blockaded it. ²On the ninth day of the fourth month of Zedekiah’s eleventh year as king, they broke into the city.

³Then all the officers of the king of Babylon came in and sat in Middle Gate: Nergal (the quartermaster), Samgar Nebo (the chief officer), Nergal (the quartermaster and the chief fortuneteller), and all the rest of the officers of the king of Babylon.

⁴When King Zedekiah of Judah and all the soldiers saw them, they fled. They left the city at night by way of the king’s garden through the gate between the two walls, and they took the road to the plain ⸤of Jericho⸥. ⁵The Babylonian army pursued them and caught up with Zedekiah in the plain of Jericho. They arrested him and brought him to Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar at Riblah in the territory of Hamath. The king of Babylon passed sentence on him. ⁶The king of Babylon slaughtered Zedekiah’s sons as Zedekiah watched at Riblah. He also slaughtered all the leaders of Judah. ⁷Then he blinded Zedekiah, put him in bronze shackles, and took him to Babylon.

⁸The Babylonians burned down the royal palace and the people’s homes, and they tore down the walls of Jerusalem. ⁹Nebuzaradan, Babylon’s captain of the guard, captured the few people left in the city, those who surrendered to him, and the rest of the people. ¹⁰But Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, left some poor people who had nothing in the land of Judah. At that time he gave them vineyards and farms.

¹¹King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon gave Nebuzaradan an order concerning Jeremiah. He said, ¹²“Take him, and look after him. Don’t harm him in any way, but do for him whatever he asks.” ¹³Nebuzaradan (the captain of the guard), Nebushazban (the chief official), Nergal (the quartermaster and the chief fortuneteller), and all the other leaders of the king of Babylon sent for Jeremiah. ¹⁴They took Jeremiah out of the courtyard of the prison and handed him over to Gedaliah, son of Ahikam and grandson of Shaphan, to take him home. So he lived among the people.

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