¹⁹Nebuchadnezzar and his army set fire to God’s Temple and broke down Jerusalem’s wall and burned all the palaces. They took or destroyed every valuable thing in Jerusalem.

²⁰Nebuchadnezzar took captive to Babylon the people who were left alive, and he forced them to be slaves for him and his descendants. They remained there as slaves until the Persian kingdom defeated Babylon. ²¹And so what the Lord had told Israel through the prophet Jeremiah happened: The country was an empty wasteland for seventy years to make up for the years of Sabbath rest ⁿ that the people had not kept.

²²In the first year Cyrus was king of Persia, the Lord had Cyrus send an announcement to his whole kingdom. This happened so the Lord’s message spoken by Jeremiah would come true. He wrote:

²³This is what Cyrus king of Persia says:

The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has appointed me to build a Temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Now may the Lord your God be with all of you who are his people. You are free to go to Jerusalem.

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Footnotes

nSabbath rest The law said that every seventh year the land was not to be farmed. See Leviticus 25:1–7.