⁹Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign; he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.^* ¹⁰In the spring of the year King Nebuchadnezzar sent and brought him to Babylon, along with the precious vessels of the house of the Lord, and made his brother Zedekiah king over Judah and Jerusalem.^*

Reign of Zedekiah

¹¹Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign; he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem.^* ¹²He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord his God. He did not humble himself before the prophet Jeremiah who spoke from the mouth of the Lord.^* ¹³He also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God; he stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the Lord, the God of Israel.^* ¹⁴All the leading priests and the people also were exceedingly unfaithful, following all the abominations of the nations, and they polluted the house of the Lord that he had consecrated in Jerusalem.

The Fall of Jerusalem

¹⁵The Lord, the God of their ancestors, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place,^* ¹⁶but they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord against his people became so great that there was no remedy.^*

¹⁷Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their youths with the sword in the house of their sanctuary and had no compassion on young man or young woman, the aged or the feeble; he gave them all into his hand.^* ¹⁸All the vessels of the house of God, large and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his officials, all these he brought to Babylon.^* ¹⁹They burned the house of God, broke down the wall of Jerusalem, burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all its precious vessels.^* ²⁰He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia,^* ²¹to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had made up for its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.^*

Read in Logos

Cross references

*2 Kings 24:8–17
*2 Sam 11:1; Jer 37:1
*2 Kings 24:18–20; Jer 52:1
*2 Chr 33:23; Jer 21:3–7
*2 Kings 17:4; 2 Chr 30:8; Jer 52:3
*Jer 25:3, 4; 35:15; 44:4
*2 Chr 30:10; Ezra 5:12; Prov 1:25; Jer 5:12, 13
*2 Kings 25:1–7
*2 Kings 25.13ff
*2 Kings 25:9; Jer 52:13
*2 Kings 25:11; Jer 27:7
*Lev 25:4; 26:34; Jer 29:10