2 Kings
25
- So in the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign,
on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched
against Jerusalem with his whole army. He encamped outside the city and built
siege works all around it.
- The city was kept under siege until the eleventh
year of King Zedekiah.
- By the ninth day of the fourth month the
famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people
to eat.
- Then the city wall was broken through, and
the whole army fled at night through the gate between the two walls near the
king's garden, though the Babylonians were surrounding the city. They fled
toward the Arabah,
- but the Babylonian army pursued the king
and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his soldiers were separated
from him and scattered,
- and he was captured. He was taken to the
king of Babylon at Riblah, where sentence was pronounced on him.
- They killed the sons of Zedekiah before his
eyes. Then they put out his eyes, bound him with bronze shackles and took
him to Babylon.
- On the seventh day of the fifth month, in
the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan commander
of the imperial guard, an official of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem.
- He set fire to the temple of the LORD, the
royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he
burned down.
- The whole Babylonian army, under the commander
of the imperial guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem.
- Nebuzaradan the commander of the guard carried
into exile the people who remained in the city, along with the rest of the
populace and those who had gone over to the king of Babylon.
- But the commander left behind some of the
poorest people of the land to work the vineyards and fields.
- The Babylonians broke up the bronze pillars,
the movable stands and the bronze Sea that were at the temple of the LORD
and they carried the bronze to Babylon.
- They also took away the pots, shovels, wick
trimmers, dishes and all the bronze articles used in the temple service.
- The commander of the imperial guard took
away the censers and sprinkling bowls -- all that were made of pure gold or
silver.
- The bronze from the two pillars, the Sea
and the movable stands, which Solomon had made for the temple of the LORD,
was more than could be weighed.
- Each pillar was twenty-seven feet high. The
bronze capital on top of one pillar was four and a half feet high and was
decorated with a network and pomegranates of bronze all around. The other
pillar, with its network, was similar.
- The commander of the guard took as prisoners
Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest next in rank and the three
doorkeepers.
- Of those still in the city, he took the officer
in charge of the fighting men and five royal advisers. He also took the secretary
who was chief officer in charge of conscripting the people of the land and
sixty of his men who were found in the city.
- Nebuzaradan the commander took them all and
brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah.
- There at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, the
king had them executed. So Judah went into captivity, away from her land.
- Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon appointed
Gedaliah son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, to be over the people he had left
behind in Judah.
- When all the army officers and their men
heard that the king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah as governor, they came
to Gedaliah at Mizpah -- Ishmael son of Nethaniah, Johanan son of Kareah,
Seraiah son of Tanhumeth the Netophathite, Jaazaniah the son of the Maacathite,
and their men.
- Gedaliah took an oath to reassure them and
their men. "Do not be afraid of the Babylonian officials," he said.
"Settle down in the land and serve the king of Babylon, and it will go
well with you."
- In the seventh month, however, Ishmael son
of Nethaniah, the son of Elishama, who was of royal blood, came with ten men
and assassinated Gedaliah and also the men of Judah and the Babylonians who
were with him at Mizpah.
- At this, all the people from the least to
the greatest, together with the army officers, fled to Egypt for fear of the
Babylonians.
- In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of
Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the year Evil-Merodach became king of Babylon,
he released Jehoiachin from prison on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth
month.
- He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat
of honor higher than those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon.
- So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes
and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king's table.
- Day by day the king gave Jehoiachin a regular
allowance as long as he lived.
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