^24:1During Jehoiakim’s reign,¹ King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked.² Jehoiakim was his subject for three years, but then he rebelled against him.³^24:2The Lord sent against him Babylonian, Syrian, Moabite, and Ammonite raiding bands; he sent them to destroy Judah, as he had warned he would do through his servants the prophets.⁴^24:3Just as the Lord had announced, he rejected Judah because of all the sins which Manasseh had committed.⁵^24:4Because he killed innocent people and stained Jerusalem with their blood, the Lord was unwilling to forgive them.⁶

^24:5The 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.⁷^24:6He passed away⁸ and his son Jehoiachin replaced him as king. ^24:7The 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 Brook of Egypt and the Euphrates River.

Jehoiachin’s Reign over Judah

^24:8Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem.⁹ His mother¹⁰ was Nehushta the daughter of Elnathan, from Jerusalem. ^24:9He did evil in the sight of¹¹ the Lord as his ancestors had done.

^24:10At that time the generals¹² of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon marched to Jerusalem and besieged the city.¹³^24:11King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to the city while his generals were besieging it. ^24:12King Jehoiachin of Judah, along with his mother, his servants, his officials, and his eunuchs surrendered¹⁴ to the king of Babylon. The king of Babylon, in the eighth year of his reign,¹⁵ took Jehoiachin¹⁶ prisoner. ^24:13Nebuchadnezzar¹⁷ 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 which King Solomon of Israel had made for the Lord’s temple, just as the Lord had warned. ^24:14He 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. ^24:15He deported Jehoiachin from Jerusalem to Babylon, along with the king’s mother and wives, his eunuchs, and the high-ranking officials of the land.¹⁸^24:16The 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.¹⁹^24:17The king of Babylon made Mattaniah, Jehoiachin’s²⁰ uncle, king in Jehoiachin’s place. He renamed him Zedekiah.

Zedekiah’s Reign over Judah

^24:18Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he ruled for eleven years in Jerusalem.²¹ His mother²² was Hamutal,²³ the daughter of Jeremiah, from Libnah. ^24:19He did evil in the sight of²⁴ the Lord, as Jehoiakim had done.²⁵

^24:20What 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.²⁶ Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. ^25:1So King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came against Jerusalem with his whole army and set up camp outside¹ 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.²^25:2The city remained under siege until King Zedekiah’s eleventh year. ^25:3By the ninth day of the fourth month³ the famine in the city was so severe the residents⁴ had no food. ^25:4The enemy broke through the city walls,⁵ and all the soldiers tried to escape. They left the city during the night.⁶ They went through the gate between the two walls that is near the king’s garden.⁷ (The Babylonians were all around the city.) Then they headed for the Jordan Valley.⁸^25:5But the Babylonian army chased after the king. They caught up with him in the plains of Jericho,⁹ and his entire army deserted him. ^25:6They captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah,¹⁰ where he¹¹ passed sentence on him. ^25:7Zedekiah’s sons were executed while Zedekiah was forced to watch.¹² The king of Babylon¹³ then had Zedekiah’s eyes put out, bound him in bronze chains, and carried him off to Babylon.

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Footnotes

1 Heb “In his days.”
2 Heb “came up.” Perhaps an object (“against him”) has been accidentally omitted from the text. See M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (), .
3 The Hebrew text has “and he turned and rebelled against him.”
4 Heb “he sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the Lord which he spoke by the hand of his servants the prophets.”
5 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.”
6 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.”
7 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?”
8 Heb “lay down with his fathers.”
9 For location see ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; .
10 Heb “the name of his mother.”
11 Heb “in the eyes of.”
12 Heb “servants.”
13 Heb “went up [to] Jerusalem and the city entered into siege.”
14 Heb “came out.”
15 That is, the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, 597 b.c.
16 Heb “him”; the referent (Jehoiachin) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
17 Heb “he”; the referent (Nebuchadnezzar) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
18 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.”
19 Heb “the entire [group], mighty men, doers of war.”
20 Heb “his.”
21 For location see ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; .
22 Heb “the name of his mother.”
23 Some textual witnesses support the consonantal text (Kethib) in reading “Hamital.”
24 Heb “in the eyes of.”
25 Heb “according to all which Jehoiakim had done.”
26 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.”
1 Or “against.”
2 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).
3 The 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 of 2 Kgs 25:3. According to modern reckoning that would have been July 18, 586 b.c. The siege thus lasted almost a full eighteen months.
4 Heb “the people of the land.”
5 Heb “the city was breached.”
6 The Hebrew text is abrupt here: “And all the men of war by the night.” The translation attempts to capture the sense.
7 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.
8 Heb “toward the Arabah.” The Arabah was the rift valley north and south of the Dead Sea. Here the intention was undoubtedly to escape across the Jordan to Moab or Ammon. It appears from Jer 40:14; 41:15 that the Ammonites were known to harbor fugitives from the Babylonians.
9 For location see ; ; ; ; ; .
10 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.
11 The Hebrew text has the plural form of the verb, but the parallel passage in Jer 52:9 has the singular.
12 Heb “were killed before his eyes.”
13 Heb “he”; the referent (the king of Babylon) has been specified in the translation for clarity.